Fuel the Body
Just being a kid
7-12
Cultivating community
Photo and reporting by
Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) - Connected blog
9-year-old Tian got his own patch of dirt in the 200-year-old Ropes Mansion Garden, one of 34 families given a plot to plant flowers with names like Rockin' Blue Suede Shoes and Superbella Doublette Love Swept.
The parent picked up a hammer too
Xia signed them both up and let it stay just the two of them, no siblings tagging along, just her and Tian and a fenced-off square of dirt for two hours.
Why we picked this one
A museum garden shut down by a pandemic still needed thirty-four patches of dirt turned over, and a nine-year-old stuck home from school was glad to be handed a trowel and a job. Nobody needed a green thumb going in. They needed a hole, a seedling, and somewhere that wasn't the living room.
Skip the acre of Colonial Revival garden. A single pot on the windowsill runs the same way: your kid picks a seed, digs a hole, tucks it in, and has to show up every day after to keep it alive. Beans or lettuce are close to foolproof, so the payoff shows up before the boredom does.
Read the full story at
Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) - Connected blog
Where it happened:
Salem, MA
There's a strip of dirt by your fence or a pot on your stoop that's never had anything growing in it. It doesn't need a name like a museum garden's to count, and neither does the kid you'd hand a trowel to.