This research is based on children’s visits to a Holma forest garden in southern Sweden. In my ongoing study, I have published two articles about children´s perspectives on this outdoor place for learning and hands-on activity, summarised below.

Nature can be seen as an (underutilized) resource for children's health and well-being in a high-tech age. The forest garden in my study gave the children a variety of experiences. They experienced the color, shape and taste of plants, the sound of the wind chime and the chirping of birds. They could listen to the crackling fire, while it also offered the opportunity to get warm. The physicality of balancing on unstable rocks in the pond stimulated emotional responses through challenges, excitement, and risk-taking. The visceral experience of getting wet and gooey could also bring about emotions. Such experiences, Wooltorton (2006) emphasizes, are not accessible to children spending time in front of screens.

The present study shows that the forest garden with committed forest garden educators gives the children a wealth of experiences and experiential learning, becoming a kind of outdoor laboratory that complements the primary school. Forest garden visits are particularly important at a time when humans have lost their understanding of our dependence on a functioning ecosystem as forest garden visits can develop and increase children's ecological literacy, as they are given the conditions to learn about plants and animals, something that is difficult to develop in a concrete urban suburb.