1904] Nature Study — No. 12. 27 



g'ardener. New g^roups followed them, and soon in that desert 

 waste rose an oasis of living green, orderly, neat and picturesque 

 — the first Children's School Farm in New York City. 



One hundred and twenty-five farmers cared tor their plots 

 during the first season, but in the iollowing spring so many re- 

 quests for "farms" were received that the Park authorities decided 

 to enlarge the space allotted, so that nearly three hundred boy 

 and girl farmers, varying in age from eight to eighteen years, 

 were happily employed during the summer of 1903. Through 

 the long hot days of July and August you might see them water- 

 ing, weeding, hoeing, or quietly sitting around the central flower 

 plot listening to a Nature Study talk by the attendant teacher. 



Improvements upon the surrounding land followed rapidly in 

 the wake of those upon the tarm. Toward the east, the Park 

 Department had placed a huge open air gymnasium and play- 

 ground. Toward the west, a tiny country seat, with a 12 by 18 ft. 

 farm-house. A green lawn and flower beds, a pavilion, a pig-pen 

 and a chicken house had been added to the farm property. Still 

 further west stood a sand tent, and a second canvas formed a 

 resting place for tired mothers. A typical afternoon might have 

 shown eighty or a hundred children busy in the gardens ; in the 

 pavilion a sewing class and a group weaving baskets for farm 

 produce ; in the tiny house tea being served by neatly aproned 

 housekeepers ; while on the lawn the boys played croquet. Dur- 

 ing September groups of children from neighboring kindergartens 

 flitted through the garden in the mornings, while the proud 

 owners appeared when school hours were over, basket or bag in 

 hand, ready to carry home their harvest, and spade over their 

 plots, leaving them clean and neat, prepared to defy winter's 

 coldest blast. 



As order emerged out of chaos, as stones and rubbish dis- 

 appeared, the restless, careless horde of children grew daily more 

 quiet and gentle. The wilderness that blossomed as the rose was 

 not only the oasis in the desolate waste of ground, but also in the 

 hardened little lives, now softened by God's wholesome sunshine, 

 in the careless hands that grew so tender with the delicate blos- 

 soms, the wayward feet that learned to run the narrow paths 



