Many good-hearted people have tried to bring the pleasure of plants and gardens to the City poor. Many of the schemes set out are quite Utopian. We cannot build cities after a plan, they grow, but individual enterprise may do much. I had enjoyed Mr. Cadbury’s well-made chocolate for many a year, before I found out a very good, and to me quite new reason for liking it. For forty years the good man had watched the class of people who worked for him in Birmingham, and came to the conclusion that the only practical way of raising them up from the degradation of their surroundings was to bring the factory-worker out on to the land, and give him a piece of garden, in which he could enjoy that most delightful of all recreations—the coming in touch with Nature on the soil. So he withdrew his great cocoa manufactory from the town, and established it in the pretty village of Bournville. The move was a great success.
A POOR MAN’S WINDOW-BOX AT MILLWALL
Town board schools in some places are doing what they can to give their scholars practical instruction in Nature knowledge. In cities this is very difficult. Seeds do not germinate well in pots indoors. A school garden, however small, is worth anything; results are so much more satisfactory. The boys’ garden at Crook’s Place Board School, Norwich, is an example of what may be done in a town. The enclosure measures 50 yards by 20, and was formerly an ugly and uninviting corner of the Chapel Field. Builders’ rubbish has been cleared away, and replaced by good soil. Friends have sent seeds and bulbs and plants; stones have been gathered for a rock-garden, the boys work with enthusiasm, and the Norwich school-garden in summer is as bright a spot as one could see.
The young gardeners are instructed for an hour a day three times a week, and show great aptitude in learning. What a pleasant change from books and slates, and how educating in the best sense of the word! No occupation brings to light the better qualities of the mind so much as gardening, even if it is on ever so small a scale. Patience, forethought, sympathy, and tenderness all belong to the gardener—they must do so or his work will be a failure.
It has often struck me that country board schools are not doing the good they might, in the way of influencing their scholars to love the land and take an interest in it. Children are very happy in their board schools. They hurry away as early in the morning as possible, from comfortless stuffy cottages to the well-warmed, well-aired school-room, where they find the joys of emulation and intelligent companionship. In the afternoon it is the same, with intervals for football or games. What time is left to help with work in their own little garden-patches? These lie neglected, while vegetables and garden-produce are purchased by mother from the travelling market-cart, dearer and less fresh than if home-grown. When the boys come home they pore over a borrowed book, or practice sums and easy drawing. Every one of them “means to go to London,” and live by his brains, not at all by his hands; and he is no more at home with a spade or a pitchfork than if he came out of a London slum. There must be something wrong about this, and the something could very easily be remedied.
At the risk of being digressive, I cannot help saying that I am afraid that Germany is ahead of us in the matter of school-gardens. The clever educationists of the Fatherland have found out that book-work, valuable as it is and dear to the heart of a schoolmaster, is barren and unproductive while divorced from the labour of the hands. Garden-schools are established up and down the country, with courses of instruction; elementary village-schools are provided with educational garden-ground, and even town schools have their garden-plots. As usual, these good and useful efforts are most successful where personal practical influence is brought to bear on them.
With regard to supplying the very poor of London and other towns with plants for their little yards and gardens and window-boxes, I have often thought how easily this could be done if owners of large or even moderate-sized gardens did not mind the little trouble of giving to them of their abundance. We all know how hardy things come up of themselves, and are thrown away as weeds by the gardener unless we prevent it. Forget-me-nots among the Cabbages, Violets under the Gooseberry bushes, Creeping-Jenny, Foxgloves and Evening-Primroses wherever they can find a footing. Why not at every change of season send off hampers and baskets to those who would find priceless treasure in our rubbish? Better with them than on the burn-heap.
Londoners are surprisingly clever in cultivating flowers. A poor woman in the City had a small plant given her, and was not very sure what it was, but put it in a sunny place on a parapet outside her garret window. It grew six feet high, and turned out to be a Sunflower! Eventually the best blossom was presented as a contribution to the harvest decorations at a neighbouring church.
