November 9, 1912. 



THE 



GARDENERS' MAGAZINE. 



859 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF A 

 SCHOOL GARDEN— IV. 



As a Means of Education. 



Not long ago a body of school managers 

 of the average rural type, consisting of the 

 vicar of the parish^ several local farmers 



ertheless 



(it is strange, by the way, but 

 true, that agriculturists quite overw'helm 

 horticulturists in point of numbers as school 

 managers), the village grocer, and jso on, 

 were discussing the desirability of estab- 

 lishing a gardening class at the village 

 school. It may be said in passing that the 

 vicar was the only educated man amongst 

 the managers, and perhaps, in fact^ the 

 only one who really believed in education, 

 and it was at his instigation, prompted by 

 the schoolmaster, that the proposal was 

 brought forw'ard. The farmers could not 

 quite see what good it was to go to the ex- 

 pense of buying tools and seeds, and rent- 

 ing ground for the purpose of letting the 

 boys grow a few potatoes, onions, and other 

 things, and if work was the idea they 

 wx)uld rather favour the idea of letting the 

 boys leave school at twelve years old in- 

 stead of keeping them a year longer. Be- 

 sides," urged the farmers, and this was 

 a great point with them, '^the lads can 

 learn gardening at home." 



I have already pointed out in a former 

 article what the learning of gardening at 

 home amounts to in the majority of cases, 

 and I mention this instance now just to 

 ilhistrate how limited is the vision of a 

 great many rural school managers as re- 

 ^rards the possibilities of a school garden. 

 To them it means nothing more than plant- 

 ing a few potatoes and sowing sundry seeds 

 on very much the same haphazard lines as 

 these operations are often performed in 

 village allotments, but as for school gar- 

 dening hailing any educational value, well, 

 they have no conception of it. I repeat 

 what I have said l3efore, that if school 

 gardening wa^^ nothing more than a manual 

 process, qualified to make boys handy in 

 the use of tools, and teaching them how to 

 work, it would be worth its place in the 

 school curriculum, but in the hands of a 

 capable teacher it goes much further than 

 this, and its bearing on general education 

 niav be very marked. 



Even the attitude of a good manv people 

 as regards gardening as a manual process 

 IS difficult to understand, for when, after 

 grymbling ahout the same type of education 

 heing applied to the countrv as the town 

 school, and claiminjr that it is all book 

 work 



and 



claiming that it is 



nothing; practical, eminently 



practical subjects like gardening and allied 



woodwork are introduced, they tnrn round 



and say that the time-table is overcrowdefl, 



and these thinirs 

 have 



—the very subiects thev 

 been clamotirinsr for — are taufrht at 



"t^e expense of something else. Dear, 

 ^'ear! What are education authorities to 



^0 to snit everybody 



-Referrinfr, however, to the no.«;siibilities 

 a school garden as a mean^ of education, 

 the verv-mnch-disni^sed. and T am afraid. 

 ^Iso, the very-much-nii sunder stood word 

 ^I'relation comes in. And what does the 

 ^ord mean? 8imply making nse of the 

 piaterial offered by the garden for teach- 

 ing other subiects m the school, and those 

 teachers who have gone the furthest in this 

 direction realise how much further it is 

 l^ssible to 2:0, their onlv trouble heinfr that 

 "f^^ys leave school too soon for them. 



The teacher who fhorontrhlv grasps the 

 trxie snirit of correlation heeins at the 

 <'ommencenient of the cardenino; vear hv 

 ^'trawing no a scheme and askinir himself, 



^ to speak, how can T use 

 T^achin 



developing, along with the above, powers 

 of observation and habits of tidiness and 



good 



One may go one way to work, 



another may take a different course, and 

 no dogmatic lines should be laid down, but 

 w^ith his scheme at the teacher's elbow as 

 his guide, the school garden may be the 

 hest in the parish in point of cultivation, 

 and (be made such an add to education that 

 you can see evidence of it all over the 

 school. Neither in point of education nee<l 

 the garden be confined to the boys 

 who work the plots, and when you see 

 a class of tiny infants learning to count 

 by means of the number of plants in a row 

 on a garden plot, you may depend that this 

 is far more real to them than sitting on 

 a form in a class-reom using their fingers 

 or a string of heads for the purpose. 



What would some of us have given in 

 our own school days, if, instead of writing 

 'compositions on ^^]sop's fables initil we grew 

 weary of the very name of the book, or 



d 



I'^wing 



the garden in 

 say. comnosition, nature stud v. 

 mensuration arithmetic, and 



painfully set down sentence after sentence 

 in dictation lessons, we had had a garden 

 to write about, the progress of crops to 

 record , and that ga rden , m i nd you , on r 

 very own. I have seen, too, how this 

 writing habit, when it is about something 

 that is living and real, grows, for I have 

 o^bserved boys at the beginning chewing 

 their pens and asking the teacher what 

 they shall put, but later they have not 

 been able to say half what they want in 

 the time set aside for this task. 



Don't you remember those freehand 

 drawing cards we had P How we used if) 

 rub out and measure and measure and rub 

 out until the leaves of the drawing-book 

 were riddled with holes, and the copies 

 looked as if they had been brought into 

 close contact with a blacklead brush. We 

 could not have drawn anything from Na- 



V CD 



ture to save our lives, but now in drawing 

 lessons the boy goes to his garden, takes 

 a leaf, a seedling, a root, a flower, or a 

 plant, puts it in front of him, and draws 

 the object as Nature made it, either with 

 pencil, pen or directly in colour with a 

 brush. There were those mensuration 

 lessons, too, those plans on the board for 

 scale drawing, that belonged only to the 

 board, as they did not teach us how to 

 measure a piece of land out of doors, and 

 make a plan of it. The hoy now puts 

 reality into his scale drawing, for he mea- 

 sures the school garden, makes his plan of 

 it to scale, and does the same thins; in 

 respect of the cropping arrangement of his 



plot. 



There was the old arithmetic, too, the 

 dealing with impossible figures, and the 

 working out of prohlems relating to things 

 we had never seen or hardly heard of. In 

 many cases now the garden provides ma- 

 terial for arithmetic, the problems dealing 

 in the seasons for different operations with 

 measurements, digging, and cultivating, 

 seed sowing, thinning, planting:, quantities 

 per perch and acre, values, and so cn. ard 

 the figures are not imaginary, hut real, for 

 it is customary to keep accurate records of 

 weight aud quantities of the produce ob- 

 tained from the garden. 



Even geography is associated with the 

 garden, the history of diiferent crops being 

 studied, their native countries being dis- 

 covere<l, and their w^anderin^s trace<l in 

 such a way that the geographical features 

 of this and other lands are impressed on 

 the mind of the boy from the fact that the 

 plants and crops grown in the school garden 

 were first obtained from this, that, or the 

 other place. As a case in point, take the 

 potato! How closely it is associated with 

 the geography of this and otberlands, while 

 it also has a connection with the history of 

 different peoples and different times. ^ To 

 know ^11 ahout the origin J^nd wand^^rings 



of our most important vegetable cc 



iodity is a fascinating story to put before 

 a school boy if it is done in an interesting 

 manner, and it will be a wonder if at the 

 end of it, the potato does not appeal to 

 him in a different light than it ever did 

 before. I pointed out in a recent article 

 what a field for Nature study the school 

 garden may be with its soil, its plants, its 

 insects, its weeds, and the rest, so I need 

 add nothing under this heading, but, writ- 

 ing as one who modestly claims to know 

 something about school gardens, though I 

 never had a school plot of my own, I con- 

 tend that this additi<m to the school curri- 

 culum, quite apart' from its practical and 

 strictly utility value, has added a distinct 

 means of education which never existed 



before. 



ROSE NOTES. 



The splendid and steady manner in 

 which our roses are ripening promises to 

 carry them happily through any but an 

 exceptionally severe winter. That roses 

 are by no means confined to the summer 

 months was again most unmistakably de- 

 monstrated at the autumn show of the 

 National Rose Society, which was about 

 the finest of a series of good autumnal 

 exhibitions. At that date, and a little 

 before, a large number of our most useful 

 roses were in as full growth and flo\N or as 

 at any time during the season, but the 

 second week of October quite finished them 

 here in Mid-Sussex. 



From present appearances there is a 

 good prospect of early transplanting, which 

 almost all agree to be the best, providing 

 soil, weather, and the efficient ripening of 

 wood are suitable. The great need for 

 making up fresh beds in an efiicient manner 

 cannot be too strongly recommended, for 

 the permanent qualities of any beds and 

 borders greatly depends upon the condition 

 of the lower soil, which will then be per- 

 meated with roots, and we can only secure 

 the proper conditions when preparing the 

 beds before planting takes place. 



To loosen the ground is in itself a good 

 thing, but to do this and encourage the 

 roots to occupy what is not of permanent 

 benefit to them cannot be so wise as seizing 

 such a favourable opportunity to make this 

 lower soil more dcvsirable. Top roots can 

 be fed at any time. 



It may not he out of place to <jill atten- 

 tion to the great benefits of firmer planting 

 than is generally practised, and a little 

 more consideration should be given to the 

 natural growth and habits of different 

 varieties, as well as their colours. To plant 

 rows or l>eds of any given colour without 

 some attention to growth frequently results 

 in disappointment that cannot be excused 

 when we have such a vast choice to select 

 from, and manv otherwise excellent collec- 

 tions of roses lose much of their beauties 

 for want of a little cave in this direction. 



It is the same with climbers upon walls, 

 fences, or buildings, a more careful selec- 

 tion as regards growth and average time^ 

 of flowering being necessary- One can so 

 easily have a grand show at almost any 

 given time, or a continuous feast, that is 

 not quite so gorgeous, throughout the 

 season. 



The cutting back of coarse roots and the 

 careful trimming of any bruised ends does 

 not receive enough attention. A clean cut 

 means a clutch of healthy roots. Nor do 

 we cut away enough of the wood at the 

 time <if ])lanting. It is of no benefit to 

 leave so much that will be a great strain 

 upon the sap and unrstablished roots, espe- 

 v\i\]\y as most of this wood will have to be 

 out awav at early spring pruning. T would 

 partly prune at planting-time for this 



reason, 



ROSABIAN, 



