Courtesy of Miss Annie Washburn
A School Garden. If Children Cannot Expand at Home, the Public School is Under Obligation to Satisfy the Need for Outdoor Occupation
Courtesy of Prin. F. C. Clifton
A School Garden. Watchung School, Montclair, N. J.
Probably no accessory to the home is more to be valued than the garden, especially the flower garden. It adds so much of color and variety to the whole scheme, and helps to bring the house into intimate relation with the grounds. The finest gardening has probably been due to feminine influence, and every girl can draw from practical experience with growing things a delicacy of taste and wealth of knowledge to apply to ends peculiarly her own. The latent intuitive feminine outlook often remains undeveloped in these days, and no craft will preserve and stimulate it more than gardening. There is a reaction just now against the formal flower beds of tender plants, a patch of exotic color dotting otherwise irreproachable lawns, though the florist would like to keep such arrangements in fashion, for he is seldom a true artist. But better standards of living, a fresher study of nature, a more personal, intimate architecture, have brought into them many of the old garden ideals where the garden belonged to the mistress of the house and showed it. The garden has a most significant history. It has always been a centre of family life, and among the Romans was in fact the element about which the household revolved. Here the family rested and visited, worked and played. The dwelling was built around it, with living rooms which opened on its walks and fountains, bringing the family together in the most intimate way. The early Dutch and English colonists brought to America a similar taste for this soothing adjunct to the home and early put into effect such garden plans as their limited resources permitted. And always it has been the women-folk of the community who have kept the garden alive with persistent belief in its harmonizing influence on the family. Not infrequently the children learned their first lessons in business, in ownership and in responsibility, there. Gardening is one of the oldest and simplest of crafts and may not be overlooked in seeking a pathway for youthful energy.
Perhaps the boy or girl would rather grow fruits or berries, vegetables, raise pigeons, keep bees—one and all are equally good. This is the essential fact: every boy and girl should come into direct and positive contact with some of the important natural phenomena and life. Growing things have to be cared for, they must have food, water and protection. One cannot play with them when one feels like it; they need attention every day. The obligation is a pleasant one, but nevertheless it is an obligation and gives a much needed lesson in a way that sticks.