Should School Gardens Survive? 



By Arthur D. Cromwell 

 West Chester State Normal 



There seems to be uneasiness in some quarters as to the survival 

 of the school garden. Whether or not the school garden should 

 survive depends upon what kind of a school garden it is. If the 

 school garden is little more than a patch for the children to enjoy 

 and an extra burden on the janitor, it should not survive. If 

 the school garden is a plot with beautiful flowers grown by an 

 unwilling janitor but flowers for which the school and especially 

 the children get credit, the school garden should not survive. If 

 the school garden is in the country and is a place where the children 

 learn poorly what they would learn better by visiting a regular 

 gardener's place, then the garden should be abandoned. If the 

 garden is in the country and prevents the children taking an active 

 part in the home garden or worse yet, from becoming active mem- 

 bers of their state or the national Boys' or Girls' clubs, and there 

 doing things on a larger and more scientific scale, then of course 

 the school garden should not survive. But if the school garden 

 is a place in town, kept by the children with no extra burdens on. 

 unwilling people, and if it furnishes an out-of-door-laboratory 

 then it should survive and become an organic part of the school. 



School gardens in town seem to be more popular than school 

 gardens in the country and for a very good reason. In the country, 

 children are very apt to learn incidentally all that the ordinary 

 teacher can teach in a school garden. The growing of a radish to- 

 eat or of a dozen radishes to eat, is not worth while for the country 

 child because double the number can be grown at home with half 

 the work. A Httle patch of com doomed to partial failure be- 

 cause of the limited chance for cross pollination is of course worse 

 than useless in the country where a boy may take charge of an 

 acre or more providing he wants to. 



But there is a very promising field for the rural school garden 

 though as yet there are few if any entering that field. That field 

 is the field of plant breeding. Supposing instead of pulling up 

 the first and best appearing radish, it is marked with a little stake: 

 and left to go to seed. Supposing this seed from the earliest and: 

 best radishes is multiplied until there is a sufficient quantity to 



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