THE thrifty war- 

 time garden has 

 come to stay ! 

 Perhaps nothing 

 short of war would have 

 thrust us easy-going 

 Americans into thrifty 



gardening, but now that we've had the experi- 

 ence, we are in it to stay. 



Never again will the American housewife 

 cling so helplessly to the corner green-grocer — 

 not while she has her own back-yard and her two 

 hands! Never again will the commuting hus- 

 band, having tasted the joys of fresh-picked 

 vegetables, having felt the pride in corn and peas 

 of his own growing, contentedly return to factory- 

 canned produce, or placidly eat of wilted corn 

 and shrivelled peas! Not he! Nor will he 

 again see with pleasure his whole ground space 

 devoted to lawn and himself, for recreation, to 

 the use of the lawn-mower. Instead, he will be 

 setting out dwarf fruit-trees, planting strawberry 

 patches, cultivating with skill and assiduity a 

 tiny kitchen-garden plot, for in America the 

 day of the small garden has come at last. 



Never before have the virtues of thrift and 

 frugality been fashionable, but Uncle Sam has 

 made them the fashion; and although fashions 

 are passing, and those who took up gardening 

 merely because it was "the thing" will presently 

 revert to type, yet the bulk of men and women 

 who enthusiastically went a-gardening will have 

 gained a love for it, and "get the habit," — for the 

 love of a garden, once born in any one, is as 

 imperishable as the love for children or for books. 

 Never does one get over it. In the making of a 

 garden there is real creative joy and no one who 

 has experienced that in any art or handicraft 

 readily relinquishes it. 



Hitherto, in knowledge of horticulture and of 

 agriculture, the American woman has been 

 miles and miles behind her Continental and 

 English sister. Take women from whatever 

 station in life you might, and this was true. 

 Even now, we have not caught up with those 

 on the other side, but this year's impassioned 

 sprinting, will have taken the American woman 

 a long distance on the way. In organization, 

 I believe we are not behind. 



Not only has Uncle Sam made gardening 

 fashionable, but he has made it democratic to a 

 degree it never dreamed of before. Very likely 

 the drawing together because of a common peril 

 and a common enthusiasm, and the common 

 sympathy of having sons or brothers or husbands 

 "over there" has made women forget the smaller 

 differences, w r hich frequently divide club from 

 club and one group of women from another, 

 in a larger, more unselfish interest. But, be 

 that as it may, all of us have worked together 

 and cooperated to a degree unheard of before. 

 And now that we have found how well coopera- 

 tion works, we shall be loth indeed to abandon 

 the principle. I he novel spectacle which this 

 year and last year saw, of men and boys of a 

 near-by city, quitting their regular work to help 

 get in the crops, of the women of a whole county 

 turning out to save the crops — all this is likely 

 to be repeated any time the need arises. After 

 all, it is nothing but repeating on a larger scale 

 the thing that takes place in every country com- 

 munity, where one neighbor helps another thresh 

 his wheat or get in his hay. 



No one dreamed that garden clubs — usually 

 mere pleasant associations of the well-to-do — 

 could be so flexible, and that they could be so 

 generally useful. All over the country they have 

 served as clearing houses of information and as 

 bureaux of first aid to the unlearned and en- 

 thusiastic first-garden gardener. Few would 

 have thought it possible to enlist the aid of busi- 

 ness men and "Ad men," of Park Commissioners, 

 and of working gardeners and commercial gar- 

 deners, in making a "spring drive" on the vacant 



Uncle Sam's Boom to Gardening 



lots and starting the work in back-yard gardens. 

 But w T e have found how admirably and efficiently 

 such a varied committee works, and those who 

 w T ere on such committees, having seen the results 

 will be quite ready to serve again. For really 

 to put things through is worth while. 



Thanks to Uncle Sam, we have found out 

 what public officials can do when they want to. 

 Here and there one in a comparatively unimpor- 

 tant office has so utilized his opportunity for 

 serving the public, that he has made it a very 

 centre of activities, making the small office stand 

 out like Portia's "little candle" or the shining 

 of the "good deed in a naughty world." We 

 have learned that it doesn't in the least hurt the 

 sacred Park greenhouses to lend them to raising 

 tomato and cabbage and celery plants for those 

 who have no greenhouse facilities. And after 

 having done all these neighborly, possibly ultra- 

 democratic, but greatly appreciated things for 

 the public, it will be hard for a succeeding Com- 

 missioner to prove that the greenhouses under 

 his control cannot, and therefore must not, be 

 asked to do any such thing. 



So with the vacant lots. We have seen these 

 gladly lent, and in some cities w 7 here they weren't, 

 impressed into service. Therefore no longer will 

 we calmly acquiesce in the sight of unused land 

 in our cities or towns, while in the same town are 

 men and women, or little children who want and 

 need gardens and have no land to cultivate. 



The bringing of city-boys out to work on the 

 farms may well be more far-reaching in its 

 results than we realize. Some weeks of actual 

 work on a farm will give a youngster a far better 

 idea of what farm life really is than the two weeks 

 of the fresh-air fund, for the poorer youngster, 

 or the weeks at a hotel for his wealthier fellow. 

 It will make for boys taking up farming, and 

 taking it up with an intelligent idea of w T hat they 

 are about. Many a youngster who summered 

 in the country has firmly fixed in his head the 

 idea of getting his father and mother and smaller 

 brothers and sisters out there to live, perhaps 

 has his mind on the very little house ■ — instead 

 of a vague and abstract suggestion to the parents, 

 the thing becomes a tangible possibility. 



The War-gardening has given a tremendous 

 impulse and direction to school-garden work, 

 and has given to its previous rigidity and bark- 

 bound condition a jolt from which we fervently 

 hope it may never recover. Never before have 

 school gardens had so much lay help in the way 

 of men and women from the outside who w T ere 

 practical gardeners. The exclusive and excluding 

 attitude of many of the school authorities had 

 to be abandoned before the sudden necessity — 

 such positions as that of the Philadelphia author- 

 ities, that no one might teach gardening unless he 

 or she were a normal graduate. The outsider 

 might be a capable gardener, the normal graduate 

 might have but the slenderest bit of book knowl- 

 edge — it mattered not, the latter was given the 

 preference, and was examined as to her fitness 

 by those who themselves knew little of gardening, 

 but much of school routine. The idea seemed 

 to be to force on the school gardens the lock- 

 step uniformity of the schools. So that we had 

 the tiny plots, planned in arrangements and 

 contents to achieve the uniformity of the garb 

 of asylum orphans. But with the veritable 

 freshet of garden-enthusiasm on the part of the 

 children and their aiders and abettors, these 

 stiff banks of prejudice had to give away. For 

 what was called for and fairly clamored for was 

 results — the children grew real crops, and such 

 crops as were suited to the locality — crops which 

 should aid the family exchequer in meeting the 



170 



extreme cost of livings 

 moreover they were to 

 help in winning the war. 

 And these large motives 

 served far better than 

 the school idea of garden- 

 ing for the sake of getting 

 in touch with Nature — and what mother's son 

 ever went a-gardening of his own volition for that 

 reason ? He grew Roses because he wanted Roses, 

 or corn or beans because he was sure he'd like 

 them. The other object, the getting in touch with 

 Nature, is a blessed result of any gardening ven- 

 ture, but it's an indirect result, and can no more 

 be gained by direct assault than the Kingdom of 

 Heaven may be taken by violence. And this 

 idee fixe of the Boards of Education, made it fairly 

 certain that the luckless children should never 

 be taught gardening by any one who loved it. 

 For the born gardener rarely gravitates naturally 

 to the Normal School. But Uncle Sam's urgency 

 and necessity, and the resulting avalanche of en- 

 thusiasm and veritable army of young gardeners 

 made the thing more than the school authorities 

 could manage and women's committees, local 

 garden-clubs, took up the work, whoever could 

 help was pressed into the service, and every- 

 where the children's gardening was a tremendous 

 success. The crops were of definite money value, 

 many markets were organized where the youth- 

 ful gardeners might sell their produce. 



Let us hope they never again will drop from 

 their last year's practicalness and efficiency. 

 One would like to see the whole enterprise of 

 school gardens and school gardening under the 

 supervision and management of the Department 

 of Agriculture cooperating with the local Grange 

 or farmer's association. There is no reason why 

 the school authorities should be expert in garden- 

 ing, or why we should expect them to be. Any- 

 way it is a charming point of contact with the 

 young folk for the towns-people, and for the 

 Federal experts— why not have it? the making 

 of gardens is a charming point of contact with 

 the young folk — so why not have it? Certainly 

 it is of value to the agricultural experts and also 

 to their fellow townsfolk, to have personal ac- 

 quaintance with the boys and girls of real 

 gardening ability while to the children, such 

 acquaintance will be of real help in their 

 future business of making their wajr in the 

 world. 



Another interesting effect of Uncle Sam's 

 adventure in gardening, is that our worship at 

 the shrine of the great estate has passed and in 

 its place is a hearty recognition of the worth 

 of the small garden, of its value in the great 

 business of feeding the nation, and of its benefit 

 to the individual. The small garden has come 

 to stay. The compact, admirably kept little 

 garden, the matter-of-course adjunct to city or 

 suburban house, the type of garden w T hich was 

 always present in the earlier days wherever was 

 the chance for it. 



Now that the pressing necessity of food pro- 

 duction has passed a little, the gardens will be 

 less exclusively utilitarian, there will everywhere 

 be flowers a-plenty but the garden's essential 

 character as first aid to the housewife's larder 

 will not be lost, it has been found altogether too 

 convenient. Our women will be likely to go in 

 for fancy gardening, it is not impossible in the 

 suburbs that skill in the management of cold- 

 frame and hot-bed, success with strawberries 

 and asparagus may take the place of rivalry at 

 bridge and we may find housewives as proud of 

 their gooseberries as was ever the Madam Vicar 

 of Wakefield. Even the complexion of our 

 suburbs may change, for who cares to expend 

 time and labor on the bringing to perfection of 

 peas or strawberries only to have a stray dog 

 or cat work on these a work of Germanic devas- 

 tation ? Therefore we are likely, with the Return 

 of the Garden, to witness also the Return of the 

 Fence as a military necessity, and a return to 

 the old-time garden enclosed. 



Frances Duncan. 



