Bits of Interesting School Garden History 



More than half a century ago, Dr. Erasmus Schwab, a noted 

 Austrian educator, said of the school gardens of his country "that 

 to my mind they are not yet a recognized inheritance of the 

 eighteenth century." A little research shows us that they are a 

 seventeenth century inheritance to the schools of Philadelphia. 

 In 1 69 1, George Fox, the old Quaker willed a tract of land near 

 Philadelphia "for a playground for the children to play on and for 

 a garden for the children to plant physical [medicinal] plants for 

 lads and lassies to know simples and how to make oils and oint- 

 ments." He thus gives the early idea of plant study for benefit 

 of human ailments that has bequeathed us such names as liverwort, 

 lungwort, toothwort, spleenwort, pleurisy root, mandrake, mother- 

 wort. 



The correspondence of John Lathrop Motley, the author of the 

 Rise of the Dutch Republic, has been collected in volumes of 

 goodly size. The first eight letters were written to his mother 

 when he was a boy of ten and eleven years of age from the Round 

 Hill School, Northampton, Mass. On May 29, 1825, he writes: 

 " I do not know when I have enjoyed myself so much as I did yester- 

 day (Saturday) . In the morning the gardens were distributed and 

 I worked in it an hour before school and in the afternoon we worked 

 a good while in them. ' ' May 31, 1825 (to the same) ' ' Our gardens 

 are excellent being eighty feet long and twenty feet broad. Three 

 other boys and myself own one together. We have several beds 

 and have planted a good many things, such as corn, radishes, 

 water and musk melons, etc. I have been working in my garden 

 this morning and very hot work it is. . . . Mr. Bancroft 

 [George H. Bancroft was the headmaster] said that the boys who 

 pleased might work in their gardens and the rest might go in 

 swimming ; and I assure you there was not one who did the former." 

 May 13, 1827 [to his father] "We had our gardens given us a week 

 ago. I have got some radishes growing." 



The garden was probably not a part of the school curriculum a 

 hundred years ago for wherever mentioned in his letters, Saturday 

 seems to be the garden day. It was probably considered recrea- 

 tional for he incidentally gives his daily school program; French 

 in the morning from half past five to seven ; Spanish from nine to 

 ten thirty ; Greek until twelve and Cicero all the afternoon which 

 was recited to a German teacher. 



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