230 massachusetts horticultural society. 



Report of the Fairhaven School Gardens. 



BY ANNA bailey TROWBRIDGE. 



Honorary Mention, 1905. 



The year 1905 brings to a close the most successful season in the history 

 of the school gardens of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. 



Established three years ago as an experiment, these gardens have now 

 become a part of the education of the boys and girls in the sixth and seventh 

 grammar grades; the increasing interest of the children with the attendant 

 gratifying results seems to warrant the maintenance of this work as a per- 

 manent feature in the school curriculum of the future. 



Some changes were made this season which tended to improve the con- 

 ditions of the gardens as a whole. Each child was granted two plots of 

 ground fifteen feet long by four feet wide, with a division between each 

 bed two feet in width; this gave each boy and girl more soil to cultivate, 

 with a double reward of vegetables and flowers over returns of previous 

 seasons. Last year the luxuriant growth of flowers, as the summer ad- 

 vanced, rendered some of the paths quite impassable, so this season this 

 difficulty was obviated by laying out all general paths three feet in width. 



Early in the spring, after the ground had been ploughed and harrowed, 

 the young gardeners staked off their lots and prepared the soil for the 

 reception of the seed. The method of planting, by a rope, was the same 

 as last year, and on the 10th of May the first row of boys and girls had 

 finished depositing their seeds and were busy cleaning up the surroundings 

 of their little plots. While these children had been occupied with their 

 planting, the little tillers of the soil in the second and third rows had not 

 been idle; gardens had been spaded, fertilized and raked, and eyes were 

 eager to catch glimpses of a first radish leaf or blade of corn. On the 17th 

 of May the last of the sixty beds was sown, and the first row of gardens 

 showed signs of germination. 



One half of each garden plot, as shown in the accompanying drawing, 

 was devoted to such vegetables as corn, lettuce, peas, beans, beets, carrots 

 and radishes, while the other half, as the season advanced, was aglow with 

 nasturtiums (dwarf), zinnias, verbenas, phlox, ageratum, marigolds, sweet 

 alyssum, etc. 



The work on the gardens, as in the past, was carried on outside of school 

 hours, so on Saturday mornings or after school at night, could be found a 

 group of earnest workers, busy weeding, transplanting, hoeing or raking 

 as conditions required. Through the summer vacation the little farms 

 were visited regularly by their owners, tended carefully, and baskets of 



