L. L. MAY & CO. 
ST. PAUL, MINN. 
had an attendance of over fifteen thousand people. The 
Garden Club there for 1914 had one thousand names and will 
surpass itself in 1915. 
It was three years ago that the School Garden move- 
ment was begun in Kansas City. The directors of the school 
district took the matter up as an experiment, and eight schools 
had gardens the first year, utilizing vacant lots, and patches 
of ground that would otherwise have been given over to weeds 
and rank growth. On the children's part the work was purely 
voluntarily, but the response was so great, that the next sea- 
son, four times as many gardens were in operation, and nearly 
ten thousand children were working. Better, and more 
economical methods of home gardening were brought about 
by school garden supervisors over looking the home gardens. 
Soil and soil fertility, rotation of crops, sterilizing and can- 
ning of vegetable crops, food values, etc., were taught in a 
practical way. High school classes in "agricultural botany" 
were organized, and experimental greenhouses were erected. 
I^ast summer Kansas City had fifty-five school gardens, one 
thousand vacant lot gardens, and over two thousand children's 
gardens were started as a result of the influence of this work. 
The city of St. Louis co-operated with the Real Estate' 
Exchange and the Civics Committee of the City Club. The 
Superintendent of the Board of Education agreed to provide 
the children to do the work of cultivation, if the city would 
give the vacant lots, and the result is regular classes of agri- 
culture in all the schools of the city. 
The Superintendent of schools in Memphis, Tennessee 
organized two thousand children into gardening squads for 
school gardens and two thousand more for home gardens. 
Uncle Sam himself is interested in this idea and the 
United States Commissioner of Education has estimated that 
two million school children can be profitably engaged, and 
thus employed, will increase the value of the country 
$100,000,000.00 each child averaging $50.00 worth of produce 
raised every year. 
Cincinnati, Ohio, numberless cities in Pennsylvania, New 
York, even Florida, are all taking it up and Oregon, the most 
westerly state of all, leads in this matter of home and school 
