INTRODUCTION 



THE idea of having a garden connected 

 with the school is a very old one. 

 Gardening was practised in some European 

 schools many years ago, and was carried 

 on often for the purpose of increasing the 

 salary of the teacher or for furnishing 

 products for him. In other schools 

 there were botanical gardens where the 

 specimens could be studied by the pupils. 

 The school-garden movement as it exists 

 to-day is of more recent origin, beginning 

 about thirty-five years ago. The progress 

 has been most rapid in Europe, where 

 there are to-day more than one hundred 

 thousand school gardens; France alone 

 has more than twenty-eight thousand, and 

 in Russia, as in several other countries, no 

 school will be accepted by the state to 

 receive state funds unless a garden is 

 connected with it. In America, the school- 

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