94 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [16:3— Maf., 1920 



By the first of August this garden very nearly runs itself as any 

 garden should. Our few mechanical helps such as registering and 

 handing in crop reports, and these reports are handed in on slips of 

 paper each period by the child, each slip having on it the garden 

 number of the child and signed with his name, appointing house 

 committees, committees for gathering flowers and vegetables for 

 the poor, the sick, and the new babies which are born during the 

 garden season into the families represented in our garden — all 

 these things help to make the garden run as it should run, and 

 create within its confines a feeling of responsibility and courtesy 

 which should never be lost from the garden. So much has been 

 written on this subject that it is not necessary to go further into 

 this end of our work. 



The older boys and girls reckon up the value of our crop at 

 current market prices each week. These prices are obtained by 

 children inquiring local prices in their different neighborhoods, 

 for this garden represents the entire borough of Brooklyn, price 

 lists are also cut from the paper as quoted for wholesale and retail 

 markets. In this way we strike an average price . 



I would like to add to this article on gardening that the most 

 important side of the garden has little to do with the crop, and far 

 more to do with those lessons of life which make toward good 

 citizenship rather than just toward good gardeners and good 

 farmers. One is the bi-product of the other. One of the most 

 interesting answers I ever heard to the question of "Why a child 

 should garden" was made by an eleven year old boy this last 

 summer. Dr. Jean Broadhurst of Teachers College, brought 

 her summer school class in nature study to visit the Botanic Gar- 

 den. The students of the class were told to ask the children why 

 they were in this garden. One young woman told me before 

 she left that as she walked up and down the garden she stopped 

 and asked this lad why he was in the garden. He thought a 

 moment and replied "I come for elementary instruction, because 

 I like to be here, and for my crop." I rather think the small boy 

 put his reasons in their correct order. We go to school and learn 

 our lessons of life which are necessary for the best living, first, 

 because we must acquire a certain body of knowledge, and second, 

 there is nothing in it all unless we enjoy our special work and unless 

 we enjoy life; and third, we are all in life for a definite result from 

 the work we are doing, and the work we like to do. 



