WHAT MAKES A SCHOOL GARDEN WORTH WHILE 19 
Teachers are not the only ones who, in this particular, mis- 
interpret the garden movement. A piece of work recently 
done by a certain social betterment committee in a small 
Massachusetts town may, just here, add its own word to the 
discussion. It appears that the determination of these public- 
spirited people to carry on a vacation garden had unfortu- 
nately been made too late in the spring to connect properly 
with the public school of the vicinity, or to enable the leaders 
to make friends with the children. They, however, did their 
best. The events of that summer as they are described pass 
before us with the vividness of moving pictures. The open- 
ing day arrived, and with it tumbled in a troop of boys and 
girls bent on getting, in some form or other, an adequate 
return for their curiosity. The ample field, generously loaned 
for this project, lay before them ; it had already been plowed 
and raked, and tidily divided off into sections. Next the ladies 
and gentlemen of the committee distributed the seeds, and, 
amid some confusion, gave excellent instruction upon the 
rules for planting. The exact places where the seeds were to 
go had already been decided, and these were explained by 
means of a carefully prepared map. 
At the season’s end a devoted member of this committee, 
very expert in horticulture but very inexpert in dealing with 
children, in almost these very words described the outcome 
of their summer of good works : 
"Yes, the gardens themselves turned out well enough. We 
directors, of course, had to do a good deal of drudgery, such 
as weeding, ourselves. By watering thoroughly in the eve- 
nings my sister and I managed pretty well to keep things 
from drying up. But the children, I am sorry to say, were dis- 
orderly and ungrateful. I can’t tell you what we went through. 
Excepting a few dear little girls who came regularly, not one 
of them seemed a bit interested. I never saw lazier boys. 
