96 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



observation of its form, structure, buds and blossoms ; the insects 

 and birds, their habits and uses. The study of plant life also 

 requires some knowledge of the soil ; its formation, kinds, the 

 crops it will produce, etc. In all of this work the great aim of 

 the teacher should be to lead the child to realize that he lives in 

 a world of beauty and that it is an abiding joy to learn to appre- 

 ciate it. In so doing he becomes a happy, contented member of 

 society. 



A few years ago the progressive teacher put window-boxes 

 in her schoolroom in order to relieve the dreary monotony of 

 an artificial environment and give the child some idea of the 

 beauty of growing things. Then came the day of school gardens. 

 These have flourished in Europe for many years, but have only 

 recently been introduced into America. Massachusetts has taken 

 an active part in this development, fostered largely by the recog- 

 nition of this movement in the way of prizes and diplomas given 

 by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. An article in The 

 Commons, by Anne Withington, calls attention to the lack of 

 cohesion in municipal life, and cites garden work in Boston as an 

 example. The writer says : " We have a city forester, with a 

 large staff of workers, and all the materials needed at hand — 

 loam, manure, seeds, implements — and yet it is impossible for 

 the city's teachers to obtain these for the city's children. So it 

 comes about that, while the city provides the land and the chil- 

 dren and the teachers, it is left to volunteer organizations — The 

 American Park and Outdoor Art Association, The Civic League, 

 and The Twentieth Century Club — to initiate the work and to 

 bear the expense of preparation of the grounds, implements and 

 seeds, and the cost of supei"vision. Of course the hope is that 

 ultimately the school authorities will assume responsibility for 

 the garden work, and that it will be incorpoi'ated in the school 

 curriculum, like other manual work — nay, some of the enthusi- 

 asts have larger hopes. They see in the garden a laboratory 

 wherein many branches of learning, now differentiated, may be 

 correlated and vivified for the child. It is with this end in view 

 that teachers have begun to use the garden in teaching English, 

 arithmetic, geography, cooking, sloyd, etc." 



In this same article upon school gardens Miss Withington 



