AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS 



ground decoration. The board encourages but 

 does not enforce correlation of school garden 

 work with routine studies.* It does not, in 

 any grade, compel the children to work in the 

 gardens. However, it conducts gardens through- 

 out the year, and provides for informal in- 

 struction by the curator, for lectures on garden- 

 ing in the schools in the spring, and for flower 

 shows in September and October. Co-operating 

 with the Home Gardening Association of Cleve- 

 land, the board approves the association's vacant 

 lot work and its training garden, where boy 

 farmers are taught simple truck farming.f To- 

 gether, they encourage the children to purchase 

 bulbs and seeds, to plant home gardens, and to 

 take an interest in the flower shows and festivals 

 at which prizes are offered by the association or 

 its friends. In school ground decoration the 

 children usually have some part, either in the 

 planting, or care or both. Today, Cleveland has 

 more than 50,000 home gardens due to the influence 

 of the school garden and the efforts of the Home 

 Gardening Association. The latter distributes seed 

 packets and bulbs by the hundred thousands both 

 in Cleveland and in outside territory. ;}: 



* The curator has worked out a system of correlation in arithmetic, 

 geography, drawing and manual training which is optional. 



t Plots in the training ground are 14x25 feet and 28 x 50 feet, in 

 all about 65 plots, and are for boys from ten to fourteen years of age. 



t Outside of Cleveland in iqoq, 421,611 seed packets were dis- 

 tributed. 



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