134 
What have we aimed to do educationally with the children’s 
gardens of the past, and what have we really succeeded in doing? 
I look first for an answer from the foreign lands whence came 
the idea of school or educational gardens; and this is what I find 
in the historical story: 
Some great educational leaders, notably Comenius, Rousseau, 
Pestalozzi, and Froebel, advocated children’s gardens for educa- 
tional purposes. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the 
school authorities of several of the old German states introduced 
gardening in connection with rural schools, and later provided 
gardens for pupils of many city schools. The original aim in the 
rural schools seems to have been vocational, that is, to teach the 
art of growing plants as a trade or business; but it is doubtful 
whether this was even the aim in the larger communities which 
were not strictly agricultural. Certainly, a few years ago visit- 
ing educational investigators could find no evidence of vocational 
aims and results in the city school gardens of Germany. On the 
contrary, the gardens appeared to have been conducted for gen- 
eral educational purposes, chiefly for nature-study, and perhaps 
for recreation. There was little emphasis on the manual training 
possibilities and on useful products of the children’s gardens. In 
several German cities the importance of children’s direct partici- 
pation in gardening was overlooked, and the gardens became 
ordinary botanical gardens for nature-study observation and for 
supplying materials for schoolroom use. 
Apparently following the example of German gardens, the na- 
tional education system of Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Holland, 
France, Switzerland, Italy, and Russia have given more or less 
official encouragement to school-gardens within the past sixty 
years. In these countries the rural schools have as a rule been 
selected for gardens, and in the beginning the official aim seems 
to have been entirely vocational. Switzerland has required spe- 
cial training in gardening in the normal schools, and since 1885 
has subsidized elementary school-gardens. For several decades 
every rural school in Belgium has had a garden, and the ele- 
mentary training in gardening is believed by many educators to 
have been invaluable in relation to the horticultural industry of 
the country. The normal schools of France have long taught 

