Rootle the Earthworm Tends the Garden

Rootle is a gentle, cheerful little earthworm with a soft pink body and the calmest way about him, and Rootle has the coziest job of all: he tends your garden, deep in the good brown soil.

Rootle wriggles this way and that, loosening the earth, tucking in the roots, making sure every plant has room to grow. And he does it slow and steady, all day and all night, whether you are watching or not.

“Here’s the lovely thing about your garden,” Rootle says, poking his head up with a soft smile. “It grows on REAL time - the same clock as your own day. Plant a seed in the morning, and by the time you come back after school, it’s grown a little. Come back tomorrow, and it’s grown a little more. Slow and sure, all by itself.”

A young ladybird tips her head. “Even while I’m away? Even when I’m not playing?”

“Even then!” Rootle beams. “The garden keeps growing whether you’re here or not. And here is the very best part…” He leans up out of the soil, gentle as can be. “Nothing EVER wilts. Not a single leaf. Not one petal. Your flowers never dry up, never droop, never die. You can come back after a long, long while - and your whole garden is still there, green and happy, waiting just for you.”

The little ladybird lets out a big, calm, happy breath. “So I never have to worry about it? Or rush back to save it?”

“Never, ever,” Rootle says warmly. “A garden that only ever grows, and never wilts - that’s a calm, kind kind of garden. Plant what you like, come and go as you please, and it will always be here for you.”

That is Rootle’s calm, earthy idea.

Your garden grows on real time, all by itself - and nothing ever wilts, so it’s always here waiting for you.

A grown-up can play too! Plant a REAL seed together - a bean, some cress, a little bulb. Then just let it grow on its own time. Check on it tomorrow, and the day after. See how it grows a little at a time, patient and slow, with no rushing. Real growing things take their own sweet time - and tending them gently, day by day, is a calm and lovely thing.

When Rootle settles back into the warm brown soil at the end of the day, the whole garden growing softly around him, he feels the quiet, deep-down gladness of a worm who tends a garden that only ever grows. “Slow and sure, and never wilting,” he hums. “It’ll be right here, green and waiting, whenever you come back.”

It grows on real time, and never wilts. That’s Rootle.