How nature nurtures creative thinkers

Building dens, damming streams and playing in green spaces encourages invention and problem-solving in children, says Libby Purves. These skills will equip them to become the innovators and entrepreneurs of the future – the people at the top of their tree. Just one reason why we want you to join our campaign to Bring Back the Nature Table and help reconnect our children with the natural environment

We all like to see children romping on grass, collecting leaves and pebbles, patting animals, playing Pooh-sticks. We think of nature as recreational, calming, an antidote to screen-time and shopping centres. Maybe we consider it vaguely educational - environmentalism, pond-dipping, and all that. Over-forties remember school Nature Walks ("This, children, is a yellow-horned poppy").

 

But we don't always recognise that there is a grittier and more creative kind of education going on when a child is allowed to confront the timeless reality of living, growing, oozing, creeping, sappy Nature. Toys and amusements are designed for children, and natural things are not.

 

So, in the great outdoors, you learn all about problem-solving, creativity, adaptability. You learn that some kinds of daisy stalk just won't split for chain-making, and others will. You learn which wood makes the springiest bows: one of my happiest holidays was when I was nine years old, roaming the dunes and woods around Wissant, France, with a heroic boy a couple of years older who taught me exactly how to strip a branch and notch a straight arrow, and then camouflage myself with leaves to break the pattern when enemies approached. He also taught me how to make a deafening noise by blowing on the edge of grass, and how to shoot burrs and grass-heads at grown-ups from your hiding place.

 

The creative, freethinking spirit has always flowered in children who are allowed to be close to natural things and creatures rather than mere toysOut there all day, you discover that heather is comfortable to lie on and gorse is absolutely not. You learn that flies don't sting but wasps do. You discover how much it takes to make a den waterproof. You find these things out for yourself - and you feel powerful.

 

The creative, freethinking spirit has always flowered in children who are allowed to be close to natural things and creatures rather than mere toys. The ability to look closely at ants or animal tracks has led, as such children grew up, to plenty of important inventions. Non-slip deck shoes were inspired by the grooves around the pads of a dog's paw; contemplating burrs led to de Mestral's invention of Velcro, and loose bird feathers and eggshells to Roman Szpur's development of the turbine. And we all know what the apple did to Isaac Newton.

 

The link between natural playing spaces and good development is recognised even officially. We have campaigns to ‘green up' boring school playgrounds with wild areas, and the report from Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Fair Play, outlines the importance of natural spaces for encouraging exploration and creativity. Let's hope they bear this in mind with their commitment to build 3,500 new play areas and we'll see more natural features and less expensive, factory-made equipment. The Children's Play Council reported two years ago that such activities foster "control and mastery, manipulating of loose parts, construction of special spaces" and the Playday survey the same year confirmed that when children get a chance to play in natural environments they willingly abandon computer games. Plenty of research backs this up; plenty more recognises that a degree of reasonable risk-taking is necessary if we are to foster future innovators and entrepreneurs rather than timid little clone-drones.

 

Like many parents, I have watched, heart in mouth, as my small daughter brushed the legs of horses 20 times her weight, and my small son sailed erratically across the river to get a closer look at a water-rat's muddy hole. It does take nerve, but is always worth it.

 

Yet there are still battles to be fought, and not only for the preservation of wild spaces and the willingness of parents to let children out in them. In urban areas, such spaces must be laboriously kept free of unnatural dangers like rusting cans and syringes: there is a distinction between an eco-playground and a rubbish tip. But in country areas, too, there are unexpected enemies of good play and good sense.

 

Too many guardians of the countryside have become prim and hateful about children: they don't want ‘their' trees climbed, or even their sticks and pine cones ‘stolen', their streamlets dammed for an hour. When a conservation body puts up signs explaining why a particular path is closed or dogs banned, that is fine and interesting. But when whole tracts are cordoned off with vague labels like ‘Nature Sensitive Area, Keep Out', the visiting child gets dragooned back to the tea-room or forced round a formal walkway full of signs. That child receives the message loud and clear: you are not part of nature, you are an interloper. Leave it to the grown-ups. Not good.

 

It's a battle worth fighting. If we want a free-thinking future full of innovators and entrepreneurs - the real blue-sky thinkers - we need
to encourage our children and grandchildren back to nature. And, however difficult it is for us, we need to let them discover it for themselves. Even Sir Alan Sugar will thank us in the end.

 

Click here to find out more about Country Living's nature table campaign 

 

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