THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN 



garden were conducted by the city supervisor of 

 school gardens. Cornell in her Agricultural Col- 

 lege offers helpful courses, and constantly seeks to 

 arouse and sustain interest in the outdoor world 

 and particularly in rural life, by means of her 

 many bulletins. The Rural School Leaflets and 

 Home Nature Study Course are widely distributed. 

 In the central west, the Cleveland Home Garden- 

 ing Association began its work in 1900 with the 

 distribution of 48,868 penny packets of seeds. 

 In the following year, it instituted a test garden 

 in the center of the city. It has continued and 

 greatly increased its work both with adults and 

 with the school children under the direction of the 

 able curator of school gardens, Miss Louise Klein 

 Miller. The Cleveland board of education was 

 the first to appreciate the value of school garden 

 work and to create the office of curator. The 

 curator is not on the educational staff but holds 

 office under the administrative department and is 

 responsible to the director of schools. The board 

 places at the curator's disposal three laborers and 

 in 1909 gave her an assistant teacher. While 

 laying much stress on the nine school gardens 

 connected with its schools and steadily enlarging 

 their number, it particularly emphasizes school- 

 others among the states are doing what they can in the way of 

 training teachers. In ii^oq the Rhode Island College provided a 

 traveling supervisor for the gardens already established in Provi- 

 dence and Newfwrt. Normal schools and colleges are also providing 

 winter courses, giving the teachers either Saturday lectures or more 

 extended courses through a part of the year's session. 



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