children's garden conference. 231 



wnll be hard to beat. Here tlie prizes were given to school gardens, 

 home gardens, and to the children ; and to our method of reaching 

 these gardens by visits and correspondence is largely due the satis- 

 factory exliibits brought in. 



Your chairman wishes to thank the members of the committee 

 for their support during the year and feels that our success has been 

 due to the individual efforts of theniembers of the committee and 

 to their combined work during the trying times of awarding prizes 

 as well as at committee meetings. It is the earnest hope of the 

 committee that the school-garden work shall continue and that even 

 better results may be obtained in the future. 



Abstracts of Addresses made at the Children's Garden 



Conference. 



Held at Horticuhural Hall, Boston, December 14, 1907. 



The Relation of School Gardens to Nature Study. 



by miss fannie a. stebbins, supervisor of nature study, spring- 

 field, mass. 



If we take as a statement of the object of Nature Study that it is to cul- 

 tivate in the child an intelligent interest in the world about him, the 

 question of the relation of the school garden to Nature Study is simpli- 

 fied. 



We wish the child to fonn the habit of observing, as correctly as may 

 be, series of facts, noting relations of cause and effect and drawing con- 

 clusions from the facts observed; then carrying the work further by 

 working out theories which he may prove or disprove. 



For tlie establishment of many facts the school garden is the best possible 

 laboratory or workshop. The individual plot supplies the added incentive 

 of the feeling of personal ownership and responsibility; and where it is 

 possible to have individual plots they should be used. The child sees 

 more clearly his owm relation to the plant's growth, or lack of it, and feels 

 more keenly the need of care and of knowledge to precede that care. Un- 



