172 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Some of the school yards in Boston have an area of three- 

 quarters of an acre. What magnificent possibilities lie in those 

 yards ! With the abolition of the recess what is their reason for 

 being as playgrounds? How much more useful for instruction^ 

 for manners, and for morals, would they be as school gardens, 

 than they have ever been as play grounds ! Suppose the hard, 

 monotonous-looking bricks to be taken up, except where they are 

 needed for walks — wide ones for passages to and from the build- 

 ing, and narrow ones in the garden — what might we reasonably 

 expect to see in the school garden ? Certainly enough to make it 

 seem like a paradise to look out upon in comparison with the 

 ordinary Sahara-like school yard. As representatives of commer- 

 cial and mouocotyledonous plants, we could have wheat, rye, 

 oats, barley, millet, corn, rice, timothy, red-top, etc., each having 

 a square yard of ground to itself. Of dicotyledonous plants, a hill 

 of scarlet runners, a ring of sweet peas, a square planted with 

 acorns, or peach or cherry stones, etc. ; plantlets in various 

 stages of development ; a row each of varieties of crowfoots^ 

 mints, lilies, pinks, roses, etc. ; fleshy roots, as beets, turnips, and 

 parsnips, — some, in their second year's growth, to show the 

 nature of biennials. Many city children have never noticed such 

 plants growing. 



The flora of the vicinit}' could be obtained without much diffi- 

 culty, even by city scholars, and with little trouble by country 

 scholars. Almost any region within a radius of a few miles has 

 plants that would serve as well for ornamentation as for observa- 

 tion work, among which may be mentioned a dozen varieties of 

 asters, shrubb}' ciuquefoil, blazing-star, wild lupine, Joe-Pye 

 weed, Canada hawkweed, jewel-weed, cone-flower, hardback, 

 sweet pepperbush, golden-rod, wild columbine, cranesbill, hare- 

 bell, Solomon's-seal, bellwort, wild bean, evening primrose, 

 purple flowering-raspberry, Philadelphia lily, Canada lily, 

 meadow rue, Jack-in-the-pulpit, clematis, and ferns. For every 

 purpose of the school, such plants would serve better than 

 cultivated flowers ; and their variation under cultivation would 

 interest and instruct every observer, and lead to a better appre- 

 ciation of wild flowers, and a more rational and profitable way of 

 spending summer vacations than obtains now. 



Annual garden flowers and fleshy roots can be raised from 

 seeds. The city forester, floriculturists, and horticulturists 



