i 5 4 THE SCHOOL GARDEN BOOK 



In September the belated judges called. Abe was selling 

 papers, but his parents were at home. They greeted the 

 judges with suspicion, but when at last they understood 

 their visitors' errand they were all smiles. They told how 

 good the sweet corn tasted, told, in their broken English, all 

 the story of the garden and how proud they were of their boy. 

 It was evident that this little garden, the brave enterprise of an 

 immigrant boy, had been a power for good in the home and 

 neighborhood. 



Alessandro wanted a garden also. But in the crowded 

 block of tenement homes where he lived there was really no 

 room for a flower bed. The narrow court hardly afforded 

 space for its swarm of children to attempt play. So Aleck 

 worked among the vegetables and flowers of the school gar- 

 den with his principal. When it was suggested that Aleck 

 might have an old nail keg for flowers, as a reward, he was 

 delighted. The coat of green paint he applied made the 

 keg quite attractive. Then a half-dozen plants were chosen 

 by the boy and carefully set therein, mostly tender peren- 

 nials and pendant vines. Aleck was a proud little gardener 

 that summer evening as he bore the prize home on the school 

 wheelbarrow. 



When the home gardens were judged again in late Sep- 

 tember, the teacher who accompanied the board of child 

 judges on their rounds found Aleck's tiny keg garden flourish- 

 ing. Up the tenement stairs they mounted, until, welcomed 

 by Aleck's mother, they were ushered into the close little 

 home room. There was the keg green with foliage, gay with 

 a few flowers, placed for the time just below the crucifix. 

 For the leaves and blossoms recalled to the parents the sunny, 

 flowery slopes of Italy and their terraced gardens, and this 



