Patterson] VALUES OF CHILDREN'S GARDENS 125 



One of the chief educational values of gardening is that it 

 gives children the opportunity to use hands and minds together 

 in acquiring knowledge. The more I see of children in school 

 and out, at their work and at their play, the more I am con- 

 vinced that muscular activity plays a tremendously large part 

 in the getting of an education. 



Gardening means something more than mere spading and 

 hoeing, planting and harvesting. With these activities come 

 questions and problems which under the direction of a skilful 

 teacher are solved by investigation, experimentation, and dem- 

 onstration. Thus the children are discovering truth for them- 

 selves ; they are acquiring at first hand sense precepts upon which 

 to base judgment and action. They are relying upon their own 

 efforts for many of the facts that they gain. Better than this 

 they are developing power to see accurately, to think clearly 

 and independently; in short, they are acquiring the first req- 

 uisites of a scientific attitude of mind toward problems of daily 

 life. A boy who sets himself a task that requires effort, care, 

 and attention for a period of weeks or months before results 

 are obtained is receiving a training in patience, in persistence, 

 in suspended judgment, and in habits of industry that few other 

 school subjects are capable of giving him. 



Again, through garden experiences children are coming into 

 a realization of nature's inexorable laws. Slowly, perhaps al- 

 most unconsciously, the truth is born in upon them that they 

 must work with nature not against her if they are to win. 



Along with the training, children through wisely directed 

 gardening come into possession of a large fund of useful infor- 

 mation and of scientific facts that will be invaluable to them 

 whether they continue their education in the high school, or whether 

 fate decrees that they must early take their place with those 

 who earn their daily bread. In fact, the garden may be made 

 the setting for a large number of fundamental facts that chil- 

 dren should know before they leave the elementary school. 



Indeed, I am beginning to think that if we do not give them 

 the opportunity to develop along these lines when their inter- 

 est is alive and active they may never afterward be able to 

 make the same response, or establish the same vital relation with 

 the nature objects in their environment. The conditions nec- 

 essary for germination and growth of seedlings may better be 



