DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS 



equipment small or large, the scope of its work nar- 

 row or wide, its quality and quantity graded or un- 

 graded; but as far as it goes, its teaching and ex- 

 perience are fundamental, whether for teacher or 

 child. So to this " fundamental type " we give par 

 excellence the name " school garden," because in the 

 mind of psychologist, educator and teacher, it is a 

 school in which to cultivate, to develop children 

 quite as much as or more than to teach them 

 how to grow flowers or to mature vegetables. 



This fundamental type offers the largest cultural 

 development for children in the smallest area, it 

 demands of the teacher either little or much train- 

 ing, according to the scope of work carried on in it. 

 Nowhere is less previous experience required ex- 

 cept in the tiny posy garden or where, as in some 

 formal_gardens, the work of teacher and children 

 is confined to a very small amount of supervised 

 planting, whether of bulbs or seeds, and to the 

 necessary later care in watering and in keeping the 

 soil loose. From the likeness of much of the work 

 in the "fundamental type" to truck gardening, 

 and from the children's delight in being known as 

 little farmers owning their small farms, this basic 

 type might be called not only the " school garden," \ 

 but the "school garden farm."* 



♦ This term would be equally applicable to the usual school 

 garden in cities and to the extensive school garden tract of five acres 

 or more which Minnesota requires under the Putnam Bill, or to such 

 gardens of lesser area, as would be advisable in our agricultural 

 states. The difference in size would be suggested by the locality 

 mentioned or by the context in which the term occurred. 



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