This article was first published in the professional journal of Botanic Gardens of Australia and New Zealand’s (BGANZ) ‘Public Garden’ newsletter in March 2013. It was the synthesis of all I believed in after a long professional career in formal and informal learning environments. It is as relevant today as when it was written. Read more about this in other articles, such as ‘Sowing Seeds of Wisdom for a Greener Future.’

Janelle Hatherly 2021

Learning is both the process and a product of thinking and when humans take it to its highest level we are rewarded with ‘a-ha’ moments of self fulfillment and creative output. Thanks to those who have learnt before us, today we have reasonable explanations for why we learn, how we learn and, with advances in neurobiology, what happens in our brains when learning occurs.

A familiar and useful explanation for why we learn is provided by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (See Fig 1). These were postulated in 1954 by the psychologist Abraham Maslow who suggested that humans are motivated to learn in order to satisfy needs, a condition that has evolved over tens of thousands of years.

The highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualisation – being fulfilled and creative. This requires a commitment to thinking, learning and education. People have been musing about the nature of learning and knowledge for centuries. The relationship between mind and brain continues to fascinate us yet remains a holy grail.

Maslow noted that very few people become fully self-actualised because our society tends to reward motivation based on money, status, love and other social needs. Although we are all, theoretically, capable of achieving our full potential as individuals, most of us are unlikely to do so because we are satisfied with less. Yet our contemporary world is the product of centuries upon centuries of such individualistic and collaborative mindfulness. Humanity’s creative achievements are all around us. And for many artists, poets, architects, scientists and other creative thinkers, the natural world has been their primary source of inspiration.

As children, we learn from everything we do. Children are naturally curious; they want to explore and discover. If a child’s efforts receive the right support and encouragement at home and at school, they experience pleasure or success. This makes them want to learn more and sets them on the path to becoming creative, adventurous life-long learners.

The purpose of education is to foster a love of learning. Most of us can think back to a teacher or adult who made a difference in our lives, opened our minds to new ideas and possibilities, helped us believe in ourselves and pushed us to excel and get the best out of ourselves.

Great educators/teachers bring their own passion and joy for learning to others. They help us learn by revealing relevance and relationships and encourage us to apply rigour – the ‘99% perspiration’ that brings self-actualisation. Those ‘a-ha’ moments produce creative objects and ideas for others to enjoy and use as scaffolding for their own learning. By communicating openly and working collaboratively, an environment where it’s safe to take risks is created and a learning community evolves. The age-old African proverb ‘it takes a whole village to raise a child’ reinforces the importance of this methodology.

Costa joined the learning community (staff and Friends’ volunteers) of Albury Botanic Gardens to celebrate the successful creation of their children’s garden.

As far back as 1896, the Russian philosopher Lev Vygotsky showed the importance of dialogue and social interaction in cognition. His theory of a Zone of Proximal Development explains how, with assistance and instruction, we scaffold knowledge and modify our world views. This laid the foundation for many advances in pedagogy over the next century. For others, it provided a useful framework to interpret the role of informal learning environments – our cultural institutions. Freeman Tilden’s Interpreting Our Heritage and John Falk and Lynn Dierking’s Learning from Museums: visitor experiences and the making of meaning are two highly relevant references for readers wanting to learn more about this.

Optimum learning occurs when we take the time or make the effort to be observant and interested in the world around us; when we take on tasks or try to understand issues that extend us. It’s important that these are just beyond our comfort zone but within our achievable challenge level. We can fail many times over but as long as we get accurate feedback and positive reinforcement along the way we will strive to master the challenge. When we do, we are rewarded with an ‘a-ha’ moment and are very pleased with ourselves. Physiologically, performing such cognitive tasks causes an increase in dopamine release in the human amygdala (in the mid-brain) and we feel happy. This feeling of happiness motivates us to try again until we learn more ... and more. Learning promotes learning and, with practice, every individual can experience a degree of self-actualisation and identify with something bigger than themselves.

With accurate feedback and positive reinforcement from artist Colley Whisson, I produced this oil painting.

This explains the addictive power of video games and, while they are basically unproductive, their mode of interaction makes computers and the internet wonderful aids to teaching and learning. The brain is programmed to pick up patterns and humans use patterns to make links, infer and experiment until a positive result is achieved.

Yet, with technology moving so fast, our very ability to think is being curtailed. Information bombards our senses and our brains can only process so much. When individuals feel overwhelmed and out of their depth (or more accurately, are beyond their achievable challenge level) stress-induced functional and structural changes in our brain’s amygdala are externally manifested as anxiety, frustration, boredom and often anti-social behaviour. Our brains are being rewired for quick bytes of information and we are finding it harder to slow down and build our focusing capabilities. Negativity to learning, caused by stress, is becoming a global problem.

While we can’t hold on to our youth, we can hang on to the sense of wonder we had as children. Our cultural institutions (museums, botanic gardens, art galleries, zoos, historic houses etc.) are optimal environments for life-long learning provided education is their primary role. These public places are human constructs and the collections within them represent what we as a society value. As such they provide the ideal context for aesthetic appreciation and the deepening of understanding: places where we can reflect on the past; contemplate the present and imagine our future.

Botanic gardens might be about plants but are defined by what people do in them. Plants and gardens touch us in many different ways and meet so many of our needs. It requires teamwork to create environments in which a diversity of plants can grow and thrive. So when staff and volunteers in a botanic garden pool their wide-ranging expertise and evolve their own learning community, they create inspiring environments which are highly conducive to learning in the general public.

The American naturalist and scientist, E.O. Wilson coined the term ‘biophilia’ to describe the deep affiliation humans have with nature. Botanic gardens have a role to play in providing safe environments where our spirits can be rejuvenated and we can reconnect with nature in our rapidly changing world. Good education programs in botanic gardens can muster concern about the loss of biodiversity by drawing on their diverse plant collections. Visitors experience an ‘a-ha’ moment when they come to understand that loss of biodiversity is the most important environmental challenge we face as it is the only irreversible one.

Many students experience an ‘a-ha’ moment in botanic gardens when they realise that all of the products we use come from plants or rocks. Thus begins their lifelong connection with conservation of Earth’s natural resources.

Where we are also affects how we think and behave. In the peace and tranquillity of a botanic garden all our senses are stimulated and we find time to think. We attempt to make sense of our surroundings and make meaningful connections. We all learn differently and, more than any other cultural institution, botanic gardens can cater for all preferred learning styles.

The information from each of the senses is stored in different parts of the brain but they are all interlinked by dendritic extensions of neurons. When a similar interest is triggered, often later and in another environment, multiple neurological pathways fire at once and memory making is strengthened. Brain imaging studies show that every time we learn a new task, we're changing our brain and growing more neuronal extensions. Neuroplasticity has replaced the formerly-held position that the brain is a static organ.

Outreach education programs involving communal gardening have empowered many botanic gardens to address environmental and social responsibilities beyond their garden walls. Gardening is hands-on and truly interactive and can be done by people of all ages, backgrounds, social status, interest levels and abilities. The rewards and sense of achievement are instant (the satisfaction of successfully planting something) and ongoing (watching it grow and produce flowers or fruit). If the key to education for sustainability is to be ‘futures-focused’, then undertaking a garden project which is underpinned by a learning ethos ticks all the boxes for sowing seeds of wisdom and self-actualisation.

Community gardeners at the Oasis Community Garden in Toongabbie, a suburb in Greater Western Sydney.

More challenging, but within the reach of the staff and volunteers that make up a botanic gardens’ learning community, is to help today’s society learn what they need to know to be able to tackle today’s complex social issues and environmental dilemmas. This challenge might be great but so are the rewards. It is also timely as our society is experiencing a technology revolution that is changing our world, faster and with greater impact, than the agricultural and industrial revolutions before it.

© Janelle Hatherly

Please credit www.janellehatherly.com if you use any information in this article.
If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Sowing the seeds of wisdom

Bringing learning to life