226 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



COUNTRY SCHOOL GROUNDS. 



MISS LUCIA E. DANFORTH, NORTHFIELD. 



A city school may have a beautiful building but can not have 

 very beautiful grounds ; a country school can not have a very elegant 

 building, but every country school can have very beautiful grounds. 

 In spite of this fact, and in spite of' the fact that the greater part 

 of a child's most impressionable years are spent there, most of the 

 country schools which we see are a by-word and a desolation. Box- 

 like structures, apologetically resting on a treeless, wind swept prai- 

 rie and crowded in by luxuriant corn fields ! We have all seen them 

 and shuddered. Fortunate are those of us who received our early 

 education in the pitifully few ideal country schools. 



There are three objects to be secured, pleasure, education and 

 beauty; there are three methods of securing these objects, judicious 

 selection, respectful letting alone and labor; there are three classes 

 of people to do this, the women, the men and the youth. 



There are some neighborhoods where little is necessary save 

 judicious selection. There may be a place where our two acres can 

 be secured near a brook, which furnishes skating in winter, clam 

 shells in summer and beauty always ; near hills which furnish coast- 

 ing, a windbreak and scenery ; possessed of natural trees and love- 

 ly views ; having, withal, enough level ground for base ball. If 

 there is such a place in the neighborhood, let us select it, rejoice and 

 put in some hitching posts to save the trees, and then put our at- 

 tention and labor on the school house itself. But there are many 

 neighborhoods where there is no such place, and our two acres must 

 be on the treeless prairie. Then some labor must ensue. Two 

 acres are allowed by the law, and two acres, at the least, we must 

 have. 



I have made a plan where the school house faces south. The 

 school should be near enough to the road to leave at least an acre 

 and a half in the rear for a ball ground. After this our main work 

 will be planting — planting trees, planting shrubs, planting flowers, 

 planting vines, and after this planting more trees, planting more 

 shrubs, planting more flowers, planting more vines and with and 

 after it, protection. On the north should be a windbreak, not of 

 Lombardy poplar but of evergreens. What to select our "Horti- 

 culturalist" tells us every year, but some hardy and beautiful trees 

 are the white spruce, Colorado blue spruce, red cedar, red pine, 

 white pine, arbor vitse and, perhaps, balsam fir. This windbreak of 

 evergreens should also continue on the west side unless it would shut 

 ofif some beautiful view. On the east side we might have a hedge 

 row instead of a wire fence, which is dangerous and hideous, and 

 instead of nothing, which tempts encroachments by adjoining 



