THE SCHOOL GARDEN 



BY J. E. HENNESEY, 



Formerly Principal of the Lady Warwick Agricultural School. 

 Author of " The School Garden." 



CHAPTER V 

 GENERAL 



THE School Garden is no new institution. Comenius, who lived 

 in the seventeenth century, recommended that every school 

 should possess its own garden, where the scholars could learn to 

 love trees and flowers and herbs, and be taught something of 

 their life-stories. A little later, Francke, who had an asylum at 

 Halle for orphan children, laid out a school garden in which the 

 children could employ their leisure time with pleasure and profit. 

 Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel all did something to help 

 forward the movement. Pestalozzi, who had established on his 

 estate at Neuhof a home for orphans, laid down the principle that 

 the farm was to be the central point of his educational work, and 

 that his pupils were to be instructed at work and through work. 

 While the idea that children should receive instruction by and 

 through their environment was thus kept alive, it was not until 

 about forty years ago that the particular method of instruction 

 now under consideration began to spread widely. In the years 

 1869 and 1870 a law was passed by the Austrian Government 

 requiring that where possible a garden and ground for agricultural 

 demonstrations should be attached to every rural school, and 

 that wherever natural history formed a part of a school curric- 

 ulum the instruction should be based on material provided from 

 a school garden specially arranged for the purpose. Since the 

 date of passing of this law it is stated that more than 18,000 

 school gardens have been established in Austria-Hungary. Much 



