David's Blog

Following the Yellow Brick Road- A Magical, Educational Gardening Experience (4)

Posted on 9 Jul, 2007 6 comments

I decided that the only way to depict the cyclone was to study the wind direction in our garden and, at some point, to have appropriate windmills or windspinners here and there. I had toyed with the idea of making an inverted chicken mesh cone covered with black tights attached to the playhouse roof, but decided very quickly that that would be just TOO GARISH! I also found that I was now studying the movie and Wizard of Oz articles etc more closely and was getting many more ideas.

Now, for the Rainbow. Do you know, there is no mention of a rainbow at all in the original book? There is, however, in some of the other books in the original series of Oz books, and I think the filmmakers used it as a convenient link between the greyness of Dorothy’s real life and the technicolour world of her dream. We learned about how rainbows are made, and tried creating our own using blow bubbles, a garden hose on a fine spray, looking at petrol leaks left by vehicles on damp roads, etc. For the garden, it was decided that multicolour planting would represent the rainbow. Imagine our elation when, one day in March, just after we had begun painting the Yellow Brick road, a real rainbow appeared almost above the garden. It was like an omen that all would go well.

Although I was drawing most inspiration from the book, I had also bought the movie on DVD, and a CD of the songs, and was also getting many ideas from those, too. It is now a major favourite with our children. I made up a sheet displaying 6 outline drawings of roses, and asked the children to colour them in in all the rainbow colours, with one of them being green (for the stems and leaves). They also had to write down or tell me the titles of any songs they could think of about rainbows, other than “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

By now, I had thought that this was too great a garden opportunity to keep to ourselves and asked my son’s teacher (who is in charge of the local primary school’s gardening club) if she thought the class might like to get involved, and she readily agreed to do so. It also fitted in nicely with their Term 3 project – Growing Things.

It was about now that I realised that I might have something
in common with “The Wizard of Oz”. I was having to use all my BRAIN to get ideas and inspiration, I had realised that I did have a HEART (for who could refuse a child’s idea, especially when he had such faith in me), and, it was taking all my COURAGE to begin painting a 4ft wide yellow “road” right across the central part of the garden!

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