August, 1910 



THE GARDEN :\I A G A Z I N E 



21 



The redemption of a back yard! See the striding difEerence brought about by the use of a few plants 



I 



charge, your good-will-offering to those 

 who need. All you have to do is to 

 write to the National Plant, Flower and 

 Fruit Guild, and details of the system will 

 be sent to you. 



How are the plants used? To start new 

 gardens in old places, or to renew the 

 window-boxes furnished by the city branches 

 to the tenement dwellers. No fewer than 

 six thousand little window gardens have 

 been sent to dingy tenement homes by the 

 New York City Branch during the past six 

 years, and the touch of green in the crowded 

 districts is most refreshing to the toilers of 

 the big city. 



A back-yard garden is a rare sight in old 

 " Greenwich Village" — a part of New York 

 City where tall warehouses obscure the 

 sunshine that tries to creep in — but the 

 guild found a space last summer, a space 

 filled with the accumulated rubbish of years. 

 When its possibilities were 

 pointed out, willing hands 

 dug and spaded the 

 ground, filled in the new 

 soil provided by the Park 

 Commissioner, and by the 

 middle of July the trans- 

 formation was complete, 

 and the green back yard 

 with its gay geraniums and 

 nodding morning-glories 

 proved a grateful resting- 

 place for the people of the 

 neighborhood. Its com- 

 mercial value was less than 

 the cost of a fashionable 

 hat, but its moral value is 

 hard to estimate. From 

 the ten cents' worth of 

 morning-glory seed planted 

 in 1909, a half-pound box 

 was sent to the guild this 

 year for "the other people 

 who want a garden." Did 

 the investment pay? 



On the top of a six- 

 story tenement the guild 

 helped one woman start 

 her garden. Lard-pails, 



flower-pots, boxes from the corner grocery, 

 and abandoned kitchen utensils were all 

 pressed into service and filled with blos- 

 soming plants — some indeed raised from 

 seed eight years in succession. The 

 woman and her husband, unable to afford 

 the ordinary amusements of a large city, 

 sat night after night enjoying the beauty 

 and fragrance of this improvised roof- 

 garden, and not a disgruntled neighbor 

 complained. 



Reahzing the help of growing things for 

 the little sick children of a Day Camp, the 

 guild placed a garden of gay flowers on 

 the roof of a big hospital where the young- 

 sters are making a brave fight against the 

 "white plague." And the taking of an 

 enforced afternoon nap is made more 

 pleasant. 



Do you not want to share in the message 

 hidden deep in the petals of the country 



A city roof-garden offers recreation -witliout the expense of travel 



flowers sent in each day by the country 

 branches ? Won't you, in your place 'midst 

 green woods and fields — where perhaps 

 the apples are rotting on the ground and 

 flowers wasting in the greenhouses — make 

 use of the guild and its system to send your 

 surplus to those who have not? Won't you 

 start a country branch, with boys and girls 

 as well as grown-up members ? You will 

 find the youngsters eager to share the plenty 

 of the country with the starving waifs of the 

 near-by city. 



The guild can do much for you and your 

 children. It can foster the spirit of giving, 

 which, after all, is better than the joy of 

 receiving. The two youngsters who send, 

 once a week from their father's big estate 

 at Tuxedo Park a box of flowers gathered 

 and packed by their own childish fingers, 

 to the crippled children of a lower East Side 

 school, receive as great a benefit as the little 

 folks who enjoy the dainty 

 nosegays. Two women of 

 the small village who share 

 their tiny garden produce 

 with the poor of a neigh- 

 boring city get a real satis- 

 faction in the knowledge 

 that their "mite" helps 

 some one else. 



During the year 1909 

 the surplus of 125 gardens, 

 amounting to some 5,000 

 bunches of flowers, 600 

 bushels of fruit and vege- 

 tables, 10,000 packages of 

 seeds and bulbs, and 25,000 

 plants was distributed to 

 the less fortunate ones of 

 the big cities through the 

 medium of this association, 

 and fully two-thirds of 

 this was sent into New 

 York City itself. It is pro- 

 posed to double the figures 

 this year — with your help; 

 and practically the only 

 cost is the trouble of pack- 

 ing and sending. The 

 "free label" does the rest. 



