Remember that both the Department of Agriculture at Washington, and your State College of Agriculture are anxious to help this kind of work. The former gives you all the seeds you need, free of charge. Write to some well-known seed houses for catalogues, and you will get particulars about all the different varieties. Go to your Public Libraries, and you will find the most fascinating books, many written especially for children, telling you just what to do. "When Mother Lets Us Garden," by Frances Duncan, is one of the best and simplest, while "Little Gardens for Boys and Girls," by Higgins, "Mary's Garden and How It Grew," by Duncan, "Children's Library of Work and Play Gardening," by Shaw, and "The School Garden Book," by Weed-Emerson, are all intensely interesting.
AN OUTGROWN PLAYHOUSE HELD THE TOOLS USED BY THE CHILDREN IN THESE GARDENS
If you find yourself so successful in your work that you have more flowers and vegetables than you can use, remember that there are always plenty of poor people in your own town who would gladly accept your gifts, and any church organization would tell you how to reach them. If, however, you are trying to earn some money for yourself, you can always find regular customers glad to buy things fresh from the garden.
For a meeting place during the summer, why not plan a flower club-house? Perhaps some of the dear old grandmothers will give you a few hollyhock roots, which you can plant in a circle big enough to hold your little club. Leave an opening in the ring just big enough to enter through, and before the season is very far along, the hollyhocks will be tall enough to screen you from the passerby. The hollyhocks sow themselves, and come up every year, and hybridized by the bees, show different colors every season. Better still, go to the woods for a lot of brush, stick it in the ground to form a square room, and cover with a brush roof. Over this you can train wild honeysuckle, which you can find in lengths of ten and twelve feet. Or you can buy a package or two of the Varigated Japanese Hop, which will grow ten feet in a month or six weeks,—and sowing itself, come up and cover your house every year.
A garden club proves a source of pleasure through the winter, too. You can go on with the care and cultivation of house plants, and the growing of all kinds of bulbs. You can meet regularly at the different homes, and have the members prepare and read little papers such as "How to Grow Roman Hyacinths in Water," "The Best Flowers for a Window-Box," "Raising Plants from Cuttings," "Starting Seeds Indoors," "How to Make a Table Water-Garden," etc.
In case you wish to know exactly how to organize and conduct a club, just like big folks do,—get from your Public Library a book called "Boys' Clubs," by C. S. Bernheimer and J. M. Cohen. This has also a chapter on girls' clubs, and it tells you all about club management, so that you can have a lot of fun at your meetings, besides learning a great many important things in a way that you will never forget.