THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



Vol. 16 March, 1920 No. 3 



Efficiency Aids to Garden Work 



Ellen Eddy Shaw 



Curator Elementary Instruction, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens 



The smooth running of a garden for boys and girls depends at 

 least fifty percent, upon what one might call "efficiency aids." 

 I use this term merely because it is a popular word of the moment, 

 otherwise one might change the title of this article to ' ' Helps in 

 Children's Garden Work" or "Aids in Gardening." 



Before any child enters the garden, whether it be a school garden, 

 home garden, or community garden, he should have had certain 

 lessons which familiarize him with the materials he is to use and 

 the method employed in the use of such materials. For example, 

 and I shall use my examples from my work with children at the 

 Brooklyn Botanic Garden, six weeks before the garden is actually 

 planted, the boys and girls come once a week to receive definite 

 lessons in gardening. This is the first step toward preparing them 

 for the great event when the garden really opens. Visit us on a 

 Saturday morning, or after school in the middle of February, and 

 you will see 20 or 30 boys and girls seated in one of the classrooms 

 in the form of a kindergarten circle. The attention of this class is 

 riveted upon the floor, for upon the floor is drawn out in chalk a 

 rectangle 8'xio', a space the size of the beginner's garden plot. 

 A lesson is being given on measuring and marking with chalk each 

 drill, and laying down the seeds in exactly the way they are to be 

 sprinkled or spaced in the garden plot. One gets no feeling of 

 depth in this sort of planting, but each boy and each girl knows 

 exactly how that plot is to be marked off, the number of inches 

 between rows, and how his seeds will look when lying properly 

 in the soil bed later on. Notes are taken, and later at home each 

 child draws his plan, plotting it out to scale. 



Two hundred and twenty boys and girls gathered in our audi- 

 torium last April for the first morning's work. Two hundred 



89 



