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How does gardening affect environmental awareness?
Having access to gardens allows children to create their own perspective on the environment. Beginning to work with plants at a young age traditionally means that children will grow up with an appreciation for the environment. Understanding the importance of plants and gardening while growing up can impact the choices that people make and the things that people do in relation to the environmental impact. Those who are exposed to gardening are more likely to be environmentalist and conservationist when they grow up due the knowledge and appreciation that they obtained when they were younger. Gardening allows children to physically work with the plants and experience nature first hand thus enhancing all learning that they would do by simply talking about it.
Having access to gardens allows children to create their own perspective on the environment. Beginning to work with plants at a young age traditionally means that children will grow up with an appreciation for the environment. Understanding the importance of plants and gardening while growing up can impact the choices that people make and the things that people do in relation to the environmental impact. Those who are exposed to gardening are more likely to be environmentalist and conservationist when they grow up due the knowledge and appreciation that they obtained when they were younger. Gardening allows children to physically work with the plants and experience nature first hand thus enhancing all learning that they would do by simply talking about it.
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How are other parts of the world solving this issue?
The United States isn’t the only country that has recognized the benefits that gardening can have on children. There are many groups around the world that are focusing on getting children to garden. Organizations and schools ranging all the way from Europe to the United States are getting kids to learn how to plant and harvest organic products. One of the many places in which there has been a steady increase of children's involvement in the garden has been the United Kingdom.
Organizations such as the Food for Life program and the Royal Horticultural Society have sparked campaigns that have involved a combined 21,750 schools all around the UK in an effort towards getting children to participate in the gardening movement. Just recently in an inspection done by the OFSTED (an organization that inspects and regulates services providing education for children and young people) which was conducted to measure academic performance, schools that were a part of organizations such as the Food for Life program had received a rating 13% higher in academic performance than in previous years. For that same reason, in the fall of September 2014 the British government organized reforms to the country’s school curriculum that would require students from the ages of 7-14 to learn valuable gardening skills.