SCHOOL-GARDENS IN PHILADELPHIA 215 



study materials for the schools. Nature-study lessons were given 

 to the visiting classes by the garden teachers, and materials for 

 nature-study were grown and sent to schools when requested. 

 On Saturdays, both teachers and pupils were occupied at the gar- 

 dens all day. By the 535 individual plots, farmed in the course of 

 the summer by 775 children, by the playgrounds — open to the 

 neighborhood, by the 48 visiting classes from schools, and the 

 nature-study materials sent to 285 schools, altogether it will be 

 seen that several thousand children benefited by the gardens and 

 the attached playgrounds. 



The average daily attendance in the Weccacoe School-garden 

 was 150, in the playground 100. The total number actually work- 

 ing the 250 individual plots in the course of this one summer, at 

 this one garden of about a half acre, was 400. The number of 

 children who began at the beginning and staid to the end was 71, 

 in spite of the fact that others were waiting to take the places of 

 any that became irregular or careless. Some waited in vain all 

 summer. The estimate of produce per plot from this hard clay 

 ground, where even a second dressing and ploughing had brought 

 to light only a second crop of bricks, was 225 radishes, 40 beets, 

 one peck of string beans, 25 heads of lettuce, 100 small turnips, 

 two small heads of cabbage, and peas which, however, failed be- 

 cause eaten by the sparrows. The number of schools supplied 

 with nature-study materials from this garden was twenty-two, of 

 classes visiting the garden, thirty-seven. 



For this year, every one of last year's 400 children, and as many 

 more, again have begged for plots, but the Square is not again 

 available. The downtown garden is located this year at Fifth and 

 Porter Streets, opposite the Taggart School, whose teachers are 

 already asking for class plots, and are giving such cooperation to 

 the garden work that the educational side of the work, — which 

 was the reason for its incorporation in the school system, — will 

 probably find a far greater development than w^as possible during 

 the first year. At date of writing, the attendance at this garden, 

 purely voluntary, ranges from eighty per cent, to ninety-five per 

 cent, per week, showing how the children regard the " work." 



At 56th and Lansdowne Avenue there were 285 individual and 

 ten general plots, farmed in the course of the five months by a 

 total of 375 children. Average attendance at the playground all 

 day was forty, in the garden 1000. One hundred and ninety-one 



