Inside a mesh enclosure that provides shade and protection from insects and birds, amid rows of cherry tomatoes, green chillies, eggplants and tomatoes, Ahad Ali, a senior student at Dubai’s Al Noor Training Centre for Children with Special Needs, presents the garden he and nine of his classmates have cultivated. To grow a vegetable from a seed, and water it every day, demands close observation. Ali notices a tiny tomato growing off of a larger one, an unusual formation, and asks what it is.
Technically, it’s a mutation, but Ali’s teacher, Smitha ­Rajendran, who has overseen the garden since its inauguration in February, uses words Ali can understand to explain. Seconds before, she reviews what it means to "pluck" for him. "‘Pluck’ means you remove it." She indicates the red tomato hanging from its vine. "What did we do when the tomatoes all became red? We plucked them."
Any new arena for learning, such as this garden, brings a host of new vocabulary with it: words like "ripen", which she also reviews with Ali: "Green tomatoes mean the plant still has to ripen."
Vocabulary is one of many benefits that Al Noor’s new garden offers its special-needs students, who have been diagnosed with autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and other developmental issues. "A garden benefits the student on so many levels," says Al Noor director Isphana Al Khatib, who has been running the school for the past 18 years. "We implement the goals for our children in what we call activity-based intervention. Activities like this garden provide the children with a chance to practise a lot of these [motor and sensory-based] goals. The act of sowing seeds is stimulating to the senses. Also taking turns, and watching something grow."
She adds that the garden offers the students a chance to go outside daily, in a place where "there are not many opportunities to be outside, where you don’t have to get into a bus and go to a park".
Raking the soil to prepare for planting is an opportunity to practise gross motor skills (which tap into large muscles to coordinate movement). Inserting a finger to create a small hole in the dirt, then placing a tiny seed into that hole, requires fine motor skills. Compost mixed with sand smells damp, salty and sweet all at once, while dirt on the hands is a new texture to assimilate. Cause and effect is made real when a child sees that a plant without enough water starts to wither. And finally, the first taste of a cherry tomato or the searing heat of a green chilli seed teaches the benefits of delayed gratification, after watching and waiting patiently for more than a month.
At the turn of the 19th century, Maria Montessori created a new educational system based on these principles. She found, in particular, that hands-on, direct-sensory experiences worked surprisingly well with children who were described, in that era, as "incapable of learning".
"Though we teach them how plants grow in the classroom, this is a hands-on activity where they’re actually coming and doing the whole process, so that’s giving them a wonderful experience. They’re seeing the whole process," says Rajendran.
The idea for a garden percolated for years at Al Noor, with reminders from Rajendran, a gardening enthusiast. Last year, the school shared the idea as part of its wish list with the Ritz-Carlton in ­Dubai. The hotel management team agreed that the project would fit well with their outreach goals, and took on the expenses, management and much of the implementation of the garden, from building the enclosure to eventually selling the produce harvested by the students at the hotel for charity.

Source: The National