52 
GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 
The question is often raised whether, in such a district as 
has just been described, only a few steps away from a crowded 
thoroughfare, where strangers are always streaming by, a gar- 
den can be kept safe from intruders. The answer is that, 
when properly organized, the young gardeners and their fami- 
lies are rightly considered a garden’s stoutest defenders. The 
children’s protective methods are sometimes very ingenious. 
In one instance at harvest time the garden was continually 
visited by loafers whom the gardeners were too young to get 
the best of, so they kept a camera in an adjoining house 
and photographed the trespassers. 
It is well known that ownership in even a tiny garden 
arouses in the children of a community a true respect for 
property hitherto unawakened. Here, very likely for the first 
time in their lives, youngsters see things from the angle of 
the owner. In concrete terms, as soon as a child raises a 
melon and has that melon stolen, he recognizes the enormity 
of theft. This is not mere school-gardening sentiment ; 
every grown person who has had experience in this matter 
says exactly the same thing. Yet granting that a change of 
heart may be accomplished through the influence of school 
gardening, only an old fogy will expect these conversions to be 
instantaneous. Few persons, moreover, except practical school 
gardeners, realize how many disasters can befall a garden, 
wholly apart from any deliberate mischief. A scrimmage for 
a stray ball is enough to spoil a whole spring planting ; and 
as for the moral natures of cats and dogs, these still remain 
so unregenerate as not to hinder them from demolishing a 
thriving little farm in a brief quarter of an hour. One child 
voices his trials thus plaintively in his garden diary : " Every 
seed I have in the world is at the mercy of a dog.” The 
subject of fencing is bound to perplex some gardeners. A 
fence or no fence is the question ? This will depend largely 
