182 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



We wish to thank the Trustees for the help ^Yhich they have given 

 us and hope that we will be able to use our even larger appropriation 

 for 1907 with an equal feeling of confidence that it has been well 

 spent. 



The year has been a most successful one and we report marked 

 progress in our work. We are still only beginning and hope that 

 our efforts may prove stimulating to other organizations to carry 

 on a similar work. We ask the hearty cooperation of all who are 

 interested that success may attend our efforts in what we believe 

 to be a vital movement for the future of gardening among our 

 people. 



Abstracts of Addresses made at the Children's Gar- 

 den Conference. 



Held at Horticultural Hall, Boston, December 15, 1906. 



The Educational Value of School Gardens. 



BY HON. GEORGE H. MARTIN, SECRETARY STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, 

 BOSTON, MASS. 



It is hardly necessaiy, in view of the widespread and rapidly spreading 

 interest in school garden work, that I should appear here this afternoon 

 to speak of the educational advantages of them. They have been already 

 discovered by the t\vo organizations in the state which are devoted to the 

 agricultural and horticultural interests. The State Board of Agriculture 

 is fully alive to the importance of school gardening as preparatory in a 

 way and supplementary in another way to the agricultural work of the 

 state for which it is organized, and the Horticultural Society has already 

 gone so far in its leadership in the movement that any discussion cannot 

 be for the purpose ♦f convincing them. The superintendents of the state 

 are rapidly becoming interested in the movement and they have discovered 

 educational advantages. The fact that last year there were some three 

 hundred school gardens in the state is evidence of this. While it would 

 seem from the report which Mr. Adams has read of the prizes that were 

 given, that school gardening was comparatively limited in its scope and 



