We’re living in an ever-changing world, where consumption keeps rising and where the air, the water and the environment are ignored. For children living in the city, they don’t usually have the opportunity to experience and be close to nature. The majority of our next generation have little knowledge about the environment.

The “Nurseries for Nurseries” (N4N) competition is a project launched by the French Embassy in China and Limagrain China to grow vegetable gardens in kindergartens and primary schools. The idea is to provide children with a new perspective of the environment, to reconnect them with nature by touching, feeling, learning about, and understanding vegetables and plants.

Students planting the seeds.

It is open to any school wishing to participate as long as it is the children themselves who do the growing and the gardening. There are 40 schools in Beijing and another 62 around China involved this year.

Each participating school was provided with a starting kit that includes seeds, organic fertilizers, gardening tools, soils, as well as ongoing practical day-to-day advice about how to plant and grow vegetables in plots, pots or planters throughout the duration of the project.

“Our children are the first to be affected by pollution, by chemicals, by substances that can be quite dangerous when used for growing plants”, says Amanda Galsworthy, the found of N4N, explaining why N4N project chose school-age children as the target group.

Students observe and make note of how the plants grow.

“So what N4N wants to bring is an alternative option for the new generation. They can grow their own vegetables. It is important that the children can understand that they can all be part of a change, that we can all be part of a change. And we want to try to give the children the keys and knowledge to become these change makers,” says Marion Lespine, another co-founder of N4N project.

Schools are pleased to be in part of the project and believe that after taking part in growing and gardening, children grew to have a good connection with the nature after watering, fertilizing and taking good care of the plants. So do the parents of these participating students.

“We decided to take part in this project because we think it’s a wonderful opportunity for the children and us to learn together about the environment, the process of gardening, and the methods to make the plants grow better, while also teaching our children how to co-exist with nature in a harmonious way. We’re very moved by the growth process because it gives us the chance of spending some precious moments with our children,” said Lin Gang, a parent of a student from Beijing Primary School who shared his experience with N4N.

Participating students make plant tags for their small farm.

Some schools encourage students in higher grades to work together with younger students, to oversee the whole gardening process including watering, fertilizing, germination, and transplantation, as they believe it’s also a great opportunity for  students to make new friends and form a sense of teamwork and responsibility.

“I think the most noticeable feeling I get from my students is that their group responsibility has been greatly improved after taking parting into the project,” says Huang Weibin, research director of Nanqiao Primary School. “They took care of the garden as if it was their own house.”

“Nature is a home where plants, animals and humans live in harmony. This is our mother earth. The air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, are all affecting our health condition. This is why we should take care of the environment, because taking care of nature is taking care of us, of our future”, says Zhang Yaqi, a student from Zizhong Primary School. She might be a very good example showing how the gardening experience gave students a new understanding of nature.

Participating students harvest the vegetables they grew with a smile

“The challenges we face are great when it comes to saving this planet, or ensuring it’s in good shape when we handed over to our children. Therefore I think the project is about not waiting for others to do things for us, but to do it ourselves. And even if you’re just growing a tomato in a pot on your balcony, it is an important contribution to making sure that our children can live in a healthier and safer environment,” Mrs Galsworthy added.

Photos: Pixabay, jardins.faguowenhua.com

The Ecology of Functional Society

It’s not that often that we see a clear view of our surroundings in Beijing. The combination of gray buildings against the gray sky adds to the tensive and bustling city mood, which somehow makes us forget the beauty of nature.

When beijingkids arrived at the old house of John Denver Liu, just northeast of Beijing’s center, we were treated to a blissful and calm refuge with birds chirping and the wind playing with the branches.

The setting is very telling, as Liu himself is an ecologist. He shared that when he was young, his father had reminded him of the importance of nature and knowledge through the courtyard of their house in Beijing. “My father told me this as he made a circle, ‘Everything inside it is what you know. Everything outside is what you don’t know.’”

Born in the US, Liu moved to their family’s Beijing home in 1979 as a journalist for Columbia Broadcasting System. Just as Liu focused his beginnings mostly on political and social issues, the budding journalist began to notice the huge industrial development happening everywhere in China.

“There was a lot of pollution coming and the people didn’t know anything about it. It’s odd to have this information [and]somebody has to do something for the environment,” he said. In 1995, the World Bank asked Liu to go and make a film about the Loess Plateau, a massive stretch of plains that covers five provinces in northwestern China. Over centuries, deforestation and population increase have resulted in the gradual degeneration of the plateau, impacting communities and ecosystems there.

He called that experience a critical moment for him. “It was extraordinary because [the plateau]was so destroyed. Basically what we’re talking about there was a dysfunctional system.”

His observations prompted him to start studying to get an academic perspective of the changes in ecological systems. Two years after his Loess Plateau assignment, he started the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP) in Beijing to tackle what he said as a “need for a collective movement and consciousness” for the environment.

The project grew soon after, with Liu saying that they have produced hundreds of books and films about ecological conservation. He said these media forms and images were just a tool that allowed for a “collaborative interpretation” of what was happening in the environment. “But the real issue is what you understand and it’s rather important that we have a change in consciousness,” Liu said.

He explained that the dysfunction he saw in the Loess Plateau and the widespread pollution in China made him want to know more about ecological function, that is, how every part of the ecosystem benefits each other.

He emphasized that people – individuals, families, and communities – play a big part in ecological systems. But he said one dynamic that underlies within society and the environment is the “economics of materialism.”

“So right now, with your throw-away society, overconsumption, waste, pollution, how do you get rid of them? How do you do something else? You can analyze why they are possible. So when you study them, you find out that the reason is people value materialism higher than life systems. But that suggests the answer: if people value the natural life systems higher than material things, it becomes impossible to pollute and impossible to degrade.”

That alone sounds a big task. We wondered how could we not pollute in the world we live in today.

“The acceptable level of pollution is zero,” Liu continued, “and pollution is something that we allow because we value materialism higher than ecology.” But he poses a challenge, telling everyone to understand and be conscious of their part in the ecosystem.

“The result of my research suggests that ecological function is the basis of wealth. When you increase ecological function, it benefits everybody, every family, every community, every individual, the entire country. The community becomes robust and resilient. If you go to functionality, you’re going to have joy and a better situation.”

In the middle of the interview, we were interrupted by a rather welcome guest – two woodpeckers that repeatedly struck trunks somewhere in the courtyard. We were once again reminded of the beauty of a functioning environment, despite being boxed in a megacity.

Outside his house, he said there’s a bigger home for everyone: the Earth where there’s no difference in the pollution in the air, in the water, in the soil, or in the food. A change in consciousness in today’s society, as he explained, would mean ensuring the future generations would enjoy a reality different from the degraded Loess Plateau or any other over-polluted cities elsewhere. “I think this is the great work of our time … so that the next generations will have water, air, and fertile soil, and that they won’t be just covered with toxic substances,” he said.

Photos: Uni You

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