The boredom and isolation of life in a nursing home, the shortage of mentors for inquisitive children, the need for more greenery in the world -- all can be addressed through intergenerational cooperation, according to a Cornell University horticulturist with a plan to send senior citizens back to school.

Horticulture Intergenerational Learning as Therapy (HILT) came about because Vincent Lalli, a schoolteacher-turned-graduate-student in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, hated to see keen minds and skilled hands idle. The result: Adults in their 80s and 90s are visiting schools to teach kids about plants, using a hands-on science curriculum developed by Cornell educators and horticulturists.

"Unfortunately, society doesn't have very high expectations for the elderly, especially those in the nursing homes," said Lalli, an elementary and middle school teacher for 30 years. "These people are like jewels. They're a treasure, and they're starved for opportunities to share their wisdom and their skills."

At least that's what Lalli hoped when he approached nursing home administrators with what he now acknowledges is a far-out idea: Why not transport seniors to local schools for part of a day and let them work, one-on-one, with children in plant science projects? To his surprise, several nursing homes in upstate New York agreed, and so did school administrators and teachers.After pilot testing the program with schools in Ithaca and Clifton Springs, N.Y., and with4-H youth groups in Geneva, N.Y., Lalli is starting to offer training workshops and is preparing guidebooks to take HILT state- and even nationwide. His inspiration, Lalli said, is his late mother, who enjoyed teaching neighborhood children about plants.

HILT learning activities are geared to the grade level. Younger children, with a little help from the seniors, test their dissection skills on a variety of seeds and discover how germ plasm in things as different as tiny marigold seeds and large lima beans can produce growing plants. Older students may, for example, explore the mysteries of reproduction (plant-style) with experiments in pollination (sexual) and plant-cutting propagation (asexual).

"We tell the seniors they don't have to be university-educated scientists," said Lalli, who earned a master's degree in Cornell's Department of Floriculture and Ornamental Horticulture. "We provide the lesson plans. All they need is to like plants and children, and have the willingness to be valuable assets as mentors."

What is important is some advance orientation, Lalli said. The elderly are reminded that the children they will see are not foul-mouthed and overly aggressive -- just young people with a little more energy than most of their nursing home peers. "They may have a stereotyped image of kids," Lalli said. "We let them know we need them and that this will be fun and exciting."

Children, too, may have incorrect impressions of the elderly, especially if they don't know older family members. "We tell them that, yes, their mentors will be quite old -- our oldest is 96 -- and that they will have some limitations," Lalli said. "But the volunteers wouldn't be coming to school, we tell the kids, if they didn't want to share something with them."

The senior citizens are always accompanied by nurses and attendants when they travel to the schools. "You can see it in their eyes when they're getting ready to go to the schools and do something useful," one nursing home administrator told Lalli. "Programs like this can build confidence, self-esteem and independence in the seniors and youth," Lalli said. "The result is both individual and collective growth."

HILT is one of 16 Graduate Student Outreach projects at Cornell, where students each year share with local schoolchildren their expertise in subjects ranging from astrophysics and African-American literature to human genetics and archaeology. The intergenerational aspect helps make HILT successful, Lalli believes.

"Of course, plant science is helped by the fact that kids love to get their hands dirty," he said. "They're thrilled to learn that people 70 and 80 years their senior like to, too."