Teaching gardens

Children need green places for outdoor play. A little time each day involved in outdoor activity is good for them offering needed exercise and a calming of the nerves. Children also need good places to learn. In a recent article Washington Post writer Adrian Higgins describes an important trend in education -- what he calls "teaching gardens." Gardens provide a natural learning lab for kids. They let children step beyond the normal indoor world of schools and classrooms and into the natural world where that can learn with all their senses.

The NWF and its statewide affiliates encourage schools to develop schoolyard habitats. These are wildlife gardens that that let children get beyond the indoor world and into a reversal of nature deficit disorder.