Toilet paper and flour weren’t the only popular items during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This spring, nurseries and hardware stores found themselves scrambling to keep their shelves stocked.
Gardening suddenly grew in popularity across the country, from backyards to community plots.
The phenomenon has been referred to as “Panic Gardening,” referencing the Victory Gardening movement during both world wars.
Meg Cunningham speaks with landscape gardener and Sackville Farmers’ Market manager, Michael Freeman, provides some insight into the sudden interest.
MC: There’s been a dramatic increase in interest in gardening since the COVID-19 pandemic. Why do you think that is?
MF: So there are two kinds of things going on, I think. One is that a lot of people have lost their employment and they’re at home and may or may not be receiving benefits and just need something to do. People need work, and home improvement I think has been the default thing for a lot of people. The other thing that I like to think about a lot is the food security aspects where, you know, people either are seeing already or anticipating shocks in supply chains. You know, in New Brunswick, like, you know, 80% of our food comes from out of province and a lot of that’s from the States and we see these places where COVID is a lot worse and people are like, Oh, geez, I, you know, better get some more of this for myself and be able to be a little more self sufficient.
MC: Do you see a correlation between gardening and mental health?
MF: Certainly, in my own life. It’s what I do to stay calm. I think for a lot of people, that’s what it is. Part of it is just like having a nice space. Part of it is doing things with your hands., part of it is feeling like you have something that you can actually control in a world where everything is out of control.
Freeman says that he’s noticed local nurseries selling out of food crop related plants this season.
He recalls that in May, his friends at Sunrise Nursery had a customer buy their entire supply of fifty blueberry plants in one purchase.
Since children have been out of school since the initial outbreak in March, I was curious to know if gardening could be used to teach kids about food and food insecurity.
MC: You’re a parent, which is why I’m including this question, how important is gardening to early childhood education?
MF: Oh, super important. Long before I even thought I was going to be a dad, I was working in elementary schools with like K through 4 students on food gardening. I think there are a lot of things that were missing from my education when I was a kid, you know, where education is really kind of geared towards, industrial skills. Sit down, be quiet, follow instructions, stuff like that. The things that fall by the wayside are like, I know how corn grows, I know where food comes from, I have some of the skills to do that stuff. Which are things that, in an increasingly food insecure world, are going to become increasingly important. There’s so much research out there and curriculum that has been developed. There’s so many ways to use gardening as an educational tool. I mean, it’s great just as a way to get kids out and having fun. You can use strawberries or ground cherries or something, it’s kind of a hook to get kids to just do an outdoor activity. Because we know that doing outdoor activities is good for kids, period. But there has been so much work by academics and by educators that goes into finding ways to teach biology through gardening, to teach math through gardening, to teach history, and culture, and social studies through gardening. You can use all of these things. I think that’s something that I’m hoping to see in in my kid’s education, both informally at home but also in the school system, is taking practical skills and using those as a means to teach some of these things that could otherwise be dry or be taught by a computer or by worksheets, and instead they can be taught in the context of crop planting or harvesting, or reading recipes or stuff like that that might be a little more relevant to people.
A similar question about early childhood education was posed to Food For All NB director, Laura Reinsborough.
LR: The most fun part is eating the food. So to connect eating back to where our food comes from, the shorter the links the better. Kids can really get those direct links and connect it back to the earth, the land, the water, where it all comes from. I see that kind of activity being the most profound thing that we can do with a very young child. My kids are seven and ten. We’re lucky to live in a place where the previous owners had planted raspberry canes. So to harvest raspberries right off of the cane and put it directly in your mouth when the berry is still warm, that really is that kind of immediate connection where they get, ah, this came from a plant and I’m eating it. So the next time there might be store bought or Farmers Market bought raspberries, they make that more direct connection. So find the ways in which you get the most pleasure out of that experience, and that those links between farm to plate or sea to plate or forage to table, find those really direct links and start from there.
An example of this sort of education in action is not far from Sackville.
Port Elgin Regional School adapted a similar strategy last year by having students research greenhouse models to be built on school property.
The school has since chosen a model and will grow produce year-round for their cafeteria.
The entire story is available on CHMA’s website, here.
By Meg Cunningham
