18 THE SCHOOL GARDEN BOOK 



visit the home gardens throughout the summer. Teachers 

 in many schools have made gardening a success through 

 their own devoted efforts until the authorities took the work 

 up and provided special instructors and facilities. 



The most satisfactory results are, of course, secured where 

 a specially trained instructor in gardening is employed to 

 direct the work of class teachers, and who may personally 

 instruct groups of pupils in the school gardens and visit home 

 gardens. Some school systems provide a special teacher to 

 every large school, or to two smaller schools, who is unassigned 

 to a class. She is employed mainly to make the graded 

 school system more elastic by aiding pupils who are slow to 

 comprehend, or who have lost work through absence, to 

 maintain or regain class standing, and by helping the ablest 

 pupils to skip grades without loss of essentials. This appeals 

 to all, the most conservative included, as worth the expense. 

 Incidentally, such a teacher makes it possible to conduct field 

 study by groups of pupils with an effectiveness seldom at- 

 tained by regular class teachers. She is also available to 

 take groups of pupils into the garden for systematic work in 

 planting and culture. Under this plan it is wholly possible 

 to secure a teacher in each school who shall be thoroughly 

 competent to give garden instruction and thus ensure full 

 success from the start. 



School Gardening for Profit 



While the true purpose of a school garden or a child's 

 home garden is educational, it may often best attain this end 

 when it becomes commercially successful, at least to the 

 extent of becoming self-supporting. A school garden will 

 naturally give many plants to its pupils as prizes to stimulate 



