Some children garden at the knee of their parents or grandparents, and by the time they are young adults and ready to start their own plant adventures, a lot of the horticulture comes naturally.
But such lucky people are thinner on the ground than in previous generations, I suspect, even though there has never been a more urgent time to introduce younger folks to the power of the plant kingdom, given the issues of climate change.
As the naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, “The connection between the natural world and the urban world … since the Industrial Revolution has been remote and widening.” Attenborough has spent a 60-year career trying to narrow that gap in television programs that began as a form of entertainment and, in recent years, have become a cry for an ailing planet. “The Garden of Eden,” Attenborough says, “is no more.” He speaks with such affable authority that resistance is futile.
