14 



GARDEN CLUBS IN SCHOOLS OF ENGLEWOOD, N. 



J. 



Assignment of flats. — With the exception of the children living 

 in the congested part of the city, most of the garden club members 

 had their plats in their back yards. The children who lived in the 

 tenements and in other buildings of the same neighborhood were pro- 

 vided w^ith plats of a reasonable size near their homes. These were 

 located in two vacant lots. One was occupied by boys and the other 

 by girls. The A^acant lots were staked off into plats of different 

 sizes to meet the needs of different children, and each plat was sur- 

 rounded by a path 2| feet wide. Each child was assigned to a plat 

 of his own in the spring, which he was required to spade, plant, and 

 care for throughout the season. Any child neglecting to care for his 

 garden and the surrounding paths in a satisfactory way was de- 

 prived of further use of it. 



TRAINING TOMATOES. 



PRELIMINARY WORK, SOIL PREPARATION, PLANTING. 



Garden planning. — Actual operations went hand in hand with in- 

 struction, wdiich was in most cases very minute. This was espe- 

 cially true while the children were drawing to scale preliminary 

 working plans of their gardens. A great deal of individual instruc- 

 tion was necessary at this time for two reasons : First, because of the 

 varying knowledge of the subject among the children ; and, secondly, 

 because of the completely different problem which each child had to 

 solve. Many children had never had any garden experience at all; 

 some had helped their parents who were experts, and were familiar 

 with the gi'owing habits of plants, garden equipment, and the use of 

 fertilizers and sprays. These differences of gardening knowledge, 

 combined with just as great differences in knowledge of arithmetic and 

 drawing, shown by the children in putting on paper the plans for 



