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The Garden Magazine, March, 1922 



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TAKING THE CHILDREN OFF THE STREETS 

 New York's Avenue A Gardens with Rockefeller Institute in the background 



WHAT ARE THE AVENUE A GARDENS? 



IEW New Yorkers and fewer visitors to New York ever 

 see Avenue A. It is not a bit like Avenue 5, better 

 known as Fifth Avenue. The magnificent shops and 

 residences which line the latter are replaced on Avenue 

 A by coalyards, machine shops, ex-breweries, things of that sort, 

 and tenements, especially tenements. The side streets which 

 cross Avenue A reek with tenements. And wherever there 

 are tenements there are children— lots of children. 



Those children, such of them as survive in their surroundings, 

 are going to be American citizens. What kind of American 

 citizens they are going to be depends largely upon what they are 

 doing with themselves now. If their play-time, in New York 

 or in any other city, is spent in the streets or backyards, left to 

 their own devices and bad suggestion, it's a fair wager they won't 

 turn out very well. 



Almost all children like to have a try at gardening. Whether 

 they keep on liking to garden depends a good deal on the success 

 of their early experiments. When once they see something of 

 their own planting beginning to grow, the liking is established 

 and that child has acquired an interest in life which is far more 

 promising for its future than stoning cats, robbing fruit-stands, 

 or corner loafing. 



The gardens are located on grounds loaned by the Rockefeller 

 Institute at Sixty-fifth Street. When the Plant, Flower and 

 Fruit Guild undertook this venture the three city blocks had 

 been a dumping ground for the builders of the Institute. The 

 boys of the neighborhood were organized to clear the ground of 

 the mass of sticks and stones. A neighboring stableman gave 

 the gardens the needed fertilizer. Six hundred gardens, each 

 5 x 10 feet, were mapped out for the children. Besides these 

 there were community plots for bigger crops on shares, and plots 

 for families. A woman superintendent and a man gardener 

 attend to the organization, instruction, and supervision. The 

 children who have had a year's experience are enlisted to show 

 the beginners; both mutual help and the spirit of competition 

 do much to produce results. The applicants are more numerous 

 than the plots and there is always a long waiting-list. 



Every city in the United States might profitably establish sim- 

 ilar gardens. Examples of the gardens with the child gardeners 

 at work will be shown at the National Flower Show at the 

 Grand Central Palace, March 13th to 19th. Members of the 

 Plant, Flower and Fruit Guild will be in charge to give informa- 

 tion to those interested. 



3. 4. 5- 



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NATURALLY it takes money to carry on an institution like the Avenue A 

 gardens. Salaries of the supervisors must be paid, tools, seeds, and sets 

 provided and other disbursements met. Ten dollars takes care of the upkeep 

 of a garden and insures that a poor, city child will have wholesome occupation 

 and a new interest in life which is pretty sure to prove enduring. Donors may 

 give what names they select to the garden or gardens they endow. 

 The Garden Magazine has provided for 

 Garden Magazine Garden Nos. 1, 2, 

 Mrs. Carl Petrasch, New York City, for 



The Ann and Jerry Garden 

 Mrs. Charles F. Mayer, Katonah. N. Y. : 

 The Esther Garden 

 The Elizabeth Garden 

 Mrs. Monroe Douglas Robinson, New York City, for 



The My Mother Garden 

 Mrs. William Perkins Draper, New York City, for 



A garden not yet named 

 Mrs. Seth Low, Bedford Hills, N. Y., for 



The Mary Garden 

 Mrs. F. N. Doubleday, Oyster Bay, N. Y., for 

 The Alice in Wonderland Garden 

 The Burroughs Garden 

 Mr. F. N. Doubleday, Oyster Bay, N. Y., for 

 The Horace Garden 

 The Florence Garden 

 The Kipling Garden 

 The Mowgli Garden 

 The Kim Garden 

 The Mulvaney Garden 

 The King Arthur Garden 

 The Guinevere Garden 

 The Lancelot Garden 

 Mr. Arthur W. Page, Garden City, N. Y., for 



The William Robinson Garden 

 Mr. Nelson Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y., for 



The Frederick Law Olmsted Garden 

 The Bedford (N. Y.) Garden Club for 



Four gardens not yet named 

 The Garden Magazine hopes to print in its April issue a much longer list of 

 acknowledgments. Checks for ten dollars or multiples of that amount, may be 

 sent payable to the order of Avenue A Gardens Fund, The Garden Magazine, 

 Garden City, N. Y., and will be acknowledged in the next issue going to press 

 after receipt. Contributions will also be received by the Plant, Flower and 

 Fruit Guild, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 



