IN VACATION AND TERM TIME 



when there was no better means. Encouraged 

 by their schoolmates' labor, the children and 

 some of their elders planted a few small flower 

 beds of their own. This city also set a squad of 

 its school boys to work on a vacant lot, 70 x 150 

 feet, where they enjoyed growing a mixed crop, 

 largely beans, for the local market. The experi- 

 ment did them and the neighborhood good and 

 all hoped that it would be repeated. In the same 

 city one troop of school children made an excel- 

 lent formal garden. 



Excellent results were obtained in Cincinnati, 

 where the Woman's Club has encouraged garden- 

 ing among the school children, chiefly at their 

 homes. It distributed seeds and hired one of 

 the university students to give talks, inspect the 

 children's home gardens (over 1000 in 1908), 

 and to supervise the work at the Douglas School 

 garden. Walnut Hills. The gardens varied in 

 size from a reasonably large backyard vegetable 

 patch to a window ledge of cans with growing 

 plants or to a tiny space made by taking up a few 

 bricks in the crowded and densely populated 

 districts where tall apartment houses and tene- 

 ments elbow each other. Many neighborhoods 

 having gardens were much improved. The Doug- 

 las School garden, carried on throughout the 

 summer by the colored children, collected from 

 different parts of the city for this vacation 

 school, is one of the brightest and trimmest and 

 most satisfactory among the smaller gardens of 

 .8 235 



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