210 CHILDREN'S GARDENS 



Irving High School, felt that they could learn more 

 biology and botany from a 4 x 8 foot plot in the open, 

 than by studying charts on the walls in the class- 

 room for years. 



Kindergartens, first primary classes, grammar school 

 boys and girls and high school graduates, numbering 

 in the thousands, used the garden without interfering 

 with the regular little farmers. 



A picture of one morning will perhaps serve to illus- 

 trate the garden's usefulness. As I entered the 

 northerly gate, 84 high school boys, with typewritten 

 lists of questions made out by their teachers, were 

 wandering through the northerly end of the garden 

 in search of answers; 104 grammar school girls were 

 at the southerly end; a mother with her twin babes, 

 three weeks old, and a little three-year-old girl, play- 

 ing at her side, sat in the summer-house gaining 

 strength and health. It is just after the birth of an 

 infant that the poorly nourished mother has the 

 strongest tendency towards tuberculosis. An unusu- 

 ally large number of parents have applied for plots for 

 their children this year, explaining their difficulty as 

 to what to do with their delicate children, whom they 

 cannot send or take to the country. 



The garden, this summer, was also a boon to young- 

 working girls, who have but a two weeks' vacation, 

 and no way of leaving the city. In some cases this 

 summer, some girls would have become fatally ill, 

 could they have not come to this garden while wait- 

 ing for an opportunity to go to Sea Breeze. 



