farnham] SCHOOL-GARDENS RELATION TO GEOGRAPHY 77 



degree his individual capacity for work, they may together help create a right 

 public opinion and show in many ways social and co-operative spirit." 



It is now half a century since Europe instituted school-gar- 

 dens. Austria. Sweden and ( lermany were the first to intro- 

 duce them, but other leading European nations quickly followed 

 their example. These gardens were considered the most prac- 

 tical form of agricultural nature-study. But it was not until 

 the year 1891 that a school-garden was opened in America, Bos- 

 ton taking the lead in the movement. The beginning was a 

 modest one, consisting of the utilization of a small plot of ground 

 in connection with one of the grammar schools. This plot was 

 devoted not to agricultural nature-study, as were the first Euro- 

 pean school-gardens, but to the raising of native wild flowers. 

 We learn that a few years later this same school added another 

 small plot for the cultivation of vegetables — a step toward real- 

 izing the end for which the first school-gardens were created and 

 cultivated. In 1903, just twelve years after Boston had taken 

 the initiative, statistics showed that more than fifty cities of our 

 country had made some provision for school-gardens. What 

 has been done along this line during the last three years, we 

 have not statistics at hand to show, but when we consider that 

 the school-garden movement is a popular one, and that Ameri- 

 cans are not slow in putting popular ideas into tangible form, 

 it is safe to say that the last three years have witnessed the 

 opening of as many school-gardens as had already been opened 

 from 1 89 1 to 1903. 



School-gardens in our country are almost entirely conducted 

 in the interests of nature-study, and are often denominated 

 nature-study gardens. Xow nature-study does not seem to be 

 very definitely outlined. In fact some of its strongest advocates 

 say that it can not be outlined without doing violence to the 

 spirit and aims of nature-study. Some supervisors go so far 

 as to leave their teachers free to choose the topics to be pre- 

 sented to the pupils under their care. This indefiniteness has 

 brought out the criticism that nature-study "has no beginning 

 and no end ;" that it begins with "almost any topic and ends 

 whenever a sufficient number of topics have been suggested to 

 fill in the allotted time." A school-garden conducted in the 



