KIDS’ STYLE : GARDENS : And One to Grow On

Students in the urban-gardening class won’t be planting any more zucchini in Barnsdall Art Park. They had enough last year. This year, it’s cherry tomatoes and melons. “We don’t make them plant any vegetable they don’t like,” says Richard Stretz, the avid gardener who runs the children’s gardening class offered through the Junior Arts Center. “In fact, “ he adds, “we don’t make them do anything.”

Nevertheless, Stretz knows how to get kids interested in gardening. The youngsters begin by making plant choices from seed catalogs. They decide and delegate garden chores. They prepare snacks and lunch from the garden. And they love to share their bounty, picking flower bouquets for events at the arts center and offering vegetables to passersby.

Comparisons and contrasts promote learning, so the student gardeners grow several varieties of the same thing--large, small, early and late tomatoes, for instance--in different ways, such as on poles, on the ground and over terrace walls. After deliberately letting some vegetables go to seed, the kids are surprised to see what broccoli or lettuce looks like in full flower--and so are more than a few adult park visitors, who obviously didn’t have the pleasure of growing their own food as children.