AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS 



tion in the care of the plants and grounds, and at 

 once to each and every child the garden becomes 

 "our" garden, and an injury to it a personal affair; 

 any praise or merit becomes a comment about 

 something " I made or helped to make." With 

 this sense of participation, comes genuine private 

 care of public property. Of necessity, there must 

 follow with this kind of interest, many self-deter- 

 mined convictions on the part of the child as to 

 what is morally as well as culturally right and 

 wrong in the garden. Lessons like these become 

 gradually ingrained modes or habits of thought, 

 and the child fibre is toughened morally. 



The larger the field the gardening offers, other 

 things being equal, the greater the opportunity for 

 development of the child. Hence, the plea for 

 individual beds and also for co-operative labor on 

 larger areas, as on paths, and on class or sample 

 plots. The union of these two kinds of tasks best 

 illustrates life where each individual works out his 

 own salvation; if happily and usefully, he must 

 do it with due consideration for others and for his 

 own share of responsibility for the public good. 



For the understanding of a subject, it is neces- 

 sary to know both its past and present. Con- 

 sequently a brief history of school gardening is in 

 order. Putting aside for a time the consideration 

 of the few gardens, — not more than four or five, — 

 which were started prior to 1900, the movement 

 in America is barely ten years old. Yet, like the 

 occasional stations of the wireless telegraph, it 



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