August 10, 1912 



IHE GARDENERS' MAGAZINE. 



607 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF A 

 SCHOOL GARDEN.-II. 



As a. Manual Process. 



When gardening -vvas first introduced as 

 a recognised sufcjeot in the curriculum of 

 elementary echools, it was as a manual pro- 

 cess pure and simple, and as such it re- 

 mains, but with a number of other features 

 added to it, which have suggested them- 

 selves as time has passed. Even 

 manual process school gardening has not 

 escaped criticism. Many have said, and 

 some still say, ^' What is the good of spend- 

 ing money in teaching boys gardening ? 

 They can learn that at home.'' Perhaps 

 they could, but do they? Experience 

 answers, "No," and in a general way the 

 amount of gardening that the average boy 

 learns at home is on a par with his know- 

 ledge of geography and arithmetic that he 



I think if the 



as a 



acquires from his parents 



asked 



pupils know about gardening when they 

 first enter the class, I think the answer 

 would he that, with here and there an ex- 

 ception, the lads do not even know the 

 proper way to handle the tools, and if they 

 were left to sow seeds of their own accord 

 at the outset the amount of after-thinnina: 

 required would be enormous. 



The fact of the matter is that gardening 

 at home and gardening at school are two 

 entirely different and opposite things. 

 Take, as an illustration, the son of an or- 

 dinary labourer who has a large garden 

 or allotment to look after. Of course, he 

 makes use of his hoy, 'but how much real 

 gardening does the latter do ? For the most 

 part, he is a drudge, a picker of stones and 

 puller of weeds, and his mind, instead of 

 being fixed on his work, is centred on a 

 hit of green somewhere not far off where 

 more fortunate lads of his age are enjoying 

 a game of cricket. In fact, I am not sure 

 whether this gardering at home is not 

 rather qualified to give a distaste for the 

 work, and I have heard more than one 

 nian say that he had such a surfeiting of 

 it as a lad at home that he never wanted 

 to do any gardening afterwards. Again, 

 what can the average parent teach about 

 gardening, even if he had time in his few 

 spare hours to impart a portion of his own 

 store of knowledge to his son ? 



Gardening at school, however, is another 

 matter altogether. Nine out of every ten 

 hoys like it, there is a sense of personal 

 possession about the lad's plot; it is his 

 own, he is a gardener, a proprietor, he does 

 the sowing and the planting, and when the 

 crops grow and mature he feels that he 

 has accomplished something. Not only this, 

 but the school plot instils into the nature 

 ■of many a boy a taste for gardening that 

 grows. Not lone; ago a head gardener who 

 IS tully qualified to teach his boy gardening, 

 informed me that his lad displayed no in- 

 terest in it at all until he was given a plot 

 at school, but after that a new interest was 

 awakened, the boy wanted a piece of 

 ground to work himself ; he made a raid 

 on his father's seed supi^ly, and spent his 

 evenings cultivating the patch that was 

 given to him. It is not too much to say 

 that the lad would not have done so if he 

 had never been put in the garden class at 

 'Sc'hool, and thus the influence of the teacher 

 was greater than that of the parent, and 



it happens so in many things besides gar- 

 dening:. 



The school garden gives an opportunity 

 to what is generally called the dull hoy, 

 hut whom it would often ibe more fitting 



"t^o describe tho Ind who is not endowed 



with great mental power, hut with capa- 

 city for working with his hands. Previous 

 to the introduction of manual processes in 

 the school curriculum, this boy never had 

 a chance; his place was at the bottom of 

 the class, and no matter how he tried, he 

 could make no headway. In the school 

 garden^ however, the boy who nature in- 

 tended to work with his hands rather than 

 his brain finds his vocation. He can hold 

 his own here, because he can work, and very 

 often a lad of this type is receiving an in- 

 finitely better education on the garden plot 

 than he could ever do inside the school, 

 because he is getting training and exercise 

 in the use of iiis hrnds. 



In a certain village where no better pro- 

 vision could be made, an intelligent cot- 

 tage gardener of the labouring class was 

 engaged to teach the boys in the school 

 garden. Some exception was taken to him 

 because he was not qualified to give any 

 theoretical instruction, but I cannot help 

 thinking that this was wrong. It was not 

 claimed for him that he was the type that 

 you would select as a teacher of school gar- 

 dening, hut in the particular instance he 

 was the best material available, and what 

 he could do was to make the boys skilful 

 workmen. / Ho knew how to dig, how to 

 sow, plant, and perform other operations 

 in a 'Workmanlike maimer, and if he could 

 teach the boys to do these things as well 

 as he could do them himself, then they 

 would be all the hotter for the instruction 

 they received under him. What is wanted 

 in these days is not only men who know 

 something, but men who can do something, 

 and a great failing about education in the 

 past was that, while it imparted so much 

 knowledge, it failed to make the boy useful 

 in the sense of being handy as a workman. 



Not is it only on the school plot that 

 gardening is useful as a manual process, 

 for the gardener, like the sailor, is pro- 

 verbially a handy man ; he wants a lot of 

 things that he cannot buy, so he makes 

 them. Very often a school garden is as- 

 sociated with the workshop, and ^he two 

 go very well together. Grardeuers '»re in 

 the habit of making a good many thmgs 

 out of material that is available, and, 

 though the article, when complete, may 

 have its faults in point of roughness ami 

 finish, it serves his purpose, which, after 

 all, is the great thing. Previous to the 

 introduction of school gardening, who ever 

 saw a hand-barrow made in a school out 

 of an empty sugar-box? Yet these are the 

 things that are being turned out continu- 

 ally now, and not long ago I saw a boy at 

 a school making, for his own use, a small 

 frame with the aid of his pocket-knife, a 

 hammer, and a few nails. 



Just another illustration, and this was a 

 case of a man who employed three h< ys in 

 his garden, and when asked which was the 

 best, he pointed to one, and said that he 

 could do things without the need of being 

 shown how. This was a boy who in the last 

 two years of his school career had been in 

 the gardening class. If, then, gardening 

 at school, with the allied woodwork, etc., 

 were nothing more than a manual process, 

 tne using of tools, the exercise of muscle, 

 and the doing of work, it would justify its 

 place in the school curriculum, because we 

 do not want boys to be turned out of ele- 

 mentary schools with their hands untrained 

 entirely in manual labour. By nature boys 

 like to use their hands, and one object of 

 school gardening is to teach them that it is 

 not infra dig. to do so. It upholds, in fact, 

 at an early and impressionable age, the 

 dignity of labour, it appeals to the hoy's 

 sense of order, to his inventiveness, and his 

 inquisitiveness, and because the garden is 

 at school, it possesses a fascination that it 

 oould never have at home. H. 



THE ENGLISH HEDGE^ROWS. 



The tangled hedge-rows, where the cows push 

 out 



Impatient horns, and tolerant, churning 

 mouths, 



Twixt dripping ash boughs; hedges all alive 

 W^itli birds and gnats, and large white butter- 

 flies." 



In olden times there were no hedges or 

 fences ; the country was all waste. Accord- 

 ing to tradition, our hedges owe their ori- 

 gin to the Jilack Death or plague, a pesti- 

 lence which so decimated the rural dis- 

 tricts of England that much of the arable 

 land passed out of cultivation, and was 

 turned into pasture. Then, we are told, 

 hedges were planted to prevent the cattle 

 from straying. 



In the year 1514 the citizens of London 

 felt grieved because the fields about Isling- 

 ton, rihoreditch, and other pilaces near to 

 the City were enclosed, fenced, and hedged, 

 which stopped their practice with the bow 

 and arrow and other pastimes. Ko they 

 assembled themselves one fine morning, 

 and went with spades and shovels into these 

 fields, and within a short space of time all 

 the hedges were cut <l()wn. the ditches 

 fi lied , and the fields \\ ere never a f ter 

 hedged. 



But far away from London hedges were 

 a necessity, not only to keep cattle within 

 bounds, but to mark the different owner- 

 ships of the several properties. Thus it 

 came about that we got our heautif ul road- 

 side hedges. Wordsworth writes: 



Once again I see 

 ThosG" hedgerows, hardly liedgerows — little 

 lines 



Of sportive wood run wild." 



The original senses of hedges is enclo- 

 sures, and near Cambridge is a collection 

 of farm buildings, which are called the 

 King's Hedges. A hedge is a barrier or 

 fence formed by bushes or small trees grow- 

 ing close together, such as thorn bushes 

 or beech, generally woven together when 

 newly planted, with twigs or wattling. 



A favourite in the hedge-row is the holly. 

 Then we have the black and white thorn, 

 which, when properly attended to in respect 

 of annual pruning, is the most effectual 

 fence for domestic animals, and also an 

 excellent shelter. In Kent, Surrey, and 

 Sussex, we find quickset, holly, yew, and 

 privet all mixed with hazel, ash, dog-rose, 



and other varieties, intermingled with the 

 sweet honeysuckle. 



Some of our roads are bordered by high 

 hedge-rows studded with stately trees, the 

 character being given rather by age and 

 wide-spreading branches than by laere 

 loftiness ; the banks somewhat lofty, and 

 their clothing various, now covered with 

 long, lank grass, now short and smooth, 

 now bare and worn into little furrows, with 

 the knotted roots of ancient trees obtrud- 

 ing through the road ; these scenes in sum- 

 mer are very beautiful to the eye, but 

 these hedges are not safe hedges. They 

 are used by vagabonds as places of Lhelter 

 or resort, for they are far away from the 

 police. In olden days these rogues were 

 called ''Hedge Birds 



Much is to he learnt from our hedges. Do 

 you want to go out for pleasure? * Poor 

 Robin, in 1733, wrote: 



" Observe which way the hedgehog builds her 

 nest ; 



For if 'tis true that common people say 

 The wind will blow the quite contrary way 



There are many curious hedge plants to 

 be found by a careful searcher. One, the 

 Bee Orchis, on which Nature has formed a 

 bee feeding on the breast of the flower, so 

 nerfetct that it is imin 



