Summer Meeting. 8i 



may be so placed that they will rival many expensive aquatics. The 

 tomato and pepper with their brilliant fruit may equal in beauty the scarlet 

 tulip and poppy. But the most beautiful trees, shrubs and flowers may be 

 so arranged that they will be less attractive than the ordinary orchard or 

 kitchen garden. It is difficult for a lover of nature to find a plant that 

 will be ugly under all conditions. Our most despised weeds may lend 

 a charm to the landscape if rightly placed. A weed is a plant out of 

 place, and it may be a rose bush, an oak tree or a corn plant as much as 

 a rag weed, a nightshade or a Canada thistle. The wild rose, a much- 

 admired and cherished plant, in flower and landscape gardens, pleasing 

 the eye with its brilliant tints and filling the air with its fragrant odor, 

 is an annoying weed in a Kansas wheat field, filling the hands of the 

 workman, who handle the sheaves, with thorns. The big yellow sun 

 flower in an ornamental garden suggests sunshine and good cheer, but in 

 a Kansas cornfield suggests hard work and annoyance. The poppy, with 

 its scarlet hues, which artists have from ancient times to the present day 

 worked in vain to reproduce, is in the fields of Europe a harmful weed. 



In managing a school garden, not only the care and production of 

 plants should be taught, but the uses and proper arrangement of plants. 

 The plants grown and the methods used will have to vary as much as the 

 conditions under which the school is placed. The schoolhouse is 

 found under all conditions in our broad country — shaken by the bleak 

 winds and covered with the deep snows of the far north; scorched in 

 the blazing sun of the far south ; soaked in the frequent rains and dense 

 fogs of the coast; swept by the dry winds of a rainless region; on the 

 crowded city street; in the deep forest; in the town under the favorable 

 conditions of plenty of space and close proximity not only to the woods, 

 but to the libraries, and under favorable conditions in the country in 

 close proximity to the woods and to the cultivated fields, orchards and 

 vineyards. 



The schoolhouse on the crowded city street, with the rays of the 

 scorching sun reflected from the paved walk and the small space of hardly 

 packed ground used as an exercise ground, can never become a favorable 

 place for the teaching of school gardening. But with the teacher who 

 possesses the knowledge and has the welfare of her pupils at heart much 

 may be done to cultivate the love of plants and awaken a desire for fur- 

 ther knowledge along that line. As many trees should be planted as the 

 space will admit without crowding or interfering with the needed sunlight 

 and exercise ground. Vines may be planted to run up the outside of the 

 building, and near the walls where they may be protected from the feet 

 of playing children ferns, violets and other shade-loving plants may 6e 



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