hemenway] SCHOOL-GARDENS 33 



ing ; taking up and setting out trees and shrnbs ; care of grounds — 

 lawns and walks ; silk-worm culture ; mixing soil ; planting seeds ; 

 potting and re-potting plants in the greenhouse and transplanting 

 them in the garden. The advanced boys grow all the greenhouse 

 plants for all the boys' gardens. Each year the pupils get some 

 advanced work and a review of the work they have already had. 



The lessons are regularly once a week for each pupil. The time 

 is so arranged that it does not interfere with public-school work 

 in any way, lessons coming after school in spring and autumn. 

 They continue every week during the summer. Pupils are per- 

 mitted to come and work in their gardens at any time when the 

 tools are not in use. 



Seeds, tools, note-books, etc., are furnished by the school, but 

 a tuition fee of five dollars for the first year, seven dollars for the 

 second year, ten dollars for the third year, and twelve dollars for 

 the fourth year is charged the pupils. This sum, however, need 

 not keep any worthy boy from having a garden, for one hun- 

 dred hours' work for the school pays any boy's tuition, and 

 many boys pay in this way. Several have found that in so doing 

 they have not only paid for their garden, but have also fitted them- 

 selves to take positions in the city. This past season several per- 

 sons have applied to the school for boys to care for their gardens 

 and lawns because the men the}' were hiring to do the work were 

 unsatisfactory in that they did not know the difference between 

 the weeds and plants. One of the second year pupils, so recom- 

 mended by us, proved himself so satisfactory that the lady hiring 

 him recommended him to several others until he had all his time 

 engaged. At the end of the season his savings bank account was 

 a great contrast to that of the boys in his school who had no 

 garden and spent their time upon the street. But aside from the 

 money value, the boy learned industry and acquired an interest in 

 plants, which will mean much to him in future life. 



The yield of the garden should exceed the price of the tuition 

 paid. It varies, of course, according to the manner in which the 

 boy cares for it. One third-year garden (ten by sixty feet) 

 yielded as follows : thirteen and one-half quarts shell beans ; ten 

 quarts wax beans, six quarts lima beans ; fifty beets ; six cabbages ; 

 forty-four ears of corn ; eighteen roots of celery ; forty-two heads 

 of lettuce ; ten onions ; fifty-eight quarts Swiss chard ; six quarts 

 peas ; one peck potatoes ; seventeen five-cent bunches of parsley ; 



