What Gaming and Gardens Have to do With Each Other

We are a blended family, with five kids: four girls and one boy. Four are adults now and they’ve found their different ways toward nature: one is an avid rock climber and surfer; one who lives in New York City found an apartment across the street from a tree-filled green space and has set up grow lights for herbs and vegetables.  All like to take walks and hike in nature. As Washingtonians, they grew up surrounded by water, mountains, meadows, streams. 

But our son is a teen now and although he has an “uber gardener Mom” and of all the kids has been the most directly schooled in horticulture and soil science (we homeschooled together for six years) he’s also our “tech guy:” the one of our five kids who loves animation and gaming. The more he’s grown interested in digital art and video game creation, the less time he’s spending outside in our gardens. To a certain extent I understand. But to a certain extent I also worry. I worry because I know the benefits not only of movement and being outdoors, but more specifically the benefit of the art of close nature observation—something that gardeners are immersed in by default, but can really go by the wayside for teens who are much more attuned to the indoor, digital world.

My son and I talk about a lot: our years of homeschool really helped us learn how to have long, rambling conversations with one another on a wide variety of subjects. Right around when he turned eleven years old, he told me that he loves nature; he really does. And he knows  I  love gardening, but that what he loves are the diverse and wild worlds he creates through his digital art, and that’s what he wants to get better at, and spend his free time doing. I really appreciated his candor, and my husband and I have done our best to support and further that interest. It’s not necessary for him to have an interest in gardening—he has a lot of knowledge about our planet, climate change, the soil and plants, but no—he doesn’t need to be out there with me, composting, staking, planting, tending.

But. The years he did spend out in the garden he so often felt wonder and awe: he was often the one, before my husband or myself, who would point out the hidden and tiny: a curled up pill bug, a Fibonacci spiral fern frond, ladybugs eating aphids, the number of umbels in a dandelion gone to seed. His enthusiasm was infectious and his joy beamed out of him like a sunray. Now that he’s predominantly spending his time behind a screen, I found myself wondering: will he still notice the tiny and amazing? Will he still feel that spontaneous and authentic joy when he sees nature doing its wild, wonderful things? Will he notice that some holes in the hosta leaves are nibbled from the side, and some are near-perfect circles in the center? What will he miss out on—what inherent abilities and characteristics and way of seeing the world will he lose by not being out there, noticing?

I decided to ask my son this question yesterday, after his archery lesson. I didn’t want to make him feel guilty for loving what he loves, so I was treading carefully. What do you think the effects will be of you not spending as much time in nature? I asked him.  You were our guy who noticed everything.

 Mom, he said, fixing me with that humorous-but-serious lopsided look of his: I notice the little details all the time. That’s what I put into my drawings. What I learned about plants and the environment is what I base most of my creatures and worlds off of. I’m still noticing things: I’m just using my noticing in a different way.

He's using his noticing in a different way.

That reached me. For me, I write about what I notice, and I photograph what I notice. He creates fantastic imaginary worlds from what he notices. Oftentimes these creatures and worlds have elements of plant biology, soil science, and photosynthesis. One creature is based off of Pitcher Plants; another has the wild adaptability traits of an orchid.

So maybe I can relax a little. Maybe when he’s going on an hour of gaming with his friends, or hour two of drawing on his ipad, that small but persistent anxiety in my gut can ease. I’ll still call him out into the garden—not to teach, not to even have him help out. But just to have him be there, among the leaves, flowers, buds, seeds. I’ll never stop pointing out the many small but magnificent observations—the way the late-day light makes the wisteria blooms glow, or how the bitter melon vines smell like skunk, or what happens when two trees angle themselves apart from one another, both reaching for their own light. And he’ll keep showing me his detail-laden drawings, and telling me his in-depth, incredibly complex and interlaced back stories for his cast of characters. Characters derived from nature, fueled by his understanding of the flora on our planet plus his limitless imagination.

Just remember, I still can’t help saying to him, to leave time for awe. Leave time for wonder and--

Look, Mom—did you see that hummingbird? He suddenly interrupts. I turn. There it is: vibrating green, with its sleek, spilled-gasoline iridescent rainbow head. I do, I breathe. I see it. We watch it until it darts away over the fence.

That was cool, he said. It was so close. I could feel its wings.

So maybe, for all of us, when we’re bemoaning the screens, the tech, the gaming, instead of worrying primarily about how much of that there is we can instead make sure there’s equally a lot of this: being outside. Not necessarily gardening, or doing a chore, or playing a sport, but just immersion: for long enough and often enough that the magic nature does becomes a part of our screen-focused, tech-y teens. What they do with those effects is entirely up to them—for my son he incorporates it into his art. For another perhaps it will take them abroad, or up into the mountains to hike, or to their instrument to create music, or perhaps they will become committed advocates for the natural world. One thing is for sure—and I’m not sure there are many things we can say this about—spending time observing nature closely will never do harm: it will only do good.