Handbook of Nature-Study 



GARDENING AND NATURE-STUDY 



^RRONEOUSLY, some people maintain that gardening is 

 nature-study; this is not so necessarily nor ordinarily. 

 Gardening may be a basis for nature-study but it is 

 rarely made so to any great extent. Even the work in 

 children's gardens is so conducted that the pupils know- 

 little or nothing of the flowers or vegetables which they 

 grow except their names, their uses to man and how to 

 cultivate them. They are taught how to prepare the soil, but the 

 reason for this from the plant's standpoint is never revealed; and if 

 the child becomes acquainted with the plants in his garden, he makes the 

 discovery by himself. All this is nothing against gardening! It is a 

 wholesome and valuable experience for a child to learn how to make a 

 garden even if he remains ignorant of the interesting facts concerning the 

 plants which he there cultivates. But if the teachers are so inclined, they 

 may find in the garden and its products, the most interesting material for 

 the best of nature lessons. Every plant the child grows is an individual 

 with its own peculiarities as well as those of its species in manner of 

 growth. Its roots, stems and leaves are of certain form and structure; 

 and often the special uses to the plant of its own kind of leaves, stems and 

 roots are obvious. Each plant has its own form of flower and even its 

 own tricks for securing pollination; and its own manner of developing 

 and scattering its seeds. Every weed of the garden has developed 

 some special method of winning and holding its place among the culti- 

 vated plants; and in no other way may the child so fully and naturally 

 come into a comprehension of that term "the survival of the fittest " 

 as by studying the ways of the fit as exemplified in the triumphant weeds 

 of his garden. 



Every earthworm working below the soil is doing something for the 

 garden. Every bee that visits the flowers there is on an errand for the 

 garden as well as for herself. Every insect feeding on leaf or root is doing 

 something to the garden. Every bird that nests near by or that ever 

 visits it, is doing something which affects the life and the growth of the 

 garden. What all of these uninvited guests are doing is one field of 

 garden nature-study. Aside from all this study of individual life in the 

 garden which even the youngest child may take part in, there are the 

 more advanced lessons on the soil. What kind of soil is it ? From what 

 sort of rock was it formed ? What renders it mellow and fit for the grow- 

 ing of plants? Moreover, what do the plants get from it? How do they 

 get it? What do they do with what they get? 



This leads to the subject of plant physiology, the elements of which 

 may be taught simply by experiments carried on by the children them- 

 selves, experiments which should demonstrate the sap currents in the 

 plant ; the use of water to carry food and in making the plant rigid ; the 

 use of sunshine in making the plant food in the leaf laboratories; the 

 nourishment provided for the seed and its germination, and many other 

 similar lessons. 



A child who makes a garden, and thus becomes intimate with the plants 

 he cultivates, and comes to understand the interrelation of the various 

 forms of life which he finds in his garden, has progressed far in the funda- 

 mental knowledge of nature's ways as well as in a practical knowledge 

 of agriculture. 



