Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health, and Joy

Abstract

” 2017 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 27(1), 2017 Book Reviews Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health, and Joy Illène Pevec (2016) New York: New Village Press, 407 pages $21.95 (paperback); ISBN 978-1-61332-017-4 Being with nature is good for us. Studies now indicate the many health benefits— reduced stress, better concentration, lowered blood pressure—are just a sampling of the positive impacts that spending time among plants and animals can have on a person (e.g., Kuo, 2015). Schools across the US and abroad are adding gardening programs with hopes of tapping into some of those benefits as well as introducing young people to healthier food choices and engaging them in hands-on learning about science. While many founders of school garden programs are inspired by their intuition, the influence of these gardens on diet, science comprehension, stewardship, and more have been examined and documented (e.g., Blair, 2009). While most previous studies have focused on children and adults, Pevec in Growing a Life solidifies the effectiveness of school gardening programs on the development and well-being of adolescents. People already working in such programs, whether they are educators or activists, will hear stories in this book they already know, but it brings them into focus and will provide these leaders with research-based evidence and justification to continue and grow their programs. Likewise, researchers in areas such as urban agriculture and therapeutic horticulture, as well as youth development and education investigators, will find compelling information in these youths’ stories. Pevec shares the stories of young people in a dozen gardening programs in four states: Colorado, New York, California and New Mexico. These include in-school and out-of-school programs, but they all revolve around gardening in its many different forms. In New York, youth are helping to plant green walls, while in New Mexico the young people are learning about and growing traditional Native American foods. The interviewed youth participating in these programs are typically low-income and ethnically diverse. Pevec states, What began for me as a deep desire to give children access to nature in their daily school life to explore, learn, and play grew to encompass multiple explorations in nutrition, transformative education, child and community health, child and nature relationships, and land use planning and public policy” (p. 15). Book Reviews 178 In order to understand the full scope of the impact the gardens had on the young people, Pevec designed her interviews around asking the youth to describe how gardening impacts their senses—what do they see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. This line of questioning opens up the young people to talk about things they have not necessarily thought about before and effectively taps into their deep emotional responses to their gardening experiences. During her interviews, Pevec does not shy away from her role of advocate and educator. While researchers often avoid engaging in a two-way conversation when conducting interviews for fear of contaminating the results, Pevec skillfully shares her knowledge with the young people. As I started reading Growing a Life, I was captivated by the rich and detailed accountings of the participants in the New York garden program. After a few chapters, I began to wonder how these stories would be woven together to tell the bigger picture of youth gardening, but I did not have a clear understanding of the book’s organization and trajectory. While not included in the book, I think the following brief chapter overviews will be helpful for readers. The first six chapters of the book are stories from the youth involved in the Green Bronx Machine. Through describing the context, as well as verbatim transcripts and poems, Pevec uses these stories to illustrate how garden involvement has relieved stress, imparted knowledge and activism, and inspired life goals for the participating urban youth. Chapter 7, “Gardens Grow Healthy Youth,” steps back and provides a review of youth development and psychology research and theory related to garden settings and positive, healthy development. Chapters 8 – 11 are each dedicated to describing and sharing stories from four garden programs in Colorado: ¡Cultiva!, Rocky Mountain School, Roaring Fork...