DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS 



each county added a premium of $150 if the 

 prize winner was found among its own lads. 

 In Illinois, apart from corn contests better- 

 ment of rural school conditions and the open- 

 ing of school gardens have been actively pushed, 

 especially in Winnebago County under Super- 

 intendent O. J. Kern. Other counties have 

 followed the lead, and there has been a steady 

 development since 1906 when Marion county had 

 ten school gardens, ten per cent of the schools in 

 McHenry county had gardens. Coles county had a 

 garden of one acre for its graded school. Pike 

 county had a garden, and Peoria county had 

 twenty-five in connection with rural schools.* 



Many schools in country districts could follow 

 the custom adopted in the cities of giving out 

 seeds for the children to plant in their home 

 gardens, and the teacher's social call might 

 include supervision of these. Speaking of the 

 work in Concord Normal School, Athens, W. 

 Va., where seeds are distributed to the children 

 to be planted in home plots with supervision and 

 advice by the head of the department, the prin- 

 cipal, Mr. C. L. Bemis, writes: 



"The reason we are doing our work in this way 

 is because we have no ground of our own for such 

 work. I think I should prefer the way we are 

 doing it, anyway, because it makes the parents 

 more interested in the work, and all the child 

 raises is his own. It is necessary, however, for him 



♦ Kern, O. J.: Among Country Schools, p. 82. 



75 



