14 
GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 
all cooperative work. What this particular situation needed, 
and needed sorely of course, was a wise word of advice slipped 
in by the right grown person at just the right moment to 
reenforce the children’s own effort. If only this had been 
forthcoming, the tale might well deserve to go on record as 
a splendid example of how a garden may educate children 
through utilizing spontaneous desires, and, incidentally, how 
it may give trend to their life interests. 
But imperfect as this experiment was, in so far as these 
youngsters had united in working out plans of their own they 
were getting positive benefit ; they were, besides, reading the 
romance of growing things, and they were being disciplined 
in self-mastery and initiative, the possession of which deter- 
mines whether a person is effective in life or not. 
These glimpses of children’s doings bring into clearer view 
many activities that are going on all around us every day. 
If the three most significant of these activities were to be 
pointed out, one would be the training of producers, another 
the awakening of interest in nature’s laws, and the third — 
not the least in importance — the joyous companionship 
shown in planning and in working out plans. Each of these 
activities has gone on, it must be remembered, quite outside 
the realm of a formal school or a certificated teacher. We 
become possessed by the thought of what a garden might 
accomplish in a school dealing frankly with living issues 
and guided by teachers willing to lend themselves to its 
rare possibilities. 
