PLOTTING AND PLANNING 
69 
Nothing is more exhilarating on a bright day than the sight 
of a superb market garden in full swing. The smell of the 
rich earth, the orderly furrows sketched in living green upon 
the black soil, seeking with one accord a vanishing point in 
the far horizon, and the unhurried industry of this complete 
little world where each man is bound up in his special work, 
— all these captivate the imagination. To crown all comes the 
economic test. A noble harvest of foodstuffs is waiting in 
bountiful heaps, to be delicately packed for shipping and for 
the city market. Inquiry proves beyond question that the 
financial status of such an industry is solid. The business is 
organized to earn every possible penny. 
It is remarkable how quickly youngsters catch the rhythm 
of a place like this. Many a one who has started out of a 
morning in the spirit of frolic will come back from his visit 
quite sobered. Whatever else may have been accomplished, 
the trip will not be likely to fail in giving exactly what was 
expected of it — a capital idea of a true market garden. 
Nevertheless, to hold this up as the one and only standard of 
excellence for a -school garden would of course be a mistake. 
It is plain enough that if this point were overemphasized, 
the miniature-farm idea might lead to mere superficial imi- 
tation. This would ruin, educationally, the promise of a gar- 
den’s best work, where a small space is to be worked, not by 
one dominant mind — of an Olympian, shall we say ? — but 
by many minds as well as many hands. A method in which 
there are few, if any, difficulties is one which has sometimes 
been adopted in a cooperative garden to secure a farmlike 
basis for vegetable growing without at all cramping the ambi- 
tions of the individual planters. First divide the entire space 
into long strips four or five feet wide, with paths of not less 
than three feet between. These strips, by the by, should prefer- 
ably run north and south, so that the sun will fall impartially 
