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), 33–35; quote on 8.Google Scholar

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⁴ Nature study was also, in many systems in the 1910s, connected to sex hygiene programs, where the concern about unbridled human nature was very evident. That topic is beyond the scope of this paper but see Moran, Jeffrey P., Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); and Irvine, Janice M., Talk about Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).Google Scholar

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⁶ Crawford, Mattie Rose, Guide to Nature Study for the Use of Teachers (Toronto: Copp, Clark, Company, 1902): 46–47.Google Scholar

⁷ Bigelow, Maurice A., “School Gardens,” in A Cyclopedia of Education 2, ed. Paul Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1914), 10–13.Google Scholar

⁸ Bigelow, , “School Gardens,” 10.Google Scholar

⁹ Editorial comment by Bigelow, Maurice A. in Nature-Study Review 1 (January 1905): 28–29. He noted that there were hundreds of successful school gardens and no need to duplicate efforts to describe them. Rather, he called for papers that showed how to make gardens educational rather than vocational by showing their intellectual, aesthetic, and moral bearings.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Schwab, Erasmus, The Practical School Garden. Being a Practical Contribution to Education, trans. Mrs. [Mary] Horace Mann (New York: M. L. Holbrook, 1879).Google Scholar

¹¹ The Horticultural Society remained involved, establishing a prize for schools (won mostly by Clapp in the early decades) in an effort to show the relationship between manual labor and financial remuneration. See Brian Trelstad, “The Little Machines in Their Gardens: A History of School Gardens in America, 1890–1925” (AB thesis, Harvard University, 1991), 12. Clapp had also attended the well-remembered Penikese Summer School for teachers with Louis Agassiz.Google Scholar

¹² Massachusetts Board of Education, Annual Report (1904–1905), 104–5. Van Evrie Kilpatrick, The School Garden: A Laboratory of Nature (New York: School Garden Association, 1940), 3–10.Google Scholar

¹³ See, for example, Lawson, Laura Joanne, “Urban-Garden Programs in the United States: Values, Resources, and Role in Community Development” (PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2000); and Backert, E., “History and Analysis of the School Garden Movement in America, 1890–1910” (PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1977).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory, “Nature Not Books: Scientific Initiatives and the Origins of the Nature Study Movement in the 1890s.” Isis 96 (September 2005): 324–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Shaw, Ellen Eddy, “The Place of Children's Gardens.” Nature-Study Review 6 (February 1910): 43–45. Shaw, a former teacher and faculty member at the New Paltz Normal School, believed gardens provided children with a wholesome benefit at they worked with plants.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Parsons, Fannie Griscom, a leader of the New York City gardening movement, outlined elaborate plans to one of the nature study leaders, Liberty Hyde Bailey, October 26, 1905, Bailey Papers, Cornell University Archives, Ithaca, New York (hereafter CUA).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Patterson, Alice, faculty member at Illinois Normal School, was confident about the impact of school garden work, perhaps because her own local programs were so successful; see her articles in Nature-Study Review 9 (November 1914) and Nature-Study Review 17 (February 1921): 55–62.Google Scholar

¹⁸ This prescient phrase was used by Shaw, “The Place of Children's Gardens,” 43.Google Scholar

¹⁹ A significant vacation school movement, sponsored by diverse groups that included women's clubs, labor unions, and civic reformers, had multiple programs and typically sponsored or reinforced the school garden movement. See Reese, William J., Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Period (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 148–76.Google Scholar

²⁰ The most recent and useful studies concentrate on particular sites and on the urban aspects of the school garden movement, including Lawson, “Urban-Garden Programs” and Backert, “History and Analysis of the School Garden Movement.”Google Scholar

²¹ Miller, Elsa, “Garden Work.” Elementary School Teacher 6 (January 1906): 246–52.Google Scholar

²² Jackman, also recommended Liberty Hyde Bailey's series of Garden-Craft books in an undated pamphlet found with the Jackman correspondence to Anita McCormick Blaine, McCormick Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.Google Scholar

²³ The best source on the farm extension movement remains Colman, Gould, Education and Agriculture: A History of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963) and also useful is Ruby Green Smith, The People's Colleges: A History of the New York State Extension Service in Cornell University and the State, 1876–1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949).Google Scholar

²⁴ This is the theme in Beverly Thomas Galloway's School Gardens: A Report on Some Cooperative Work in Normal Schools of Washington, Bulletin 160 (United States Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations, Washington, DC, 1905).Google Scholar

²⁵ Bailey, L. H. to Allison, Senator, January 22, 1907, Bailey Papers, CUA. Also see Anna Botsford Comstock, The Comstocks of Cornell: John Henry Comstock and Anna Botsford Comstock (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1953), 89–197.Google Scholar

²⁶ Bailey, L. H. described Spencer's efforts to George, W. R., January 17 and January 19, 1907, Bailey Papers, CUA.Google Scholar

²⁷ The first significant historical effort was a thesis at Harvard by Mitchell, Dora Otis, “A History of Nature Study,” published in Nature-Study Review 19 (September 1923): 258–74; and (October 1923): 295–321; Also see Henson, Pamela M., “The Comstocks of Cornell: A Marriage of Interests,” in Creative Couples in the Sciences, ed. Pycior, Helena M., Slack, Nancy G., and Abir-Am, Pnina G. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995); and Dorf, Philip, Liberty Hyde Bailey: An Informal Biography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956).Google Scholar

²⁸ Detailed plans were provided, for example, in Olly J. Kern's Teachers’ Course 100, “Elements of Agriculture, Nature Study, and School Gardens,” produced for the University of California, Berkeley, Division of Agricultural Education [1010], copy in the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.Google Scholar

²⁹ On Canada see Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory, “Nature Study in North America and Australasia, 1890–1945.” Historical Records of Australian Science 11 (June 1997): 439–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ These differing goals are discussed in Greene, Kristen Jane, “The Macdonald Robertson Movement, 1899–1909” ((PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2004), chapter 3.Google Scholar

³¹ See the bound volumes of circulars issued by the Superintendent of Indian Schools, 1899–1908, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), #75, Department of the Interior, United States National Archives (hereafter USNA). Also see E. Reel, “Nature-Study and Gardening for Indian Schools,” Nature-Study Review 2 (April 1906): 141–43.Google Scholar

³² Circular dated May 5, 1903, with the signature of Tonner, A. E., addressed to Agents and Superintendents. BIA, USNA. The superintendents typically met immediately after the National Education Association meetings for five days. Teachers were provided their normal salary during these classes but paid their own transportation and expenses.Google Scholar

³³ Circular dated March 2, 1902, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIS), United States National Archives (USNA).Google Scholar

³⁴ Circulars dated March 12 and 19, 1904. BIA, USNM.Google Scholar

³⁵ Circular dated February 1, 1904. BIA, USNA.Google Scholar

³⁶ Descriptive records of the BIA, NARA Central Plains and Pacific Region facilities, USNA. On the vocational emphasis and “outing work” see Tennert, Robert A., Jr., The Phoenix Indian School: Forced Assimilation in Arizona, 1891–1935 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 69, 72–75.Google Scholar

³⁷ Child, Brenda J., Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900–1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); chapter 6 on “Working for the School” underscores the vocationalism at Carlisle, PA and at Flandreau, SD. Also see Archuleta, Margaret L., Child, Brenda J., and Lomawaima, K. Tsianina, eds., Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879–2000 (Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum, 2000); Lomawaima, K. Tsianina, They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); and Adams, David W., Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995).Google Scholar

³⁸ See Carver, George Washington, Nature Study and Children's Gardens, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Leaflet #2 (1906). I thank Nina Lehrman for bringing this material to my attention.Google Scholar

³⁹ Rosenwald, was interested in science and vocational education but response to this particular initiative was limited. Rosenwald, also supported Tuskegee Institute and had provided funds to the black geneticist Everett Just; see Manning, Kenneth R., Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Everett Just (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Claxton, P. P. to Rosenwald, (who served on the Council of National Defense), April 19, 1919, Historical File, 1870–1959, Officer of the Commissioner of Education, USNA. The Commissioner's office only allocated $3299.25 in fourteen cities and thus did not come close to the $25,000 offered by Rosenwald, .Google Scholar

⁴¹ Bailey, L. H. to Taylor, Ellen, March 11, 1907, Bailey papers, CUA.Google Scholar

⁴² George Peabody College for Teachers, Division of Surveys and Field Services, Bulletin (1913). Knapp, a Union College graduate, had spent several years in Louisiana doing demonstration work with rice farming and embodied the goals of extension and outreach anticipated in this farm project.Google Scholar

⁴³ The best historical discussion remains Bowen, William, The Country Life Movement in America (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1974). For a contemporary overview that envisions the country school and country teacher “as regenerating forces for the new rural order,” see Mabel Carney, Country Life and the Country School: A Study of the Agencies of Rural Progress and of the Social Relationship of the School to the Country Community (Chicago: Row, Peterson, and Co., 1912), 327.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Commission on Country Life, Report, ed. Liberty Hyde Bailey (U.S. Senate Document 705, 60th Congress, 2nd session, 1909); it was privately published with an introduction by Theodore Roosevelt in New York by Sturgis and Walton Co., 1911.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Fuller, Wayne E., The Old Country School: The Story of Rural Education in the Middle West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 218–45.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Stebbins, Cyril A., “Growing Children in California Gardens,” Nature-Study Review 7 (February 1912): 67–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁷ Lawson, Laura Jeanne, “Urban-Garden Programs in the United States: Values, Resources, and Role in Community Development” (PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2002). Lawson devotes a chapter to these efforts, pages 92–137, and notes they are an early official intervention to solve problems of unemployment and urban poverty.Google Scholar

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

⁵¹ Curtis, Henry S. surveyed “Vacation Schools, Playgrounds, and Recreational Centers,” in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education, NYC 1 (1902–03): 2–7. Curtis noted that the vacation work was, in nearly every case he studied, started by philanthropic groups, mostly comprised of women. Typically the women paid for the teachers and materials and the school board provided the building for free, although eventually municipalities took over the full funding.Google Scholar

⁵² Bullough, William A., Cities and Schools in the Gilded Age: The Evolution of an Urban Institution (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1974), 104.Google Scholar

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⁵⁶ Curtis, “Vacation Schools, Playgrounds, and Settlements,” 2–7; Randall, John Leslie, Nature Study and the City Child (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Playground Association, 1912).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Buell, Lucy C., “Home Gardens in Cleveland.” Nature-Study Review 3 (February 1907): 38; also discussed in Trelstad, “Little Machines,” 17–20.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Sixth Annual Report of the Home Gardening Association (Cleveland, 1905). Miller, Louise discussed her methods in Children's Gardens for School and Home: A Manual of Co-Operative Gardening (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1904). She is likely the same Miller, Louise who produced A Course in Nature Study for the Public Schools for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 63 (1900) and wrote “The Civic Aspect of School Gardens.” Nature-Study Review 8 (February 1912): 74–77.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Templin, R. L., ed., Information and Suggestions on School Gardens, Children's Home Gardens, Junior Clean-up Work and How to Make Your Home and Community a More Desirable Place to Live (Cleveland: The Children's Flower Mission, 1915). The claim that over twenty-one thousand schools had used “penny packet seeds” from the Children's Flower Mission is from an advertisement in The Third Annual Report of the School Garden Association of America, Meeting with the National Education Association (n.p., 1914), 14.Google Scholar

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

⁶¹ McCready, S. B., Gardening for Schools, Ontario Agriculture College, Bulletin no. 152 (December 1906), 28–29. McCready subsequently moved to Prince Edward Island, and by 1914 he and Canadian educators from British Columbia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Quebec were on the roster of nearly 800 members of the School Garden Association of America listed in The Fourth Annual Report of the School Garden Association of America (n.p., 1915), 49–57.Google Scholar

⁶² Jackman, Wilbur sent a questionnaire home with pupils for parents to indicate how much space they could establish for a small home garden correlated with the gardening activities at the school; see Elementary School Teacher 36 (1902–03): 528–29.Google Scholar

⁶³ See Course of Study in Nature Study and Agriculture (Bismarck, ND: Department of Public Instruction, 1923), found in the extensive curriculum collection at Teacher's College, Columbia University, New York (TC). Given the diverse geographical conditions of the state, the course outlines emphasized the need to find good local materials.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Annual Report of the Board of Education for the Omaha Public Schools (South Omaha: Magic Printing Co., 1905).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Thayer, Edna R., “Children's Gardens at Dowling St. School, Worcester, Massachusetts.” Nature-Study Review 1 (March 1905): 63. Gardening persisted in Worcester, see Childs, Breta W., “The Need for Gardening as an Intermediate Grade Subject in City Schools.” Nature-Study Review 19 (February 1923): 79–82.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Floody, R.J., “Worcester Garden City Plan; or, The Good Citizen Factory.” Nature-Study Review 8 (April 1912): 145–50.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of Minneapolis for the Year 1873 (Minneapolis, 1874).Google Scholar

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

⁶⁹ Unpublished paper “School Gardens” by Dietrich Lange in his papers at the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Sipe, Susan B. of the Washington Normal School to Bailey, L. H., January 19 and February 29, 1907, Bailey Papers, CUA. For a somewhat more upbeat assessment of the demonstration program, see Lawson, “Urban-Garden Programs,” 198–200.Google Scholar

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

⁷² Straubenmueller, Gustave, “The Work of the New York Schools for the Immigrant Class.” Journal of Social Sciences 44 (1906): 165–83.Google Scholar

⁷³ See Livermore, A. L., School Garden: Report of the Fairview Garden Association, Yonkers, New York (New York: Department of Child Hygiene, 1910). The estimated cost for tools and salaries of staff during the garden season (seeds and fertilizer and other items) was nearly $5,000 a year.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ See Northrup, Alice R., “Flower Shows in City Schools.” Nature-Study Review 1 (May 1905): 104–9. Northrup was at that time a lecturer in botany and nature study at the city normal school; her article outlined the early efforts of the committee in New York.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Diary entry for May 9, 1915. Northrop Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA (SLR).Google Scholar

⁷⁶ She started these in the 1890s, using Cornell leaflets; Northrup to Spencer, December 8, 1897; also Northrop's “Wanamaker Date Book” for a number of years from 1907 to 1914, has inserts of “Nature-Study Class” excursions and lists of the almost exclusively women (usually about eighteen to twenty-five) attendees. Northrop Papers, SLR.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Alice Northrup to Henry Fairfield Osborn, December n.d., 1918, Osborn Papers, American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Osborn had helped Northrup edit A Naturalist in the Bahamas, written by Alice and her husband John Northrup before his death in a laboratory accident at Columbia School of Mines.Google Scholar

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

⁷⁹ Osborn, Henry F. to Northrop, Alice, December 20 and 26, 1918, Osborn Papers, AMNH. Florida Wiley was for many years the well-loved teacher coordinator at the American Museum. Also see records of the School Nature League, Teachers College Archive, Columbia University (TC).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Lillie, Florence E., Course in Nature-Study for Elementary Grades of Minnesota Public Schools (Minneapolis: Syndicate Print, 1901), 5.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Reese, , The Power and Promise of School Reform, 151–62. On the public interest in supporting nature study also see Martha Van Rensselaer to L. H. Bailey, Bailey Papers, CUA, and Karen Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1980).Google Scholar

⁸² The school gardens got considerable attention from weekly magazines; for example, C. S. Sargent, “A Garden for Children.” Garden and Forest 10 (April 21, 1897): 151–52.Google Scholar

⁸³ Annual Report of School Garden Activities (Philadelphia, 1915), 8. Miller, Caro, the director, said that his program recruited teachers from Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Wellesley, and the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women eager to help with these programs.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Corrine Aldine Seeds, “Uses of the History of a Creative Elementary School” (typescript oral history), in the University of California at Los Angeles Archives. She subsequently ran an Americanization Center and Socialized Evening School for the Los Angeles public schools before taking an MA in supervision from Teachers College Columbia and becoming head of the UCLA elementary practice school.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Kilpatrick, Van Evrie, The School Garden: A Laboratory of Nature (New York: School Garden Association, 1940), 12.Google Scholar

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

⁸⁷ School Garden Association, Fourth Annual Report (1915), 10. This report claimed that ten thousand copies had been printed for distribution, sponsored by the Children's Flower Mission of Cleveland.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Jarvis, C.D., “What Shall be Our Policy Concerning Gardening in the Elementary City Schools?” Nature-Study Review 12 (April 1916): 174–78. The Bureau of Education staff member suggested that teachers might be hired for twelve months to help train children for home gardens.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ School Gardens for the Public Schools of New York City (New York: Department of Education, 1917), 3.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ The principal of PS 15 in Manhattan, Margaret Knox, described “The Best School Garden I Know” as one wedged into a previously vacant and overgrown space between two tenements in Nature-Study Review 12 (January 1916): 34–36.Google Scholar

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

⁹² Undated report of Dr O'Shea on “School Gardens” in the NYC Board of Education, Vertical File, TC. Kilpatrick eventually worked directly for the Board of Education.Google Scholar

⁹³ He fretted that “The distances of the schools and the homes of the pupils from open spaces, parks, fields and meadows, and the dangers from heavy traffic, necessitate the bringing of nature to our pupils, or to some place where they can observe the growth and beauty in plant life, and learn to protect that life.” Van Evrie Kilpatrick, Supervisor of School Gardens, in Superintendent of Schools, New York City, Annual Report (1924–25), 149.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ See Parsons’ reprinted talk to the International Children's International School Farm League, “What the School Garden will Mean to the Children of the World,” Pamphlet 31, January 1912.Google Scholar

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⁹⁶ Anderson, to Bailey, L. H., March 24, 1908, and reply, March 30, 1908, Bailey Papers, CUA. Materials were quickly forthcoming, including E. B. Babcock's Suggestions for Garden Work in California Schools (Berkeley: Berkeley University Press, 1909) and Palmer, Clayton F., Elementary Horticulture for California Schools: A Manual for Teachers and Amateur Gardeners (n.p., 1910).Google Scholar

⁹⁷ When the faculty at the State Normal School at Chico issued its first nature study bulletin, it was a pamphlet on School Gardens for California Schools, edited by Stebbins, Cyril A. in 1909; he later produced The Principles of Agriculture through the School and Home Garden (New York: Macmillan Co., 1913). Benjamin Marshall Davis, School Gardens for California Schools: A Manual for Teachers, State Normal School, Chico, Bulletin 1 (July 1905).Google Scholar

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⁹⁹ Commissioner Philander P. Claxton, for example, often offered strong opinions about teacher training and educational practice but typically couched his comments to disavow any desire to “dictate local policy.” His correspondence is found in Historical File, Boxes 55–60, OCE, USNA.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Crosby, Dick, “Report on School Gardens,” Office of Experiment Stations, United States Department of Agriculture, Report, 1907, 573–84.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

¹⁰⁵ Templin, R. L., ed., Information and Suggestions on School Gardens, Children's Home Gardens, Junior Clean-up Work, and How to Make Your Home and Community a More Desirable Place to Live (Cleveland: The Children's Flower Mission, 1915), 33.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Leaflets found at in a box labeled “Nature Study Pamphlets,” Mann Library, Cornell University.Google Scholar

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

¹⁰⁹ Leaflet found in Historical File, Boxes 55–60, OCE, USNA. Newspaper clippings and press releases also calculated that over a million young people had cultivated thirty thousand acres of formerly nonproductive land, and produced $15 million worth of food.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

¹¹³ This information is taken from a number of undated memoranda and loose sheets, probably written as press releases, in Historical Files, 1870–1950, OCE, USNA. The original five regional directors are listed at the front of the Fall Manual of the United States School Garden Army (Washington: Department of the Interior and Bureau of Education, Government Printing Office, 1918), namely Weed, Clarence M., Merrill, Frederick A., Ivins, Lester S., Stebbins, Cyril A., and Randall, John L. They each produced Courses in School-Supervised Gardening for first through sixth graders in their region published by the Bureau of Education in 1919.Google Scholar

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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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¹²⁰ The scrapbook is in the Historical File, OCE, USNA.Google Scholar

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¹²⁴ The move toward traditional subject matter and away from techniques like gardening is discussed in Kim Tolley, The Science Education of American Girls (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2003), and the more general shift is discussed in Urban, Wayne J. and Wagoner, Jennings L., Jr., American Education: A History (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004), chapter 8.Google Scholar

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