.58 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



September, 1912 



-a foot out from the wall, set trellises for 

 roses, or single posts where climbing plants 

 may grow; this breaks the monotony; 

 and children hate monotony. 



If one side is open and there is neither 

 wall nor need for chicken-wire defence, 

 then plant a hedgerow such as I have de- 

 scribed; it may be varied infinitely, of 

 varieties or of plants which are easily 

 obtained in the neighborhood. Or eke 

 have a long arbor of "carpenter- work." 

 This may be light and very simple in con- 

 struction — made by the boys themselves, 

 but it will afford a support for climbing 

 vines; it will also afford, what there ought 

 to be in a school-garden, a shady place 

 where the little gardeners can sit and rest 

 from their labors. After all, the pleasure 

 of sitting at ease and enjoying the sight 

 of your flowers is as honest and necessary 

 a garden joy as the more strenuous one of 

 working in it, and children who have the 

 one, should have the other. 



As to the arrangement: The usual school 

 garden is laid out in small square plots 

 with no attempt whatever at design. 

 Until the end of the season, when the 

 little plots are abloom, it is not pretty to 

 look on, except with the eyes of faith. 

 Now this bareness is unnecessary. The 

 little plots may be of the same size, but 

 why of the same shape? There should be 

 a well-thought out design, fitted exactly 

 to the space, the prominent points em- 

 phasized by small evergreens or dwarf 

 fruit trees, so that, even in its barest stage, 

 the school garden will have a Little character 

 and definiteness. In the earliest spring 

 with the flowering trees abloom at its edge, 

 the little bulbs blossoming at their feet, the 

 multitude of little gardens which make 

 up the design will wear an air, not of blank- 

 ness, but of expectancy. Here and there 

 a small plot will show a border of crocus 

 already in bloom, in another, a tall, com- 

 manding spike of the ancient Crown 

 Imperial holds aloft its colors as emphatic 



a sign of spring as if Madame Nature had 

 hoisted a flag. 



Each little garden may be planted after 

 the devices of the small owners, yet all 

 together make up a harmonic whole. 

 When this is the case, and every young 

 gardener feels that not only is he making 

 his own little space lovely but that in 

 doing so, he is helping to make the whole 

 garden beautiful, there is a strong incentive 

 to sincere work. It is also good training in 

 citizenship. 



There may be a summer-house designed 

 by the children; garden- tables and garden- 

 benches of juvenile manufacture (if good 

 enough) may be welcomed; bird houses 

 and bird baths may find a place in the 

 scheme. 



When gardening is more consistently 

 taught, the very definite assistance it 

 might be to other school work will be 

 utilized by the more intelligent teachers. 



Planning the garden, for instance, affords 

 a lesson in design well-suited to the child's 

 ability and in which he is thoroughly in- 

 terested. The construction of a coldframe, 

 a trellis for actual service, gives force and 

 point to the manual training. Instead of 

 making drawings of "nature objects" 

 which have no relation to anything else, 

 the child will make comparative drawings 

 of weeds and the plant infants which they 

 resemble; then not only does he learn to 

 draw, but he learns the value of accurate 

 observation. For why? If he hasn't the 

 difference exactly someone may mistake 

 his flower for a weed and pull it up. To 

 many a child arithmetic is difficult; but if 

 he needs to compute how many tiny seed- 

 lings may go in such a space in his cold- 

 frame, how many lettuce plants may stand 

 three inches apart in a row, the arithmetic 

 is taken out of the abstract which en- 

 wraps it like a circumambient cloud and 

 brought into the concrete of his own ex- 

 perience; precisely where the child under- 

 stands it. 



I look forward definitely to the day when 

 gardening shall be an integral part of the 

 school life. When, instead of being con- 

 sidered merely as a pleasant thing for a 

 child to know, it shall be taught in a clear, 

 orderly, definite manner and with con- 

 sistency. The simpler processes to the 

 younger children, the more complex to the 

 more advanced, so that, when a boy leaves 

 school, he shall, if necessary, be able at 

 least to get a living out of the soil. 



Such teaching would open up to the 

 boy and girl a wide range of out-of-door 

 professions of which, otherwise, they 

 would have but the vaguest notion — 

 forestry, horticultural experiment, farming 

 in all its forms, landscape gardening, mar- 

 ket gardening, commercial horticulture, 

 beside dozens of little sidelines, peculiarly 

 fitted to those with slight physical handi- 

 caps. 



Such teaching would do more to hold the 

 boys and girls in the country than any other 

 one thing; it would also draw country- 

 ward the city-born and city-bred; it would 

 take away from the children of factory 

 workers the unreasoning terror of the 

 country and be a powerful lever to move 

 them from the crowded conditions to a 

 little home in the suburbs and a bit of a 

 garden, where a narrow income could be 

 eked out; thus it would even have a bear- 

 ing on the vexed problem of the high cost 

 of li\ing. 



And if neither boy nor girl uses the 

 garden-knowledge to turn a penny, the 

 interest in it they will keep their life long, 

 for once a gardener always a gardener. 

 To give a permanent source of happiness, 

 a taste for the purest and sweetest of 

 pleasures that no reverse of fortune can 

 take away, is not a small gift, nor an un- 

 worthy gift, and the question of whether 

 one has the right to refuse it is a matter 

 worth the careful consideration of those who 

 have- committed to their hands the edu- 

 cation of our children. 



The Hyannis Normal School garden is laid out as one unit, giving an eflect more pleasing than the individual plot system 



