GARDENING FOR LITTLE GIRLS 



carry them away. They took home all they wanted, 

 and made up the rest into thousands of little 

 bunches which the city Plant, Flower and Fruit 

 Guild gladly called for and distributed to the New 

 York City hospitals, jails and missions. Freshly 

 cut, they would last a week, until the children's 

 next visit to their gardens. With hollyhocks, dah- 

 lias, cannas and cosmos at the back of the border, 

 and in front stocks, poppies, sweet alyssum, Japan- 

 ese pinks, nieotiana, and the loveliest blue corn- 

 flowers imaginable, they offered a choice variety. 



How the children loved the work! One poor 

 little lame boy took some of his morning glory seed 

 back to the slums and planted — where? In a box 

 on the window ledge of a dark court that never saw 

 a ray of sunshine. (The woman in the tenement 

 below objected to having it on the fire escape in 

 front and he had no other place.) And there it 

 actually bloomed, dwarfed like its little owner, fra- 

 gile beyond words, with a delicate flower no bigger 

 than a dime, but answering the call of love. 



The gardens thrived in spite of the only once-a- 

 week care. A pipe line, with a faucet, ran to the 

 center of the lot, and plenty of watering cans were 

 provided for the weekly use, but during any extra 

 hot weather a friendly neighbor would turn on her 

 hose in between times to save the crops. And a 



110 



