164 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



not refer to manual skill alone, or even to technical garden 

 lore, but to skill in some other matters not so self-evident. 

 To illustrate : he must master the art of figures, of measure- 

 ments, and of calculation. In trying quickly to get the A B C 

 of a business situation the bearing of mathematics upon his 

 present task all at once dawns upon him. What does it 

 signify if up to this time arithmetic has been the most cor- 

 dially hated subject in the curriculum ? The exercises that 

 teach him exactness must be mastered. Upon this ground, 

 if on no other, mathematics justifies itself even in the mind 

 of the beginner. Certain parts of the arithmetic get learned 

 from the very pressure of pure interest. 



Not all the subjects included in the school arithmetic would 

 probably be needed in the gardening of a single grade during 

 the season ; square root, for instance, would hardly be re- 

 quired. Look through the textbook and check off one by 

 one the various subjects that have been dealt with as the 

 result of the demand of a garden ; it is a surprise to find how 

 many are included. A committee of teachers, who lately met 

 to compare their experiences, unanimously agreed upon two 

 points : that a curiously large proportion of the arithmetic 

 usually assigned to a child's school course is positively re- 

 quired in garden work, and, on the other hand, that the gar- 

 den furnishes an extraordinary number of practical problems 

 illustrating mathematical principles and rules. One teacher 

 gives her experience in these words : " The correlation of 

 arithmetic with the garden work is positively necessary. The 

 large garden has to be divided into individual gardens whose 

 areas are alike. As these may be square, oblong, or triangu- 

 lar, it takes quite a bit of arithmetic to equalize them. Then 

 the problem work used in the class can be based on the pro- 

 ductions, the outlay, and the gain. To have the problems real 

 makes the reasoning processes easier." 



