202. Before cleaning up. The first lot secured by the YonKers garden school. 

 This is typical of the poorer parts of the large, densely packed suburban towns 

 around New York. Bad conditions for training good citizens 



203. After cleaning up. The same lot after it had been voluntarily cultivated 

 by the boys. The garden school has now outgrown this place, but thirty-six 

 girls still cultivate the original lot. The school is supported privately 



A New Kind Of Garden School— By Mary Leland Butler 



Jersey 



NOT A SCHOOL GARDEN OR A VACATION SCHOOL— A PRACTICAL SCHEME TO KEEP IDLE BOYS OFF THE 

 STREETS, SHOW THEM HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE FAMILY SUPPORT, AND GIVE THEM FIRST LESSONS 

 IN AN INTERESTING CRAFT — AN ENTERPRISE QUITE INDEPENDENT OF THE PUBLIC - SCHOOL SYSTEM 



Photographs by Edward Mahoney 



THE garden school at Yonkers, though not 

 the first of the kind, has been so suc- 

 cessful and has become so well known in the 

 East that a brief account of its origin and 

 work will be of interest, both to those who 

 think of starting similar schools in their own 

 neighborhood and to those who are glad to 

 see boys kept off the streets, and possibly 

 started on the road which will bring them 

 "back to the farm." 



It must be understood . at once that this 

 Yonkers school is not a school garden. It 

 has no connection with any school, and does 

 not come within the limits of any board of 

 education's activities. It is a garden where 

 practical gardening is taught to the children 

 of the public and parochial schools, who 

 would otherwise be only too apt to spend the 

 vacation idly, if not worse than idly. As it is 

 not connected with the public educational 

 system, it is quite different from the ordinary 

 vacation schools. Those open for work only 

 when the school session ends, late in June. 

 The Yonkers garden school follows the more 

 logical and appealing method of beginning its 

 work when Nature does, in the early spring. 

 This year it was opened on April 15th, and 

 it will remain open until the last of the grow- 

 ing crops shall be harvested by the young 

 gardeners, about the beginning of October. 

 By making such an early beginning, there is 

 time to raise more than one crop on each 

 lad's plot. The crop belongs to the boy who 

 cultivates it, and is his to do with as he will. 

 This plan of opening early and closing late 

 has solved the problem of maintaining inter- 

 est in the work. In the third year of its ex- 

 istence the applications for admittance to the 

 school were greatly in excess of those of any 

 former year. 



The school was begun three years ago on 



a small scale. Two ordinary city lots were 

 obtained — veritable rubbish heaps, the re- 

 ceptacle of the odds and ends of the neigh- 

 boring tenements. These were cleared and 

 fitted for the use of the school, and garden 

 plots laid out whereon thirty-six boys worked 

 happily all the season. So much did they 

 enjoy the work that thirty of them — all who 

 were so situated as to be able — applied for 

 admittance the second year. The school was 

 then moved to its present larger quarters, and 



204. Measuring the first pick 



the original lots given up to a class of thirty- 

 six girls, for whom and their successors it is 

 still maintained. The girls, it may be said, 

 raise flowers chiefly. The boys, though they 

 may grow flowers if they wish, prefer to raise 

 vegetables. A large majority of them devote 

 a part, at least, of their gardens to growing 

 cabbages. 



As it exists to-day, the garden school oc- 

 cupies a lot with an area of one and three- 

 quarters acres. This is divided into 240 in- 

 dividual gardens, almost all of them 10x19 

 132 



feet, a few smaller lots being kept for little 

 fellows who cannot care for full-sized gar- 

 dens. The plots, marked off by main paths 

 three feet wide and cross paths one foot wide, 

 are thus large enough to allow crops of some 

 size to be raised. This fact also stimulates 

 the boys to constant work, for on them they 

 can and do raise enough to help very de- 

 cidedly in providing the family meals for the 

 summer. 



THE EXPLANATION OF ITS SUCCESS 



In the work of turning what had been 

 a barren pasture into a garden the heavy 

 part was done by outside labor, but the 

 boys, as in the first year on the much 

 smaller lot, were called upon to do the final 

 raking, leveling and removal of stones. The 

 garden is therefore largely of their own cre- 

 ation, and this fact again serves to make 

 them interested in its continuance. Another 

 element in fostering this feeling of proprietor- 

 ship is the fact that each boy pays dues of 

 two cents a week. The expenses, of course, 

 are much greater than the $4.80 a week 

 brought in by dues from 240 boys, and are 

 met by private subscription ; but the boys feel 

 that they have an actual personal and finan- 

 cial interest in the gardens, and give much 

 more care to them than they would if the 

 plots cost them nothing — much more than the 

 average well-to-do child gives to the garden 

 prepared by a professional gardener for him 

 to play in with tools supplied by his parents. 



The result of these well-planned schemes 

 for creating and maintaining interest in the 

 work is shown by an average daily atten- 

 dance of eighty during the entire season. 

 Only sixty of the 240 boys who started work 

 in the spring of 1904 dropped out, and 

 almost all who did because they had secured 



