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“A Better Crop of Boys and Girls”: The School Gardening Movement, 1890–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota

Extract

In the 1890s progressive educators like John Dewey proposed expansive ideas about integrating school and society. Working to make the boundaries between classroom learning and pupils' natural environment more permeable, for example, Dewey urged teachers to connect intellectual and practical elements within their curricula. Highly visible and widespread examples of this integrative goal were the school gardens that flourished from the 1890s well into the twentieth century. Evidence of their presence is recorded in newspapers, national magazines, and annual school reports whose illustrations typically portrayed well-dressed children cultivating large gardens next to impressive urban school buildings. Whether in large cities or country settings, school gardens were expressions of modern and progressive education of the sort encouraged by Dewey. Gardens were encouraged in theory and in practice not only at the laboratory school affiliated with the University of Chicago but also in normal schools across the country (Figure 1).

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 History of Education Society 

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References

1 School and Society (1899) was written at a time of optimism and high productivity for Dewey, John, and he argued eloquently for schools in which children's social and natural environments were connected to intellectual and practical instruction. He suggested, among many other things, that object lessons presented for the sake of processing information were no “substitute for acquaintance with the plants and animals of the farm and garden acquired through actually living among them and caring for them.” See Dewey, John, The Middle Works, 1899–1901, ed. Boydon, JoAnn, 1 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), 3335; quote on 8.Google Scholar

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48 Vacant Lot Cultivation Association, Annual Report of 1910 (pamphlet); its motto was “Increased Opportunity for Self-Help.” This and a number of other pamphlet reports relating to city garden programs are found in the Historical File, 1870–1950, Box 14, Records of the Office of the Commissioner of Education (OCE), Department of the Interior, USNA. Also see Crawford, Andrew W. to Bailey, L. H., January 21, 1904, Bailey Papers, CUA.Google Scholar

49 Merrill, Jennie B., supervisor of kindergartens in New York City, wrote to John Spencer on April 27, 1898, that “Children's Gardens” were to be her topic at the New York State Teachers’ Associations and the National Education Association. She noted that her kindergartens have “small box gardens but out-of-door gardens are appropriate for smaller cities.” Within a few years New York City would have school gardens and even a school garden farm. Spencer Extension Education Papers, CUA; also Merrill, “Children's Gardens” Proceedings and Addresses (NEA, 1898), 598.Google Scholar

50 Quoted in Reese, Power and Promise of School Reform, 152.Google Scholar

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60 See Lawson, “Urban-Garden Programs,” 195–97. This program was one of the few that seemed to be for boys only.Google Scholar

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68 A summary of the program indicates that there were twenty gardens by 1916 under a year-round Supervisor of Gardening; Perkins, Alfred, School Gardening in St. Paul, Minnesota (n.p., 1916).Google Scholar

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71 Fannie Griscom Parsons directed the Juvenile Agricultural School in DeWitt Clinton Park in Manhattan; the school hosted area teachers who used four-by-twelve foot “farms” for their pupils. See her report in The First Children's Farm School in New York City (New York: DeWitt Clinton Farm School, 1903) and, “A Day in Children's School Farm in New York City.” Nature-Study Review 1 (November 1905): 255–61.Google Scholar

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78 Northrop was a well-respected botanist in her own right, having done field work in Central and North America and the Caribbean; she moved in 1919 to Great Barrington, MA, where the Northrop Memorial Camp is now located. Northrop Papers, SLR.Google Scholar

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86 School Garden Association, Fourth Annual Report (1915), 10. Also involved were the School Garden Committee of the Society of American Florists, the Garden Department of the National Congress of Mothers, and various Parent-Teacher Associations.Google Scholar

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91 See summary in the “Report on School Gardens for 1945,” NYC Board of Education, Vertical File, Box 90, TC. The impact, however, was limited; Vernon Lantis suggested that less than 2 percent of the children were reached by the New York garden program in, “Some Criticisms of the Present Method in School Gardens.” Nature-Study Review 9 (September 1913): 186–90.Google Scholar

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104 The formation, which was made possible by a special appropriation by Congress, was announced in a gardening issue of Nature-Study Review 11 (February 1915), 43.Google Scholar

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107 School gardens were just one part of multifaceted efforts to engage children in the war on the home front. These included gathering clothing for relief of children in France and Belgium, collecting fruit pits to be used in gas masks, selling thrift stamps and war savings bonds, and preparing surgical dressings and other items for soldiers. See, for example, “A Brief Memorandum Regarding War Work and War Relief” in the public schools of New York City prepared for Anning S. Prall, n.d., NYC Board of Education, Vertical File on WW I, TC.Google Scholar

108 “United States School Garden Army” Bureau of Education, Department of the Interior, vol. 4, no. 24, pointed out that “school-supervised gardening has already become an integral part of the school curriculum in most of the States” and this new effort can help build “a patriotic and Americanizing impulse.” NYC Board of Education, Vertical File 422, TC.Google Scholar

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111 Pack produced a pamphlet entitled Victory Gardens Feed the Hungry (n.p., n.d.) as well as a record book for girls and boys to record their daily garden activities. He also wrote The War Garden Victorious: Its Wartime Need and Its Economic Value in Peace (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1919). Available at: http://www.earthlypursuits.com/WarGarV/WarGardTitle.htm (February 19, 2004).Google Scholar

112 The Fall Manual of the United States School Garden Army (n.d.), 5. The motto was “A Garden for Every Child. Every Child in a Garden.”Google Scholar

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116 Italics in original. Eliot to P. P. Claxton, April 18 and April 27, 1918, Historical File, 1870–1950, OCE, USNA.Google Scholar

117 Her stories and many other accounts are found in a large scrapbook of School Garden Army newspaper clippings, Historical File, 1870–1950, OCE, USNA.Google Scholar

118 Undated memoranda sent to such groups pointed out that the School Garden Army wanted to recruit nine- to fourteen-year-olds and argued that a successful effort would displace more than $250 million in market produce that could then be used for the soldiers in battle. Historical File, 1870–1950, OCE, USNA.Google Scholar

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125 Superintendent of Schools, New York City, Annual Report for 1924–25, 271. Kilpatrick argued that an urban child knew nothing of nature and was “denuded of his natural heritage” unless introduced to nature itself in Nature Education in the Cities of the United States (New York: School Garden Association, 1923), 7.Google Scholar

126 Plans for building a Nature Room, supported by the Board of Education in all new schools and encouraged in others, were included in Nature-Garden Guide: An Organ of Vitalized Nature Education for New York City Schools 5 (March 1926), n.p.Google Scholar

127 Fox, Florence C., Cycles of Garden Life and Plant Life, Department of Interior, Bureau of Education Bulletin 25 (1925). The Federation also sponsored a pamphlet by Sherman, Mary K., Natural Science and Nature Study in the School (1920–22).Google Scholar

128 Conover, L. Lenore to Palmer, E. Laurence, May 22, 1927, American Nature-Study Society Papers, Cornell University Archives, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar

129 Lawson, , “Urban-Garden Programs in the United States” devotes chapter seven to urban gardens in general during the depression of the 1930s.Google Scholar

130 Bullough, , Cities and Schools in the Gilded Age, 22–23.Google Scholar

131 Anna Botsford Comstock noted that the Cornell education program was going in this direction in “American Nature-Study Society.” Science 57 (February 1923): 184. For a description of such efforts see Arthur Newton Pack, The Nature Almanac: A Handbook of Nature Education (Washington: American Nature Society, 1927).Google Scholar