212 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



A city school garden should carrj'' garden work throughout the year, by 

 means of cold frames, hotbeds, window gardens, mushroom beds in the 

 cellar, and ere long by a school greenhouse. Such intensive garden work 

 is the appropriate training for city conditions where land is valuable and 

 children have time to spare. What school garden development most 

 needs is instruction for teachers. The Massachusetts Agricultural College 

 should publish leaflets and arrange extension courses for teachers. There 

 should be a practical class in gardening open to teachers in one or more 

 places of eastern Massachusetts. There are failures and much waste in 

 the work now because of the inability of teachers to grow plants with full 

 success. 



Children's Gardens from Frost to Frost. 



BY HERBERT D. HEMENWAY, DIRECTOR SCHOOL OF HORTICULTURE, HART- 

 FORD, CONN. 



Three things fix a man's value in the world. His knowledge or what he 

 knows, his ability or what he can do, his character or what he is. The 

 school should help in developing all three, and the school garden is per- 

 haps the most potent factor in developing the man. It increases his 

 knowledge -and his ability to do things and develops his character. 



The school garden can be correlated with all other things taught in the 

 class room. It takes away the drudgery of the school life. Children 

 having some outdoor work in the garden, generally, if not always, develop 

 more rapidly mentally as well as physically and morally. 



The school gardens at the Hartford School of Horticulture begin for the 

 first year in May; the second year in March; the third year in February; 

 and the fourth and fifth years in January; and continue until October. 

 The children come into the class room, where they receive their notebooks, 

 and write down from dictation or copy from the blackboard definite direc- 

 tions; then with the instructor and their seeds they pass into the tool room, 

 where they receive their tools, and then into the garden, passing by obser- 

 vation plots of all of our common agricultural and market garden crops, 

 flowers, and fruits. 



There are now about five hundred different kinds of things growing at 

 the School of Horticulture; all distinctly labeled with the common Eng- 

 lish names. 



While an agricultural failure may not be an educational failure, we 

 should try to have the school gardens succeed, and have results from an 

 agricultural and horticultural standpoint. The moral value of success 

 is very great and wherever possible the gardens should be conducted right 

 through the summer so that they may never become overgrown with weeds. 



