
THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
RECORD 

VoL. VIII October, 1919 No. 4 


CHILDREN’S GARDENING IN THE RECONSTRUCTION 
ERIOD* 
One morning last week we were awakened by the news that 
the Great War is over. This meant to the thinking man and 
woman not only the end of the greatest catastrophe this old world 
has ever seen, but it meant that we have crossed the chasm and 
come to stand on the borderland of a new world—a world that 
surely will be new socially, politically, industrially, educationally, 
morally, and religiously. It meant that the time had come for 
speeding up the great re-building, the radical reconstruction, of a 
large number of human affairs which have been developing slowly 
during the long era of civilization. 
World reconstruction has now begun. In America it is per- 
haps truer to say that our own problems are concerned with 
readjustments rather than reconstruction. Nevertheless, very 
many radical readjustments are necessary, and it behooves the 
leaders of every helpful movement to survey its past failures as 
well as its successes, and then make the rich experience of the 
past guide through the mazes of the problems of the future. 
It is with this attitude that I ask you to join with me in a rapid 
examination of the possible contribution of the children’s garden- 
ing movement to the coming great work of making better citizens 
for a reconstructed world. 


* Address at the graduation of teachers of children’s gardening, Brook- 
lyn Botanic Garden, November 23, 1918. 
133 
