54 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:2— Feb., 1915 



Flower planting by wholesale was suggested as the chief means 

 of adding to the attractiveness of the community, and a brief 

 investigation revealed that it was possible to reach thousands of 

 families through the children that otherwise could not have been 

 influenced to co-operate. The agricultural department of the 

 schools, with a corps of sixty teachers, entered heartily into the 

 plan. To arouse interest on the part of the children in planting 

 and maintaining home gardens the committee offered individual 

 prizes ranging from five to fifty dollars for the best year's work, 

 and for the schools, the largest prize was $400. 



The youthful gardeners joined heartily in the campaign. Nearly 

 five thousand entered in competition for the best home gardens, 

 in addition to the tens of thousands who took part in beautifying 

 the school grounds and their homes without entering the contest 

 for individual prizes. 



A fall planting was proclaimed the Friday after Thanksgiving, 

 when it was estimated ninety thousand children in the city and 

 county actually were engaged in garden work. The agricultural 

 department of the schools distributed seed enough to the children 

 to plant five square feet of ground for every resident of the city, 

 placing the population at 600,000. The climate of Southern 

 California lends itself readily to winter gardening, as the rainfall 

 usually begins in October and continues into May. 



Five experts were employed by the committee to work with the 

 agricultural teachers in supervising the home garden work, in- 

 structing the gardening classes and scoring the individual gardens. 

 In the credits given due attention is paid to the condition of the 

 ground before planting and other conditions, so that the pupil 

 in easy circumstances might not enjoy any advantage over those 

 whose facilities for garden making were limited. Photographic 

 records also arc kept of the home gardens. The final scoring will 

 be done at the end of the spring term. 



The effect of the home work proved to be far reaching. Broth- 

 ers, fathers and neighbors became interested in "watching things 

 grow." They also absorbed much information in the develop- 

 ment of the little home gardeners' work, as pamphlets containing 

 full instructions were distributed free to the children to take to 

 their homes for guidance. From these the amateur adult gardener 

 could learn the first principles of home beautification. The 

 popularity of the home garden manual was such that an extra 



