82 State Horticultural Society. 



grown at the north side of the building, and poppies, cacti and nasturtiums 

 and other sun-loving plants may be grown at the south side of the build- 

 ing. Hanging baskets and fern balls may add a charm to the rooms, and 

 window boxes with sand and soil may be used to grow a variety of plants 

 both ornamental and useful. Miniature vegetable gardens as well as 

 flower gardens may be grown and radishes, lettuce, onions, asparagus, 

 peas, beans, beets, carrots, parsley, rhubarb, red dutch cabbage, nearly 

 all garden vegetables, and strawberries may be so arranged that they will 

 not only be a daily source of useful information to the pupils but an orna- 

 ment to the school room. 



The seedhouse and greenhouse may be patronized, but if the pupils 

 can be induced to bring seeds and slips, so much the better. A good 

 supply of nurserymen's catalogues, placed where pupils may have free 

 access to them, will not only supply much needed information, but do 

 much to arouse the interest of pupils in any school. But especially in 

 the city schools where the lack of plants are felt, the descriptions and 

 pictures serve as useful substitutes. If agricultural and horticultural 

 books, experiment station and U. S. bulletins and year books are placed 

 where pupils may refer to them both in and out of school hours they will 

 prove a source of much useful knowledge. 



Compared with the school on the crowded city street, perhaps the 

 one on the dry, bare, windswept prairie stands second in unfavorable con- 

 ditions for school gardening. The same methods inside the school room 

 may be used for both. If sufficient water for irrigation can be secured 

 a great variety of plants and trees may be made to^ grow out doors. If 

 water is scarce the plants found growing in that vicinity may be planted 

 near the schoolhouse. The sage brush and cacti prove valuable in the 

 absence of other plant life. 



But the teacher in town or country, who has at hand plenty of space, 

 favorable conditions of soil and moisture, and is in close proximity to the 

 woods, has a boundless opportunity for the development of school garden- 

 ing in the best sense. Any plant that thrives in that soil and climate may 

 be grown. But some of the most pleasant features connected with school 

 gardening are trips to the woods, where plants may be observed growing 

 in their natural state. It is a universal trait of childhood to love the 

 woods. The biographies of poets, scientists, philosophers, men great in 

 almost every walk of life, relate instances where they have fled from 

 the bare school room and dry books for a few brief hours of freedom and 

 communion with nature, though they knew the inevitable consequences — 

 the severe words, the blows from rod or ferrule awaited them from the 

 monarch of the school room. Happily those dark days are vanishing un- 



