238 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



square feet. The gardens were attractive by reason of the quantity and 

 quaUty of the vegetables and flowers, and satisfaetoiy according to our 

 necd.s and purposes. The produce for the year was all for which we could 

 hope, with one or two exceptions. After supphang the Home with vege- 

 tal)les through the summer, we have several barrels stored for winter use. 

 The greatest gains and advantages of school gardens to institution 

 interests do not appear in statistics; they are not alone in the physical 

 benefits, as one of the facilities of preventive hygiene, or entirely the result 

 of observation and experiment in plants. A development of the primal 

 instinct of gardening has been to the boys and girls of tliis institution more 

 than the growing of potatoes and posies. It has been the expression of 

 their desire to create, to watch the process and development of gro^^■th 

 that was dependent upon their personal efforts and efficiency. Its ethical 

 benefits have tended to develop the "social conscience" and the sense of 

 fellowship through the contact mth the things of nature that have made 

 such generous returns for the loAing care l^estowed. 



School Garden Reports. 



Report of the Armory Street School Garden at Sprixg- 

 FiELD, Mass. 



BY FLORENCE M. ABBE. 



The first school garden in comiection with the Armory Street School 

 was started in 1905. It jjroved successful and extremely popular with 

 the children and has been continued ever since. 



The garden work is carried on by the fifth grade pu^Mls, the regular science 

 period being used for this work. 



Each cliild had a plot of ground 8 feet long by 2^ feet wide, separated 

 by walks one foot wide. The entire class of forty-two pupils worked in 

 the garden at the same time. 



There were forty-four garden plots this year, one of the two extra beds 

 being used by the teacher to illustrate the work to be done during the 

 class period by the children, and the other u.sed to give pupils practice in 

 transplanting, so that they might be successful in work of that kind in 

 their home gardens; also as a place where plants of each kind were al- 

 lowed to go to seed, to show seed formation. 



The city furnishes the necessary tools, stakes and line, and weeders for 

 each pupil; and has the garden dug over and marked out. After that 



