Chapter 9

Gardens and Gardening

Four generations of gardeners: my son, Grub; me; my mother, Vanne; and my grandmother Danny in The Birches’ garden. (CREDIT: JANE GOODALL)

In many ways, as I have explained, The Birches’ garden was less than ideal. It was dark, shaded by trees. The soil was sandy and in some places made acid by pine needles and rhododendrons. Yet for me as a child it was a magical and perfect garden—a place where I waited for the first spikes of leaves breaking through the earth in spring and wondered whether they would become a crocus or a hyacinth, a place where I could watch the swelling of the buds on the trees and the unfurling of tiny leaves.

The garden was not just a place for growing things and learning about nature. It was also a place for nurturing the soul. Gardeners have always known that working with the soil and growing and harvesting plants can lift the spirits and make you feel better. I can see Danny now, kneeling on her little mat, trowel in hand, aches and pains temporarily forgotten. And Uncle Eric, home for the weekend during World War II, digging the flowerbeds, battling with dandelions, and feeding the hydrangeas with rusty nails and old bits of iron to improve their color. It helped him to forget the horrors of the wounded who filled Whipps Cross Hospital after every enemy bombing raid on London. He didn’t talk about it, but I knew there were people who had lost limbs, lost their eyes, lost family members. When I was eleven years old and found out about the Holocaust, I turned to the garden and Beech in my confusion, seeking the reassurance of that living, green space as I tried to come to terms with my growing awareness of evil.

The wonderful thing is that we still have The Birches and its garden. Of course there have been changes, but much is the same. It was my aunt Olly who introduced the idea of growing flowers in tubs. Today Judy has greatly increased their number, and some are used for apple, plum, and cherry trees. In the spring there are still the primroses and violets of childhood. And we still have the same three peony plants and the hydrangeas and some of Olly’s roses, though they are very old now, and dying. The pine trees and rhododendrons, and Beech and Nooky, along with most of the other childhood trees, are fine.

A new addition to the garden, growing in the middle of the lawn by the birdbath that was installed by Uncle Eric and the stone frog “Jeremy Fisher,” who has been sitting there for more than eighty years, is a young Japanese maple, planted for my mother after she died because she had always loved their color. Some of her ashes were sprinkled among its roots when it was planted, and we added some of Olly’s when she died a year later. That tree has thrived. Something else new is a pond introduced by Judy, which grows water lilies and other water plants. She and her daughter, Pip, are planning to make a new rockery in memory of Danny.

How lucky we are to have this place, so rich with the memories of childhoods long gone and now creating new memories for the two little boys—Judy’s grandsons—who in their turn play and dream in this magic garden.

Gardens of the Ancient World

Our human love of flowers and gardens goes way, way back in time. I remember reading, as a child, about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were said to have been suspended from heaven on golden chains. According to one of the earliest accounts, these gardens were built on the bank of the Euphrates by King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled between 605 and 562 BC. He had them built for his wife, who was homesick for the trees and flowers of her native Persia. Water from the river was continuously driven up pipes laid beside stone steps that rose in tiers, as in a theater. The highest garden was one hundred feet square and seventy-five feet high, and huge trees grew up there. The gardens were an architectural miracle.

Other historians believe that the gardens were built by King Sennacherib of Assyria (reigning 705–681 BC) in quite a different place, close to his palace on the Tigris. And there are those who think that the Hanging Gardens were merely poetic fantasy, that they never existed at all. If they did, then what happened to them? There is speculation that an earthquake destroyed them at the end of the second century BC. At any rate, I like to believe that they were real, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Whatever we think about those particular gardens, we certainly can be sure that gardens and gardening have been part of human culture for thousands of years. Elaborate gardens were created in China and then in Persia (where the oldest archaeological proof of a garden layout has been discovered). In the Western Hemisphere, gardens—as opposed to fields for the cultivation of food crops—seem first to have proliferated in Italy around the temples and later within walled enclosures close to the houses of the wealthy. The ash that rained down during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 has preserved not only temple gardens but also hundreds of these domestic gardens. I well remember learning about the horrifying event when I was at school, wondering what they went through, all those hundreds of doomed citizens—perhaps it was similar to the experience of those who lived in Nagasaki and Hiroshima when the atomic bombs were dropped. The difference, of course, was that one was an “act of God,” while the other was the result of humanity’s inhumanity.

Different styles of gardens have developed in different countries, and styles change over time. The wealthy, with their large estates, have developed whole landscapes, with streams and woodlands in addition to the more formal flowerbeds, ponds, and fountains. The traditional English cottage garden displays a wealth of colorful flowers—hollyhocks and delphiniums and roses, cheerfully rubbing shoulders in tiny spaces. Formal Japanese gardens place rocks and water and plants to create an atmosphere of serenity, a place for meditation. I have been fortunate, for my travels around the world have enabled me to visit many extremely beautiful gardens of many types.

One of these visits, on a cool but sunny May day in 2010, was to the Val de Marne Rose Garden. Situated about four miles south of Paris, it was created in 1894—the first public garden in the world to be dedicated entirely to roses. It is a magnificent place, with over thirteen thousand bushes representing some 3,200 varieties. Collected from around the world, they grow in the hundreds in the different flowerbeds, while others climb walls and arches, trellises and pergolas. The riot of colors, ranging from pure white to dark crimson, almost purple, set against the green of the spring leaves and grass borders, was truly a banquet for the eyes. And the fragrances… nothing heavy and cloying here, nothing like the overwhelming scent of frangipani and tiger lilies. No, a series of delicate scents, each one a delight.

I was greeted by Christian Hanak, known as a rose author—or “poet,” as he calls himself—and Guillaume Didier, a rose breeder. The two had worked together, for the eight years that it takes, to produce a glorious new variety of rose, and I was invited to “baptize” it. A singular honor, for not only do I have a love of roses but this particular rose was named for me—the Jane Goodall rose.

It is a climbing rose (Generosa) with delicate pink blooms, glossy dark-green leaves, and a strong stem—with very strong thorns. The young plant I met that day had six blooms, but when fully mature, Christian told me, it will flower abundantly and climb up to ten feet high, reaching toward the sky. I love what he says about it, this poet: “the ultimate romantic flower… it has the natural grace of simple beauty… a rose that knows not to reveal its heart until the end of flowering, when it can no longer hide its secret.” And a couple of the blooms had revealed their secrets—exquisite orange-pink colors right in their center. Best of all, this rose has the most exquisite fragrance, delicate yet strong, without being overpowering.

A small group of people had been invited for the ceremony. Speeches were made, the Jane Goodall rose was planted in the garden, and we scattered handfuls of rose petals over her. And then I kissed a leaf, as I always do to mark ceremonial plantings. Corks popped, and soft-pink rose-flavored champagne was passed around. I poured a little for the rose, and the baptism was complete.

We all left with light hearts and raised spirits. That is what time in a garden, among our favorite flowers, can do for us.

Gardening to Heal Body and Soul

It was soon after this that I learned how another rose tree had been planted to help a traumatized victim of war. There is, in London, a wonderful organization called Freedom from Torture. They treat survivors, and therapists have found that even the most severely traumatized victims can benefit from spending time in nature. A skilled and sensitive horticulturist has designed a peaceful and sheltered garden where therapists can spend time, one-on-one, with their patients. Slowly, gradually, the power of soil, flowers, and trees begins to work its healing magic.

Precious, a young woman from a war-torn part of Africa, was one of the most severely traumatized patients. She had brought with her a dark burden of terrible memories—memories that could have destroyed her. Not only had she been gang-raped by soldiers but, worse still, she was forced to watch as they slashed off the head of her six-month-old baby. She had somehow managed to escape and was helped, by friends, to get to England. When she reached Freedom from Torture, she was on the brink of mental disintegration.

Each day she spent time in the garden alone with her therapist and nature. Gradually she was able to tell her story. And one day she planted a rosebush—in memory of her son. That was the start of her long, hard journey back into the world through the dark memories of her terrible ordeal.

There is now scientific research that proves that gardening promotes well-being in people experiencing depression or distress, including those who are elderly, homeless, or mentally ill. Indeed, putting one’s hands in the soil, feeling the texture of plants, smelling their scents, and looking at their calming colors can relax the mind and uplift the spirits. Just half an hour of gardening can help to raise morale and help us to face the problems thrown at us by life. And although an actual garden is best, even tending a few potted plants can have a remarkably beneficial effect.

Gardening for Prisoners

Probably because of the calming effect on the psyche, more and more prisons are sponsoring onsite gardening programs. Typically food is grown in these gardens, which is then used for prison meals, thus improving the inmates’ nutrition. Sometimes there’s even surplus food, which is donated to food banks or other community outreach programs. But the act of gardening also seems to enhance the participants’ mental health, leading to more well-being and less violence in the prisons. Recidivism rates can even be lowered with onsite gardening programs as inmates learn marketable horticulture skills that they can use upon release.

In October 2011, I had an opportunity to visit such a program when Drew Reynolds, one of the teachers at the Oak Creek Youth Correctional Facility in Albany, Oregon, asked if I could possibly squeeze in a visit with the girls during my packed schedule. That is how I heard about a garden that seven of the teenage girls had created. It all started when they learned that the state’s “Oregon Youth in Action” program was offering cash awards to worthy school projects that supported healthy living.

They had already been inspired by Michelle Obama’s mission to improve nutrition and fight obesity. And they knew that she had an organic kitchen garden at the White House. With the help of Drew, the girls applied for the award, proposing that they start an organic vegetable garden so they could learn about plants and gardening and incorporate better food into the correctional facility’s kitchen. The award required the girls to testify about their plans in front of the state legislature and speak about the value of their project. Because they were confined to the facility, they had to testify by phone. They were very nervous, but together they wrote a speech and read it over the phone.

After they heard that they had won the award, the First Lady of Oregon drove out to the facility to hand deliver a $2,000 check and a certificate. The girls were given a small piece of ground tucked behind one of the facility’s buildings, and they used the money to pay for compost so that they could create a nourishing soil bed for plants and seeds. The novice gardeners had a lot to learn—many of them had never done any hands-on work with plants or gardening. Some were only just beginning to learn where food came from or how it was grown. One girl asked if you could grow candy corn there!

The girls chose what they would plant, and they tended and harvested the vegetables. Some of them worked in the kitchen, learning how to prepare and cook what they had grown. They told me proudly that they had been able to produce 219 pounds of food that summer out of their small “test garden” and that almost all of it was used in the kitchen for meals at the facility. I later learned from Drew that because their garden was so successful, the facility has now committed to giving them additional space as well as providing them with a thirty-by-forty-eight-foot greenhouse.

The original group of girls who won the award received a lot of positive attention and felt incredibly proud. Because girls come and go, others have taken over the gardening, and it has become a very popular activity. If they could, Drew says, many of them would spend all their days gardening during the warmer months.

If only every child could know the joy of a garden, there would, I am sure, be less violence in the streets. Remember how that intrepid plant hunter David Douglas abandoned his unruly behavior when he began to work, as a child, in a garden? It has been found that areas in a city that are enhanced with green places and window boxes see a drop in crime rates. Enlightened inner-city schools realize this and make an effort to give the children at least some experience with planting things, watching flowers bloom, growing something they can eat—even if it is only in pots in the schoolroom. But that is a lot better than nothing.

Perhaps the best endorsement of the effect of a garden on the well-being of the gardener comes from that most inspirational of people, Nelson Mandela. He survived twenty-seven years in Robben Island Prison in South Africa, and this is something he wrote in his autobiography:

“A garden is one of the few things in prison that one could control. Being a custodian of this patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom.”

Renewal on the Reservation

Nowhere is the power of gardens and gardening more apparent than in Pine Ridge, an Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Native American reservation located in South Dakota. When I first went to the “Rez,” it was a place that offered almost no hope to the people living there, displaced from their traditional hunting grounds by the white man. Unemployment was over 80 percent—and everywhere I went, I met families struggling in all arenas of survival. There was lots of trash; mangy dogs whelped under trailers; many of the adults were either alcoholics or on drugs; and suicides (especially among the youth) were all too common, much above the national average for the United States.

Patricia Hammond is a Lakota living near the reservation, where she works every single day. Jason Schoch was originally from a small rural North Dakota town and a farming family who, when I met him, was keen to do something for the Native Americans and the small towns of the Dakotas. Soon after that, he and Patricia met, they fell in love, and he moved to join her in Pine Ridge.

We all recognized the potential benefit of establishing a Roots & Shoots program on the reservation as a way to engage and empower youth. We hoped it would help not only to reconnect the Native children to the animal and plant world around them but also to foster respect for their own cultural traditions. Patricia and Jason started by working with some of the children to prepare the soil and plant a vegetable garden, working with as many of the young people as they could persuade to join them.

“We chose a garden,” Jason told me, “because it was relatively simple and could lead to immediate change right in their backyards.” They both told me that knowledge of plants has always been important in the indigenous community. Patricia said, “So we both knew we needed to connect these vegetables growing in the garden with the native plants and the natural world and their own culture, as well as their physical health. But we knew the garden was key—just talking about these things would not have helped.”

At first it was an uphill battle. The garden was trashed time and again. But something magic happened: a few of the older boys, including gang members, seeing how upset their younger brothers and sisters were when their hard work was destroyed, began to protect their garden.

The tribal elders, having been let down so many times by the white man and his broken promises, were initially mistrustful of this new program that came from outside the Lakota culture. For months they watched and waited. And then, finally, they gave the Roots & Shoots program their support. That was the breakthrough that Patricia and Jason had so desperately needed. From then on, the garden became a gathering place where the grandparents joined in, teaching the children about the importance of bees as pollinators, and worms for aerating the soil. The garden was a stepping-stone toward teaching them about the native plants that had always played such an important role in their culture. It was the start of repairing the growing disconnect between youth and the natural world that has always been at the heart of Lakota culture. And it also began to re-bridge the disconnect between youth and the elders.

The Roots & Shoots group started hiking out to the prairie to learn about indigenous wild food and medicinal plants. They collected seeds and started a native-plant garden. With a garden nearby, one of the elders, who said it was too hard for him to travel out to the prairie, could then finally begin to pass on his knowledge to the young people.

Lakota Native American Patricia Hammond helped start a Roots & Shoots gardening program on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. One of the goals of the program is to teach children about indigenous plant food and medicine. Through gardening, native wisdom is once again being passed down through the generations. (CREDIT: JASON T. SCHOCH)

Since the first garden was planted in 2006, sixteen more have been created, and all have a section for native plants. Indigenous knowledge, once again, is being passed down from the wise elder medicine men and women, who still remember their old culture, to the next generation. There is a new feeling of hope now—at least among some people in Pine Ridge Reservation.

Guerrilla Gardeners

Now that we understand how gardens and plants can raise our spirits, we should be really grateful to the people who are defying the law to become “guerrilla gardeners.” A few months ago I was on a bus heading toward London’s Victoria Station. As we drove through a particularly dreary neighborhood of faded office blocks, I suddenly noticed one roundabout that was bright with assorted flowers. It was in stark contrast to the other roundabouts, and I was curious.

That was my introduction to guerrilla gardening in London. A growing number of middle-class, well-dressed, well-spoken, “respectable” people, frustrated by the dreary appearance of the neighborhoods where they live or work, are growing flowers on any unused land they can find—along the edges of the roads, on patches of earth around the base of trees—and on roundabouts. It is, apparently, illegal to do this, so even though the police usually ignore them, these visionary gardeners do their work at night.

As a matter of principle, surely if people want to create beauty in shabby places, they should not be prevented? This is certainly the view of Richard Reynolds, the unofficial leader of what is known as the “Growing Movement” in London. He began brightening roundabouts in the drab concrete area of the intersection of Elephant and Castle in central London in 2004 and immediately captured the media’s attention. He has even written a book for those interested in joining him—Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries. “Going out there and taking responsibility for a shared space, along with other people can warm the soul,” he says.

Another act of rebellion that I love is the tossing of a “seed bomb” or “green grenade”—which is simply a clay ball mixed with flower seeds that germinate easily. These bombs are thrown up onto embankments, behind railings, and other hard-to-reach places where guerrilla gardeners can’t plant the seeds by hand. When the rain comes, the clay dissolves, the seeds take root, and soon patches of bright flowers bring smiles to closed city faces. At least, that is the idea.

Certainly it works for me. When I am walking through some alien town, I love it when I pass an urban garden and am suddenly gifted with an unexpected scent of lilies of the valley, or the fragrance of roses, or the smell of new-mown grass. Indeed, I always try to detour so as to go through a park, where the light is softened as it filters through the leaves—and instantly my heart is lightened and the world seems a better place. Most people, when I ask them, say they feel the same.

New Gardens for a Changing World

Gardening is changing. Until recently, modern landscaping and gardening was oriented more toward maintaining lawns and decorating beds with flowers and shrubs. In order to keep the grass green and exotic decorative plants alive, gardeners relied on liberal doses of water as well as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and “weed killers,” such as Roundup.

At one time a young man was paid, one day a week, to help Olly with the garden at The Birches. We did not realize that he was using herbicide on the lawn to get rid of moss and other small weeds, as well as a particularly vicious pesticide to deal with the snails and slugs. When we found out, we were horrified. About six months after we dispensed with his services, we heard, for the first time in several years, the bang, bang, bang of a song thrush smashing open snails against a rock. Gradually other birds reappeared, and now the whole area is protected for conservation and the use of chemicals strongly discouraged.

So many people are concerned about the terrible environmental degradation of our planet, and so often they feel helpless and hopeless in the face of all that is wrong. The most important thing, as I am constantly saying, is to think about small ways in which we can make a difference—every day. And people lucky enough to have gardens can truly make a difference by maintaining the land in an environmentally friendly way.

Right now one of the biggest new gardening trends in the United States is the elimination of fertilizer-dependent and water-draining grass lawns. Instead, gardeners are discovering the joys of creating more environmentally friendly habitats with native trees and plants—those that have been living in the area for hundreds of years and are adapted to the climate.

My botanist friend Robin Kobaly is an advisor to people who want to grow drought-tolerant gardens with native plants in the Southwest. She says that people are especially enthusiastic about native plants when they live in arid areas, but even in other parts of the country, where there’s more rainfall, gardeners are getting sick of the amount of water it takes to keep grass lawns green. At the moment, gardening with drought-tolerant native plants is just a popular eco-conscious trend. But soon, five to six years from now, Robin believes, “it will be imperative for everyone to change how they landscape and garden as the overriding reality of the lack of water becomes apparent.”

This new gardening movement not only reduces water waste but also provides an attractive habitat for the local wildlife. Last month Gombe videographer Bill Wallauer wrote to tell me about how he and his wife, Kristin, were transforming their “typical ridiculous American lawn” into a native plant habitat for bees and other insects and birds and a whole host of small creatures.

Bill put in a stream, a pond, and a wetland for water-loving plant species. He created two areas of high-wildlife-value shrub species, planted numerous coneflower and aster species, and is propagating native grass.

“My favorite spot is our beautiful native-woodland-wildflowers area, which has species like wild ginger, wild leek, and trillium,” he recently wrote to me. So far he has recorded thirty-seven bird species in their “tiny little backyard.”

I have to say that while it may seem small to him after the wilderness of Gombe, it is clearly rather large compared to the postage-stamp-sized gardens that most people have—if they have a garden at all. But even the smallest of gardens can make a difference for the wildlife that is struggling to survive. Almost everyone I meet wants to save wild animals and insects, but they often don’t realize how important it is to preserve the anchors of the wildlife community—the native plants.

In urban areas where the gardens and yards are often small, some communities are joining together to create wildlife havens. There is, for example, the “Pollinator Pathway” in Seattle—where a group of neighbors have transformed the scruffy strips of grass in front of their homes, between the sidewalk and the street, into a mile-long bee-pollinator corridor, planted with native plants that attract and nourish bees.

Other neighborhoods and individual properties are havens for migrating birds. Robin tells her gardening clients, “Think of your garden as a gas station for migrating birds, a place where they can fill up their tanks—they can’t migrate if they don’t have fuel.”

It is exciting to think that our gardens can be part of a growing effort to restore health to our planet. To this end, enormous efforts are also being made by young people all around the world through the Jane Goodall Institute Roots & Shoots program.

Children—The New Garden Warriors

I mentioned Roots & Shoots earlier when I explained how I started the Alligator Club as a child. But let me pause here to explain what Roots & Shoots actually is, and why gardens and gardening play such a large part in many of its programs. R&S is a global movement that encourages young people to become involved in projects that have a positive impact on the world around them. Its most important message is that every individual matters and has a role to play, that each of us makes a difference every day, and that the cumulative result of thousands of millions of even small efforts brings about major change.

It started in 1991 with twelve secondary-school students in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Now, at the start of 2012, there are programs in some 130 countries with around fifteen thousand active groups, involving young people from preschool through university—and beyond, for more and more adults are forming groups.

Hundreds and thousands of these groups can solve many of the problems their elders have created for them. I have seen how it changes the lives of young people, gives them a sense of purpose, rekindles hope.

R&S members are determined to make a difference, prepared to roll up their sleeves and take action, to walk the talk. For the most part, it is the young people themselves who, after discussing local problems, decide what to do to try to solve them. They are asked to choose three projects about which individual group members feel passionate—one to help people, one to help animals, and one to help the environment. The three projects they end up choosing vary depending on the nature of the problems and the age of the members, their culture, whether they are from inner-city or rural environments, and which country they come from. By taking action, seeing the difference they can make, knowing that there are other young people just like them all around the world, the R&S members become empowered, filled with enthusiasm and hope.

A great many of the R&S groups choose to care for their school gardens and learn about plants. In Tanzania, schoolyards that were once made up of dry, trampled dirt are now made beautiful with many trees. They not only provide shade but also hold the soil in place. I especially loved visiting the Tanzanian group that was helping to clear a space in the wilderness by the school to build a library—and one eight-year-old took me to where they had created a similar-sized habitat “for the insects that lost their homes.” Cactus Roots & Shoots Club at Mjimpya Secondary School in Kilimanjaro has a project called Green Mjimpya. To make their school beautiful, they have created various flower gardens grown from seeds they have collected from native plants in the adjacent forest reserve.

In the United States and Europe, provided the schools give permission, a lot of R&S groups are building wildlife habitats, planting native species, putting up bird nesting boxes, and designing woodpiles for insects. Many Roots & Shoots groups around the world are also creating butterfly gardens. In Taiwan the “Green Thumb” project now persuades as many schools as possible to plant indigenous species of flowering plants, in an effort to restore something of the magic of a country once known as Formosa, “the land of the butterflies.”

The Garden of Eden—Lost?

So far I have not mentioned the Garden of Eden—yet that story is part of my earliest childhood memories, and is certainly one of the best-known and most famous gardens of all for Jews and Christians alike. I used to love to think of Adam and Eve at the dawn of time, before the loss of innocence, and imagine what their garden was like. A place of rich biodiversity, when we humans were part of it all.

Today it seems that this garden represents, symbolically, not just the loss of innocence but the loss of the connection between Man and Mother Nature. As a species we have tried to separate ourselves from the other animals. In our arrogance we have tried to dominate the natural world. Fortunately the Garden of Eden has not yet been utterly destroyed.

Let us, symbolically, work together to restore harmony to that garden. Let us strive to replant everything that, over the ages, we have destroyed as a result of greed and ignorance, poverty and apathy. But we had better not plant another apple tree there!