An exploration of children's gardens: Reported benefits, recommended elements, and preferred visitor autonomy

The number of children's gardens in the U.S. is growing, but discourse in the field lacks progression. The purpose of this study was to synthesize the existing body of knowledge concerning the benefits from experiences in children's gardens and the recommended garden elements included in them, to elicit responses from various children's garden stakeholders in conceptualizing a children's garden, what they thought were essential elements, and their preferences for autonomy of garden visitors.; A questionnaire was constructed concerning stakeholder role; age of respondents; conceptualizations of children's gardens; importance assigned to 72 children's garden elements; and preferences for level of children's garden visitor autonomy, based on four distinct age groups. Respondents were attendees of the 2005 American Horticultural Society's Children & Youth Garden Symposium, and stakeholders of five botanical gardens in the U.S. The total number of completed surveys received was 120. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze and interpret the data from this convenience sample. Major findings included: (1) Meta-synthesis of the literature: outlined the history of children's gardening and current trends; delineated reported benefits to children from plant-based learning; revealed four approaches to the design of children's gardens discerned by the researcher; and created a list of cited children's garden elements; (2) Representative quotes constituted a glimpse into stakeholder conceptualizations of what is a children's garden. A children's garden typology was offered by the researcher; (3) Responses for garden elements were reported by percentage distribution, means and standard deviations. 61 children's garden elements received responses indicating relative importance, twelve received responses indicating that the element was very important to essential. Plants, water source for plants/people, trees, paths, and water feature(s) received highest mean values. Assigned importance to elements based upon stakeholder role revealed 19; visitors assigned high importance to comfort and interactive elements. A cluster analysis revealed five clusters; (4) Significant differences between stakeholders in their preferred levels of visitor autonomy emerged based on age and origin of respondents, but not based on stakeholder role. Summary of the research findings, discussion of the literature, implications, research and practice recommendations, and closing perspective were offered.