AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS 



houses or even big rocks or boulders. Later fill 

 in the map so as to suggest the kinds of growth 

 in the bordering woods or meadows, first the 

 larger sorts and then the smaller, gathering as you 

 chart them topics for talks to which a part of one 

 day each week may be given. At these times, the 

 teacher should help the children sort out the 

 knowledge which each has contributed and should 

 amplify and intensify it for all. Some of the 

 children will fetch specimens. With a little en- 

 couragement, they will be willing to bring enough 

 earth, if necessary, to start a wild flower garden, 

 like the one at the George Putnam school pre- 

 viously mentioned as the first in America, or 

 the 10 X 100 foot strip of wild flower garden 

 at the Cobbett School, Lynn, Mass., where several 

 hundred shrubs, woody vines, ferns and herbs 

 are gathered. "From hepatica and bloodroot 

 to aster and witch hazel they flourish in their 

 season." Some of the rarer plants were brought 

 or sent from central New York, from New Hamp- 

 shire and from distant parts of Massachusetts. 



However, one need not in any rural district 

 go far to find suitable material for fern or wild 

 flower border, for shrubbery or for trees fit to be 

 transplanted. There are few plants that, like 

 the arbutus and fringed gentian, rebel at civiliza- 

 tion, and many that increase in size and bril- 

 liancy under cultivation. That they are hardy 

 and persistent when once rooted, twenty years' 

 experience in gardening in a city back yard 



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