Cultivating the butterfly effect.

• Author: Assadourian, Erik

Chaos theorists suggest that the waving wings of even a single butterfly affect the weather around the world. All life affects all life. And so, in a vastly larger way, does the growth of even the smallest home or neighborhood garden. The millions of gardens growing around the globe are having a powerful cumulative effect on people, communities, and the environment.

Monarchs, anise swallowtails, gulf fritillaries: these are just 3 of the 15 species of butterflies that now inhabit the 2nd Street Elementary School Garden. Begun 10 years ago in a few flowerboxes, the garden has expanded to the size of two classrooms. Kids who walk into it find themselves sharing space not only with butterflies, but with sunflowers, ladybugs, and yellow-rumped warblers. The National Wildlife Federation has even designated this little plot a certified wilderness area.

This would be a commendable achievement for any garden, but it's especially impressive for one that is contained on all sides by freeways, and is located in an inner-city Los Angeles neighborhood that suffers from a severe degree of gang-violence. The garden has become a refuge of green within the gray smog-filled junction of Interstate 5, Interstate 10, and Route 60, with chirping birds now defying the rumble of downshifting trucks that exit the I-5--the freeway whose retaining wall is shared by the school parking lot.

Like countless other gardens around the world, the 2nd Street Elementary School Garden is having noticeable effects on its community. While it can't quite neutralize the smog of the three major highways or the aggression of nearby gangs, it has brought a new vitality to both the school and its neighborhood--restoring a piece of the local environment, fostering a sense of community, and providing the school with fresh vegetables and a fresh approach to education.

Brandyn Scully, the teacher who started the garden in 1992, says the project has become the students' "reason to learn," and is consistently voted their favorite part of school. "It helps me teach," she says. For example, it provides a creative way to discuss the intricacies of math and science, as when the kids investigate the lifecycle of flies that grow in marigold seed pods. For students who are just beginning to learn English, that kind of hands-on setting also helps to reduce the difficulties of learning only in a classroom setting. It has Fostered a newfound respect for the environment, as teachers and students become partners in restoring a natural system that balances the needs of the environment--like milkweed for the monarchs--with the needs of humans.

The 2nd Street Elementary School is one of about 3,000 California schools that have maintained gardens with the encouragement, materials, and funding of a state Department of Education program, "A Garden in Every School." A primary mission of the program, which began in 1995, is to provide "an opportunity for children to learn about nutrition, healthy eating, and basic food preparation." According to the program's coordinator, Deborah Tamannaie, the program is working. "Instead of eating junk food, the children are eating what they grow," she says.

One indication of the program's success comes from a recent study of 97 children, conducted by Jennifer Morris and her colleagues at the University of California at Davis. Morris found that the 48 children who learned about nutrition and worked in a garden throughout the school year were significantly more willing to try new vegetables than were those of a control group, who did not have gardens or nutrition education.

Critics might question whether school systems that are financially stretched can really afford gardens. But in fact, these gardens address a rather urgent need. In the United States, with obesity having reached...