Miscellaneous. 



156 



[Feb. 1908. 



the art underlying any one of these 

 traders as to awaken an all round 

 intelligence in the children, and a love 

 of the beautiful, the true, and the good, 

 and at the same time provide a means 

 for healthy bodily exercise. 



Gardening as an art per se should have 

 no place in any general scheme of educa- 

 tion, and any attempt to force one for it 

 must sooner or later lead to disappoint- 

 ment, and probably even to the giving 

 up of the work. The sooner we realise 

 this fact the sooner shall we get school- 

 gardening put on its only workable 

 basis in the school-life of our children, 

 that is to say, taken as a means to a 

 given end, that end being the all-round 

 development of the child. Herein lies 

 the solution of the question of gardening 

 with school children. 



There is no more delightful or healthy 

 work for children, or even grown up 

 persons, than gardening. The digging 

 and preparing of the soil, the sowing of 

 seeds therein, the daily tending and 

 watching of living and growing things, 

 the observation of the natural pheno- 

 mena which affect the life of the garden, 

 all have a strong fascination for children 

 of almost the tenderest age. By foster- 

 ing this love and care of and for the 

 things of Nature, we are not only creat- 

 ing in the growing boy or girl a love for 

 a healthy occupation which will safe- 

 guard them against the ennui which so 

 easily besets us, aud cause other evils, 

 but also doing much to secure them 

 happy memories in later life. 



Experience proves ever more and more 

 strongly that Nature teaching, or garden- 

 ing, should be the centre point of all the 

 other (secular) work of any school 

 children up to, at least, nine years of 

 age ; and it should certainly have a 

 large place in the work of schools for 

 scholars of more advanced age. What an 

 admirable means it offers for the teaching 

 of most of the sciences to the growing 

 boys and girls ! In keeping, for instance, 

 a record of the sun's annual " journey " 

 in the heavens, the science of mathe- 

 matics could be well applied with the 

 senior scholars. They could be helped 

 to find out the angle at which the sun's 

 rays touch the earth at given seasons 

 and given latitudes ; the ratio of the 

 shortening and lengthening of shadows 

 with the days and seasons, and many 

 other interesting facts. In this way a 

 living interest is given to what might 

 otherwise be a dull science. How much 

 more interesting would the cookery 

 lessons be if the girls grew all the vege- 

 tables they needed in little gardens of 

 their own in the school play ground? 

 How valuable the power thereby 

 obtained of being able to go to market 



and discriminate between fresh and 

 stale vegetables ! 



The way in which school-gardening 

 can be made an integral part of the lite 

 of a school has been fully worked out in 

 my book " School Gardening for Little 

 Children." * Here I will, therefore, con- 

 fine my attention to some difficulties 

 which many teachers seem to experience 

 in taking up school-gardening for the 

 first time. And in dealing with these I 

 may. perhaps, be pardoned for referring 

 to what has been done in my own school. 



Our garden consists of a strip of 

 ground 80 feet by 8 feet, divided into two 

 portions, one portion being reserved for 

 a kitchen garden, the other for a flower 

 garden. These two portions are each 

 sub-divided by transverse paths into 

 eighteen little beds, so that the children 

 can work quite easily upon all the beds. 

 It is impossible for little children, at 

 least, to reach over and garden from one 

 end of a big bed. 



The garden belongs to the whole 

 school. Each class has so many (six) 

 beds on which certain children work for 

 a year, and so follow the life story of 

 some of the plants and creatures of the 

 garden from beginning to end. Two 

 children (a girl and a boy) work on a 

 bed. They may have help from their 

 comrades at any specially busy time, 

 such as when the garden needs a good 

 weeding after a long holiday. The 

 children who do not own a bed in the 

 garden any given year have plenty of 

 indoor and window gardening. 



Annuals are chiefly selected for grow- 

 ing, and all of these, as well as any 

 animal inhabitants, and the various 

 natural phenomena which affect the life 

 of the garden, become, in turn, and in 

 due season, objects of specific study 

 with the children in school. As far as 

 possible, plants and creatures of the 

 same kind are also then kept in school, 

 and specially tended and watched by the 

 children who have no outdoor garden 

 that year. 



Whilst it would be impossible with 

 our method to study every plant as it 

 comes up in the garden, the seeds, bulbs, 

 etc., are always selected with regard to 

 the subjects we propose to studv speci- 

 fically with all the children in ensuing 

 seasons. Generally the plants are grown 

 the year previous to the one in which 

 they are grown to receive specific 

 attention. This plan affords an excellent 

 opportunity for the staff to get an inti- 

 mate first-hand knowledge of such plants 

 beforehaud ; and also for the children 

 then to get a general impression of them. 

 The Spanish Iris and the Flax are among 



* Published by Messrs. Swan it onnenschein. 



