REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCHOOL GAR- 

 DENS AND NATIVE PLANTS FOR THE YEAR 1905. 



BY HENRY SAXTON ADAMS, CHAIRMAN. 



The year 1905 marks a turning point in the activities of this 

 committee, it being the last year that prizes will be awarded for 

 Children's Herbariums and Native plants, and it has been most 

 successful. In the year to come the committee will be known 

 as the Committee on Children's Gardens, and all our efforts will 

 be directed to the encouragement of gardening among children, 

 which is more directly in line with the objects of the Society. 



During the year we offered prizes for school gardens, children's 

 home gardens, children's herbariums, and native plants. The 

 work now dropped is that connected with the last two and we think 

 that we can carry out the purposes of the Society better by this 

 change. While we regret being obliged to make the change we 

 are very glad that the Trustees concur with us in the matter. Early 

 in the year, very soon after our prize circular was distributed, a 

 letter was printed in the Boston Transcript criticising our offering 

 prizes for children's herbariums, the writer complaining that we 

 were encouraging the destruction of native plants. It was thought 

 wise to call together the members of the committee and to ask sev- 

 eral members of the Society for the Protection of Native Plants and 

 others interested, to meet with us to discuss the subject. While 

 this gathering was not largely attended it resulted in a decision that 

 we were not encouraging the destruction but rather helping the 

 protection of native plants, and we made no change in our efforts. 

 As it has now been decided to drop this work as too botanical for 

 our Society, nothing further need be said. 



On looking over the results already accomplished we felt, that, 

 while we had fostered the school garden movement from the very 

 beginning, we were not having entries from all the gardens in the 

 state and that we were not giving encouragement to more than a 



