PARK AND CIE-METERY 
480 
ican Park and Out-Door Art Association, recently or- 
ganized in Boston, has undertaken the improvement of 
two schools, in order to demonstrate what may be 
accomplished. One building is situated in the city, 
with no yard. It is necessary to resort to window 
boxes and vine planting. The children living in tene- 
ment houses and crowded districts will be taught to 
love “green things growing,” and shown how they 
can have their own window gardens. The other school 
is in the suburbs. It registers twenty-eight hundred 
children, and has a yard containing ten thousand 
ing spots for the citizens during the long summer 
va(?ations and warm summer evenings, thus forming 
a stronger bond of sympathy and interest between the 
school and parents. 
The greatest need and greatest opportunity is in 
village and rural districts. And alas ! too often there 
is only bleakness and barrenness. The school direc- 
tors seem to have set apart the poorest ground in the 
district for the school yard. Will nothing grow? 
There are no flowers, and only some weak grass and 
a few starved trees. By a little effort these unattract- 
NOS. 1 AND 2 ARE COUNTRY SCHOOLS IN NEW ENGLAND. NOS. 3 AND 4 ARE SCHOOL GROUNDS IN CLEVELAND, O. 
square feet. The problem is to use it to the best ad- 
vantage. 
Similar work is being undertaken by civic clubs, 
women’s clubs in the cities, and by improvement asso- 
ciations in towns and villages. The time has come 
for action. The movement is on. In large cities prop- 
erty is considered too valuable to be utilized for school 
grounds and gardens, but as soon as citizens and mu- 
nicipal authorities are aroused to an appreciation of 
the importance of this movement better conditions 
will prevail. Some of the landscape architects are in- 
terested, and some excellent results have been accom- 
plished. As was suggested in a recent number of Park 
and Cemetery, the school yards might be the breath- 
ive surroundings could be made pleasant and beauti- 
ful. Children should be led to study nature’s method, 
and to examine her manner of planting flowers beside 
the road, grouping trees and shrubs along the fences, 
in the woods, and upon the banks of the streams. The 
vvind, the birds and squirrels, — nature’s agents, have 
no regularity in their seed planting. The arrange- 
ment is irregular massing of her trees, shrubs and 
flowers, and their struggle for existence produces 
pleasing variety and effective results all the year 
round. 
Some of the trees, plants and vines found in field 
and wood can be easily arranged to form attractive 
groups. Trees can easily be obtained, and the most 
