Secret Gardeners
Growing a Community and Healing the Earth
When three children stumble into an overgrown city yard, they end up elbows-deep in an urban gardening project that replenishes the earth and unites a community.
With the mentorship of Amy, a neighbour who is well-versed in no-dig gardening, Luna, Bianca, and Billy set to work mixing manure, spreading mulch, and sowing seeds. After a few weeks of hard work, the yard is transformed into a sustainable community garden, and more and more people are showing up to grow herbs, mushrooms, vegetables, and fruit. Just when everyone is beginning to harvest their hard-earned local food, they learn that the property is going to be cleared for a parking lot. Will this be the end of their secret garden? Or can the children rally their community to save the day?
In Secret Gardeners, journalist and beekeeper Lina Laurent collaborates with author and illustrator Maija Hurme to tell a story of community solidarity and ecological stewardship. Woven among the dreamlike illustrations are informative notes about soil life, composting, seed starting, beekeeping, wild pollinators, and more. An exquisite blend of fiction and nonfiction that will equip readers with all the information and inspiration they need to begin their own no-dig garden…and maybe even their own community project.
Maija Hurme is an illustrator of children's books. Her book Shadowed (2018) was nominated for the Finlandia Junior Prize, while Bat Boy (2014) and Rustle Bustle Bu! (2015) were nominated for the Arvid Lydecken Prize. In 2015 she received the Finnish State Award for Information Publication for Children's Own Yearbook (2015). Her Helsinki allotment has in part inspired Secret Gardeners.
Lina Laurent is a journalist and beekeeper. She lives part of the year in the village of Parkkuu in southern Finland, where she keeps not only bees, but also chickens, sheep and sometimes even pigs. Secret Gardeners is her first book for children.
