What an Hour of Gardening Does to Your Body

Britain is known for introducing us the best of the best — think Princess Diana, Harry Potter and fish and chips. Now we can thank the UK for bringing us a fantastic sun safety idea: the 3-hour-gardening rule.

 Part of Tom Massey's

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Garden Sprouts is a program I run at the South Carolina Botanical Garden that is designed for preschoolers and caregivers. This class takes place once a week for three months every spring and fall. The goal is to share age-appropriate nature-based activities with children, who are mostly three to five years old, but sometimes younger or older. Over time I have learned the caregivers also learn things they never knew, enjoy the activities immensely, and are able to connect more deeply to the natural world through this program. The structure of this hour-long program is three-fold, we begin inside with a book related to the theme of the day, a walk or outdoor activity, and finally a craft. In this blog, I would like to share some of the books, outdoor activities, and crafts we have done in this class.

WE TALKED HOSTAS MONTHS AGO, in the dead of winter, when they were just twinkles in a gardener’s eye, or images pulled from color catalogs and memory.

The Acalypha ‘Giant Leaf,’ splashed with pinky-peaches, gold and green, and my beloved Calibrachoa ‘Terra Cotta’ that I’ve grown flats of each year since it was introduced not long ago, seemed an obvious pairing. The Acalypha, a tropical shrub in its native haunts, will get 2 or 3 feet tall by summer’s end. You probably know what the million bells will do, much like a tiny petunia. I love how it, too, has a mosaic of color…two chameleons in a single big pot.The barrel below, beside by barn, is barely getting started. But in it is a canna called ‘Grande’ with red edges and giant green leaves (I remove the flowers if they ever form), a couple of gold leaf He

We’d been to hear another old friend, Dan Hinkley, speak at nearby Berkshire Botanical Garden’s annual lecture with several hundred other winter-weary types, and afterward gone off with Dan and friends to eat.We didn’t really talk plants at the meal; nine crazy gardeners traded pet stories. I know—insane. Either we are getting old and soft, or have spent too much time on Cute Overload. But the next morning my breakfast guest and I shifted from zoology to botany, stirred up by a few of Dan’s slides, including one of Mukdenia rossii ‘Crimson Fans,’ a shade plant Dan’s helped bring to market as

THE LATEST BOOK GIVEAWAY–which was a smashing success–ended at midnight Sunday, but there’s a “win” for everyone, it turns out. Collaborator and author Katrina Kenison and I asked commenters to tell us about books they’d relied on in times of transition…and wow, did they ever.

My wish for a photo-uploader that you could use to post pictures to A Way to Garden was inspired by my friend Pam Kueber of RetroRenovation, and her wildly popular website about loving the “mid-century modest” home you’re in. (Like how about these 300-plus different reader living rooms–whoa! Can we top that, gardeners?). In the future I’ll have other community photo events like this–but for now, why don’t we simply start with this theme:Upload photo(s) of a favorite happy moment in your garden, whether a single plant or a whole scene…The Happy Garden Moments GalleryGO AHEAD: Try it. My photo up top (and the first one in the gallery below), taken today, is of Euphorbia griffithii ‘Dixter,’ a plant I’ve grown for more than a dozen years that was said not to be hardy here so I shouldn’t even try. Take that, hardiness naysaye

NOBODY HAD EVER ASKED ME ABOUT WHERE I THOUGHT my “creativity” came from–the oomph or mojo or whatever you want to call it behind things like gardening and writing and I suppose even taking photographs (like the one of dried-up gourds and snakeskins inside the windowsill, above) that I seem to spend a lot of time doing.

CAN YOU GUESS what the top 11 new stories of 2011 were on A Way to Garden? As was the case last year, not even one featured the increasingly cushy life of Jack the Demon Cat, now operating under the assumed name Jack the Mama’s Boy–and just completing his first full year of nonstop sleepovers and on-demand feeding courtesy of his personal valet. Speaking of eating, a lot of this year’s top posts involved garden-fresh ingredients. Here’s what else:

Each day in the garden reminds me that I am blessed, even when it is raining ping-ping balls of ice from on high, as in the video clip above. (Try watching it full screen by clicking the Vimeo logo; for perspective, it’s shot through a window and the pond in the distance is more than 25 feet from where I was standing, in awe.)BEFORE FIVE concurrent weather warnings converged overhead that afternoon to form the hailstones and, eerily, a small tornado, I had been thinking about Oklahomans, including the Shawnee garden club I’d lectured to in 1999. It was the first time I’d ever seen the formidable red clay up close—I think I actually said, “Is that soil?” before I got hold of myself and my manners. Also on my mind was Dee Nash, the “Red Dirt Ramblings” garden writer who always has a smile and a kind word. Even this last week; even among her tears.“After tornadoes