52 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



The question is often raised whether, in such a district as 

 has just been described, only a few steps away from a crowded 

 thoroughfare, where strangers are always streaming by, a gar- 

 den can be kept safe from intruders. The answer is that, 

 when properly organized, the young gardeners and their fami- 

 lies are rightly considered a garden's stoutest defenders. The 

 children's protective methods are sometimes very ingenious. 

 In one instance at harvest time the garden was continually 

 visited by loafers whom the gardeners were too young to get 

 the best of, so they kept a camera in an adjoining house 

 and photographed the trespassers. 



It is well known that ownership in even a tiny garden 

 arouses in the children of a community a true respect for 

 property hitherto unawakened. Here, very likely for the first 

 time in their lives, youngsters see things from the angle of 

 the owner. In concrete terms, as soon as a child raises a 

 melon and has that melon stolen, he recognizes the enormity 

 of theft. This is not mere school-gardening sentiment ; 

 every grown person who has had experience in this matter 

 says exactly the same thing. Yet granting that a change of 

 heart may be accomplished through the influence of school 

 gardening, only an old fogy will expect these conversions to be 

 instantaneous. Few persons, moreover, except practical school 

 gardeners, realize how many disasters can befall a garden, 

 wholly apart from any deliberate mischief. A scrimmage for 

 a stray ball is enough to spoil a whole spring planting ; and 

 as for the moral natures of cats and dogs, these still remain 

 so unregenerate as not to hinder them from demolishing a 

 thriving little farm in a brief quarter of an hour. One child 

 voices his trials thus plaintively in his garden diary : " Every 

 seed I have in the world is at the mercy of a dog." The 

 subject of fencing is bound to perplex some gardeners. A 

 fence or no fence is the question ? This will depend largely 



