136 GARDEN CITIES 



In other words, market gardening will easily produce any- 

 where from five to ten times as much as ordinary farming. This 

 was well shown by a gardening contest at Bournville, in which 

 nineteen gardens took part. These gardens, which averaged 

 3, 700 square feet (the same as 37 x 100 feet.), produced vegetables 

 and fruit worth $23 .45 each, which is at the rate of $278.25 an acre. 

 Yet the total yield from 77 of the acres where Bournville now 

 stands was less than $25 an acre in the days of ordinary farming. 

 So that these 77 acres for which a record has been kept not only 

 house under ideal conditions a population of nearly 2,000 people, 

 but they also produce more than six times as much profit under 

 home gardening as they did under general farming. 



It is this enormous productiveness which makes gardening 

 such an efficient enemy of the saloon. For even the poorest tenant 

 at Bournville has an experience like this: Coming from the slums 

 of Birmingham and knowing nothing about gardening, he finds 

 everything to encourage him. His beautiful evergreen lawn is 

 already started. A hawthorn hedge has been planted around his 

 whole lot for the protection of his garden. The gravel walks are 

 all made. Dwarf fruit trees and grape vines have been planted, 

 and on the house walls is a set of ornamental climbers which is a 

 little different from that in any other yard. Thus all the pre- 

 liminary work which is so costly and difficult that the beginner can 

 never do it alone without serious mistakes and delays all this is 

 done for him. And the longest time which can elapse before a 

 man has something to eat of his own raising is three months. 

 After this event, it is all clear sailing. And experience shows that 

 under such conditions a man finds gardening more interesting than 

 the saloon. 



The saloon and its attendant evils are unknown at Bournville. 



