AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS 



and conducted under the authority of the school 

 trustees and with the express approval of the rate 

 payers. The work of the garden is recognized 

 as a legitimate part of the school program and it 

 is already interwoven with a considerable part of 

 the other studies. The garden is becoming the 

 outer classroom of the school, and its plots are its 

 blackboards. The garden is not an innovation, or 

 an excrescence, or an addendum, or a diversion. 

 It is a happy field of expression, an organic part 

 of the school in which the boys and girls work 

 among growing things and grow themselves in 

 body and mind and spiritual outlook."* 



At the beginning of the movement, six teachers 

 of experience in the rural schools were selected and 

 sent, at the expense of the Macdonald fund, for 

 special studies to the Ontario Agricultural Col- 

 lege at Guelph and to Chicago, Cornell, Columbia 

 and Clark universities. They were specially 

 trained to supervise the work in each of the 

 provinces.! The general plan was to have the 

 gardens started in groups of five schools each, at 

 distances of from seven to fifteen or more miles 

 apart, and to have traveling instructors superin- 



* Cowley, R. H.: The Macdonald School Gardens of Canada, 

 Queen's Quarterly, p. 401. 



t For the present requirements for teachers see Elementary 

 Agriculture and Horticulture and School Gardens in Village and 

 Rural Schools. Explanatory and Descriptive Circular No, 13, 

 Sept. JQ07, July, IQ09, issued by Department of Education, Toronto, 

 Canada. Also programs of Summer School for Teachers, issued by 

 Macdonald Institute, Guelph. See Appendix A, Note 2. 



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