204 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



in use we have this autvimn added eight more. Some new lines of work 

 have been successfully undertaken. Our school yard has been outgrown 

 and we have established large plots for multiplying hardy plants in the 

 yards of two lots adjoining the school, and one in a church yard. A plot 

 of some 4500 square feet in another yard adjoining the school has been 

 used for individual gardens for every child of the fourth grade, and for 

 the vacation school in the summer. The method of caring for the gardens 

 by pupils and teachers has been most successfully developed to the end 

 of securing the most training to the pupils and good gardens therewith. 

 The year's success may be measured financially. The treasurer of the 

 Cobbet School City, Master Ellsworth Stone, has issued checks for over a 

 hundred dollars worth of business. The sales of hardy plants and other 

 products from the garden have amounted to some forty dollars. We are 

 proud to have won the two first prizes of five dollars each for the best 

 exhibits at the exhibitions held under your auspices in Boston, and at 

 the two exhibitions of the Houghton Horticultural Society of Lynn the 

 school won sixteen first prizes, eight second prizes and six gratuities, 

 amounting to some eighteen dollars in all. We send herewith exhibits 

 of school work showing how this aids the garden work and is aided by it. 

 Finally the Principal has by lectures before bodies of teachers and village 

 improvement societies, and by articles contributed to educational and 

 popular periodicals, shared in spreading the movement to other com- 

 munities. 



The garden of individual plots for fourth grade children has been a most 

 satisfactory feature of the year's work. This practical experience of 

 everj^ boy and girl in preparing the soil, planting, weeding, cultivating, 

 harv'esting, and in every way caring for a variety of quick growing crops, 

 — radishes, lettuce, scullions, beans, beets, candytuft and the like, — lays 

 the necessary basis for successful home gardens. This spring one ambi- 

 tious sixth grade boy, a lawyer's son, bought a half dollar's worth of seeds, 

 and planted every sort an inch or more deep. Of course but few sorts 

 were able to push to the surface and grow. The little folks that are 

 trained to plant their seeds correctly, first discussing what is advisable, 

 then watching their teacher plant a few, then planting themselves with 

 the teacher's helpful criticism, soon learn to plant so as to secure results. 



The large measure of success we have attained this year has been in 

 considerable measure due to the special teacher assigned to the school by 

 the Committee. She is given no class, but spends most of her time in 

 transforming misfits among the children into pupils who are well placed 

 in their grades, enabling some to skip a grade, and saving others from 

 being kept back a year. In autumn and spring she uses some days to 

 take little groups of the fourth grade boys and girls out for periods of 

 work at their individual gardens. The plan should be adopted wherever 

 a school has such individual garden plots. 



During the summer the same garden was used by a large class from the 

 vacation school, and the Cobbet Principal prepared directions for the 

 vacation school teachers, several of which directions are enclosed herewith. 



