Building a Garden, Nourishing Children's Hearts

Liang Shu [For Women of China]

"I hope children will often visit and bond with the countryside. When they grow up, they will have sweet memories about rural life," Liang Shu says.

Liang owns a garden in Shangluo, a village in Shanghang County, in Southeast China's Fujian Province. The garden is a nature-education base for children. Various activities related to gardening and farming are held during weekends and holidays. The garden is like a paradise, in nature, for children.

Dream Garden

Liang, a native of Shangluo, graduated from Jimei University, with a bachelor's degree in English, in 2011. She worked with  a foreign company in Xiamen, a coastal city in Fujian. "At that time, I would pass by a green vegetable field every time I went to work. Out of the window of my office was the blue ocean," Liang recalls.

She loves nature. She always dreamed of making a garden of her own, especially after her daughter was born. In early 2016, she quit her job and returned to her hometown with her daughter.

Liang's parents no longer lived in the village, and their ancestral house had been deserted. Liang rebuilt her parents' house, and she rented about 2,700 square meters of land to make her garden.

Liang initially encountered many difficulties, mainly due to lack of money and manpower. She invested 200,000 yuan (US $29,850) of her own, but it was not enough. Then she got a loan of 100,000 yuan (US $14,950) from a bank. She even worked for a company in the county to earn money. Despite the hardships, she never thought of giving up.

After a year of hard work, the garden was finally completed. With more than 10,000 flowers blooming, the garden became a beautiful area in the village. It attracted many visitors.

Embracing Nature

At first, Liang wanted to make her house and garden a family hotel. After some consideration, she decided to focus on nature education for children. In the Internet era, children are more likely to be immersed in cyberspace, and less likely than previous generations to spend time embracing nature.

Liang and children [For Women of China]

"Nature education is not just letting children play in nature. Instead, it means igniting children's curiosity and thirst for knowledge about nature, encouraging children to explore the secrets of  nature and  leading children in acquiring wisdom and experiencing beauty," Liang says. This approach to education of children aged 3 to 12 is popular in Japan and some European and American countries. However, it is not commonly known in western Fujian Province.

Liang has a 110-square-meter studio, called Xintian (meaning heart in English), in her garden. She hopes the garden will nourish children's hearts and help children accumulate knowledge and experience in the fields.

She and her team members provide horticultural therapy (a professional practice that uses plants and gardening to improve mental and physical health), and they conduct various classes on aesthetics, literature and science. They also hold various activities, including observing insects and plants, reading in the forest and performing dramas.

To improve both her professional knowledge and the curriculum system in her studio, she has received training in Japan. Liang has more than a dozen team members, including postgraduate and doctoral students in a variety of majors, including art, ecology and botany. In November 2017, she qualified and received a certificate as a horticultural therapist. The Horticultural Therapy Department of the Mental Health Committee of China Federation of Social Work designated her garden as a horticultural therapy pilot base.

Liang plans to promote a natural lifestyle and develop the cultural industry in the countryside. "I hope children will not only have fun in my garden, but they will also obtain scientific knowledge and have their hearts nourished here … Taking advantage of rural culture, folk art and folk customs, I'd like to create a nature-education base, where children can enjoy playing and learning in nature, and where people can enjoy leisure time," Liang says. She hopes more artists will open studios in the village.

Liang's garden has been growing in popularity. A group of teenagers of Chinese descent from North America visited the garden, during a summer camp, in July 2018. The foreign affairs office of the county helped organized that summer camp.

During weekends and holidays, parents and children from Fujian and/or other places across China visit her garden. By the end of June, registrations for the five summer camps planned for this year closed because the maximum number of registrants had been reached.

Liang's garden has brought new vitality to the development of her hometown. Locals have been hired to teach urban children how to make snacks and honey, and how to do carpentry. Young villagers have become assistant teachers, and they have guided children in playing games and conducting experiments in the forest. Some villagers have also started agritainment businesses.

Boys play in Liang's garden. [For Women of China]

(Women of China)