"A better crop of boys and girls": The school gardening movement, 1890-1920

History of Education Quarterly

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 58-93

  Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

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EID: 65349169652     PISSN: 00182680     EISSN: 17485959     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-5959.2008.00126.x     Document Type: Article

References (171)

1. School and Society (1899) was written at a time of optimism and high productivity for John Dewey, 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 John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899-1901, ed. JoAnn Boydon, 1 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), 33-35
2. quote on 8.
3. On Dewey during his years in Chicago and his interaction withWilbur Jackman, which started well but ended badly, see Jay Martin, The Education of John Dewey: A Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 199-210.
4. Wilbur S. Jackman, Nature Study for the Common Schools (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1891), 8.
5. On his larger role in education, see Audrey B. Champagne and Leopold E. Klopfer, "Pioneers of Elementary School Science: Wilbur Samuel Jackman." Science Education 63 (1979): 145-65.
6. 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 Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)
7. and Janice M. Irvine,Talk about Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
8. William A. MeKeever, "A Better Crop of Boys and Girls." Nature-Study Review 7 (December 1911): 266-68.
9. Mattie Rose Crawford, Guide to Nature Study for the Use of Teachers (Toronto: Copp, Clark, Company, 1902): 46-47.
10. Maurice A. Bigelow, "School Gardens," in A Cyclopedia of Education 2, ed. Paul Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1914), 10-13.
11. Bigelow, "School Gardens," 10.
12. Editorial comment by Maurice A. Bigelow 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.
13. Erasmus Schwab, The Practical School Garden. Being a Practical Contribution to Education, trans. Mrs. [Mary] Horace Mann (New York: M. L. Holbrook, 1879).
14. 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.
15. Massachusetts Board of Education, Annual Report (1904-1905), 104-5.
16. Van Evrie Kilpatrick, The School Garden: A Laboratory of Nature (New York: School Garden Association, 1940), 3-10.
17. See, for example, Laura Joanne Lawson, "Urban-Garden Programs in the United States: Values, Resources, and Role in Community Development" (PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2000)
18. and E. Backert, "History and Analysis of the School Garden Movement in America, 1890-1910" (PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1977).
19. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "Nature Not Books: Scientific Initiatives and the Origins of the Nature Study Movement in the 1890s." Isis 96 (September 2005): 324-52.
20. Ellen Eddy Shaw, "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.
21. Fannie Griscom Parsons, 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).
22. Alice Patterson, 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.
23. This prescient phrase was used by Shaw, "The Place of Children's Gardens," 43.
24. 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 William J. Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Period (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 148-76.
25. 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."
26. Elsa Miller, "GardenWork." Elementary School Teacher 6 (January 1906): 246-52.
27. 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.
28. The best source on the farm extension movement remains Gould Colman, Education and Agriculture: A History of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963)
29. This is the theme in Beverly Thomas Galloway's School Gardens: A Report on Some CooperativeWork in Normal Schools ofWashington, Bulletin 160 (United States Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations,Washington, DC, 1905). The School Gardening Movement, 1890-1920 67
30. L. H. Bailey to Senator Allison, 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.
31. L. H. Bailey described Spencer's efforts to W. R. George, January 17 and January 19, 1907, Bailey Papers, CUA.
32. The first significant historical effort was a thesis at Harvard by Dora Otis Mitchell, "A History of Nature Study," published in Nature-Study Review 19 (September 1923): 258-74
33. and (October 1923): 295-321
34. Also see Pamela M. Henson, "The Comstocks of Cornell: A Marriage of Interests," in Creative Couples in the Sciences, ed. Helena M. Pycior, Nancy G. Slack, and Pnina G. Abir-Am (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995)
35. and Philip Dorf, Liberty Hyde Bailey: An Informal Biography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956).
36. 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.
37. On Canada see Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "Nature Study in North America and Australasia, 1890-1945." Historical Records of Australian Science 11 (June 1997): 439-54.
38. These differing goals are discussed in Kristen Jane Greene, "The Macdonald Robertson Movement, 1899-1909" ((PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2004), chapter 3.
39. 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.
40. Circular dated May 5, 1903, with the signature of A. E. Tonner, 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.
41. Circular dated March 2, 1902, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIS), United States National Archives (USNA).
42. Circulars dated March 12 and 19, 1904. BIA, USNM.
43. Circular dated February 1, 1904. BIA, USNA.
44. Descriptive records of the BIA, NARA Central Plains and Pacific Region facilities, USNA. On the vocational emphasis and "outing work" see Robert A. Tennert, Jr., The Phoenix Indian School: Forced Assimilation in Arizona, 1891-1935 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 69, 72-75.
45. Brenda J. Child, Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000)
46. chapter 6 on "Working for the School" underscores the vocationalism at Carlisle, PA and at Flandreau, SD.
47. Also see Margaret L. Archuleta, Brenda J. Child, and K. Tsianina Lomawaima, eds., Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000 (Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum, 2000)
48. K. Tsianina Lomawaima, They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995)
49. and David W. Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995).
50. See GeorgeWashington Carver, 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.
51. 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 Kenneth R. Manning, Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Everett Just (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
52. P. P. Claxton 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.
53. L. H. Bailey to Ellen Taylor, March 11, 1907, Bailey papers, CUA.
54. 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.
55. The best historical discussion remains William Bowen, The Country Life Movement in America (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1974).
56. 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.
57. Commission on Country Life, Report, ed. Liberty Hyde Bailey (U.S. Senate Document 705, 60th Congress, 2nd session, 1909)
58. it was privately published with an introduction by Theodore Roosevelt in New York by Sturgis andWalton Co., 1911.
59. Wayne E. Fuller, The Old Country School: The Story of Rural Education in the Middle West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 218-45.
60. Cyril A. Stebbins, "Growing Children in California Gardens," Nature-Study Review 7 (February 1912): 67-74.
61. Laura Jeanne Lawson, "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.
62. 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.
63. Also see Andrew W. Crawford to L. H. Bailey, January 21, 1904, Bailey Papers, CUA.
64. Jennie B. Merrill, 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 yearsNewYork City would have school gardens and even a school garden farm. Spencer Extension Education Papers, CUA
65. also Merrill, "Children's Gardens" Proceedings and Addresses (NEA, 1898), 598.
66. Quoted in Reese, Power and Promise of School Reform, 152.
67. Henry S. Curtis surveyed "Vacation Schools, Playgrounds, and Recreational Centers," in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education, NYC 1 (1902-03): 2-7.
68. 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.
69. William A. Bullough, Cities and Schools in the Gilded Age: The Evolution of an Urban Institution (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1974), 104.
70. William J. Reese, "Between Home and School: Organized Parents, Clubwomen, and Urban Education in the Progressive Era." School Review 87 (November 1978): 16-17.
71. "Nature Study in City Schools," American Primary Teacher (June 1899) in Scrapbook 4, Arnold Papers, Simmons College Archives, Boston.
72. Trelstad, "Little Machines," 22.
73. Curtis, "Vacation Schools, Playgrounds, and Settlements," 2-7
74. John Leslie Randall, Nature Study and the City Child (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Playground Association, 1912).
75. Lucy C. Buell, "Home Gardens in Cleveland." Nature-Study Review 3 (February 1907): 38
76. also discussed in Trelstad, "Little Machines," 17-20.
77. Sixth Annual Report of the Home Gardening Association (Cleveland, 1905).
78. Louise Miller discussed her methods in Children's Gardens for School and Home: A Manual of Co-Operative Gardening (New York: D. Appleton&Co., 1904).
79. She is likely the same Louise Miller who produced A Course in Nature Study for the Public Schools for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 63 (1900)
80. and wrote "The Civic Aspect of School Gardens." Nature-Study Review 8 (February 1912): 74-77.
81. R. L. Templin, 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).
82. 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.
83. See Lawson, "Urban-Garden Programs," 195-97. This program was one of the few that seemed to be for boys only.
84. S. B. McCready, Gardening for Schools, Ontario Agriculture College, Bulletin no. 152 (December 1906), 28-29.
85. 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.
86. Wilbur Jackman 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.
87. 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.
88. Annual Report of the Board of Education for the Omaha Public Schools (South Omaha: Magic Printing Co., 1905).
89. Edna R. Thayer, "Children's Gardens at Dowling St. School, Worcester, Massachusetts." Nature-Study Review 1 (March 1905): 63.
90. Gardening persisted in Worcester, see Breta W. Childs, "The Need for Gardening as an Intermediate Grade Subject in City Schools." Nature-Study Review 19 (February 1923): 79-82.
91. R.J. Floody, "Worcester Garden City Plan; or, The Good Citizen Factory." Nature-Study Review 8 (April 1912): 145-50.
92. Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of Minneapolis for the Year 1873 (Minneapolis, 1874).
93. A summary of the program indicates that there were twenty gardens by 1916 under a year-round Supervisor of Gardening; Alfred Perkins, School Gardening in St. Paul, Minnesota (n.p., 1916).
94. Unpublished paper "School Gardens" by Dietrich Lange in his papers at the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN.
95. Susan B. Sipe of theWashington Normal School to L. H. Bailey, 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.
96. 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.
97. Gustave Straubenmueller, "The Work of the New York Schools for the Immigrant Class." Journal of Social Sciences 44 (1906): 165-83.
98. See A. L. Livermore, 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.
99. See Alice R. Northrup, "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.
100. Diary entry for May 9, 1915. Northrop Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA (SLR).
101. She started these in the 1890s, using Cornell leaflets; Northrup to Spencer, December 8, 1897
102. 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.
103. 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.
104. 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.
105. Henry F. Osborn to Alice Northrop, 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).
106. Florence E. Lillie, Course in Nature-Study for Elementary Grades of Minnesota Public Schools (Minneapolis: Syndicate Print, 1901), 5.
107. Reese, The Power and Promise of School Reform, 151-62.
108. 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: TrueWomanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1980).
109. 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.
110. Annual Report of School Garden Activities (Philadelphia, 1915), 8. Caro Miller, 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.
111. 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.
112. Van Evrie Kilpatrick, The School Garden: A Laboratory of Nature (New York: School Garden Association, 1940), 12.
113. 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.
114. 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.
115. C.D. Jarvis, "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.
116. School Gardens for the Public Schools of New York City (New York: Department of Education, 1917), 3.
117. 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.
118. See summary in the "Report on School Gardens for 1945," NYC Board of Education, Vertical File, Box 90, TC. The impact, however, was limited
119. 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.
120. 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.
121. 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.
122. 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.
123. Lawson, "Urban-Garden Programs in the United States," 1.
124. Anderson to L. H. Bailey, 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)
125. and Clayton F. Palmer, Elementary Horticulture for California Schools: A Manual for Teachers and Amateur Gardeners (n.p., 1910).
126. 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 Cyril A. Stebbins in 1909; he later produced The Principles of Agriculture through the School and Home Garden (NewYork: Macmillan Co., 1913).
127. Benjamin Marshall Davis, School Gardens for California Schools: A Manual for Teachers, State Normal School, Chico, Bulletin 1 (July 1905).
128. Alfred C. True, A History of Agricultural Experimentation and Research in the United States 1607-1925, Including a History of the United States Department of Agriculture (Washington: GPO, 1937).
129. 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.
130. Dick Crosby, "Report on School Gardens," Office of Experiment Stations, United States Department of Agriculture, Report, 1907, 573-84.
131. G. F. Ekstrom, Historical Development of Agricultural Education in the United States Prior to 1917 (Washington: US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1969)
132. and Wayne E. Fuller, "Making Better Farmers: The Study of Agriculture in Midwestern Country Schools, 1900-1923." Agricultural History 60 (Spring 1986): 154-68.
133. Susan Sipe, "School Gardening at the National Capital." Elementary School Teacher 8 (1905-1906): 417-19, plus illustrations.
134. James Ralph Jewell, "The Place of Nature Study, School Gardens, and Agriculture in Our School System." Pedagogical Seminary 13 (September 1906): 173-292
135. quotation from page 279.
136. See his report, "Agricultural Education Including Nature Study and School Gardens," Department of Interior, Bureau of Education Bulletin 2, no. 368 (1907).
137. 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.
138. R. L.Templin, 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.
139. Leaflets found at in a box labeled "Nature Study Pamphlets," Mann Library, Cornell University.
140. 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 onWWI, TC.
141. "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.
142. 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.
143. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture to Claxton, March 23, 1918, Historical File, 1870-1950, Box 43, OCE, USNA.
144. 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).
145. 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."
146. 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.
147. 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 Clarence M.Weed, Frederick A. Merrill, Lester S. Ivins, Cyril A. Stebbins, and John L. Randall. They each produced Courses in School-Supervised Gardening for first through sixth graders in their region published by the Bureau of Education in 1919.
148. Undated memorandum in Historical Files, 1870-1950, Box 43, OCE, USNA.
149. American Forestry 23 (October 1917): 599.
150. Italics in original. Eliot to P. P. Claxton, April 18 and April 27, 1918, Historical File, 1870-1950, OCE, USNA.
151. Her stories and many other accounts are found in a large scrapbook of School Garden Army newspaper clippings, Historical File, 1870-1950, OCE, USNA.
152. 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.
153. Susan Sipe Alburtis, "War and the School Garden." Nature-Study Review 14 (March 1918): 124.
154. The scrapbook is in the Historical File, OCE, USNA.
155. The ongoing influence of the SGA was evident in Anna Botsford Comstock's edited series of "Reports from Garden Supervisors." Nature-Study Review 16 (March 1920): 123-129.
156. The Department of Agriculture also presented helpful information in its anonymously authored announcement, "Lantern Slide Sets Loaned by the United States Government." Nature-Study Review 15 (March 1919): 107.
157. Lathrop's The War Garden Victorious is now an e-book at www.earthlypursuits.com/WarGarV (Accessed August 1, 2005).
158. "Editorial: The School Garden Outlook." Nature-Study Review 17 (March 1921): 142
159. and Adelaide Derringer, "Symposium of Garden Supervisors from Coast to Coast." Nature-Study Review 17 (March 1921): 103-20.
160. Jarvis, "What Shall be Our Policy?" 175.
161. 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),
162. and the more general shift is discussed inWayne J. Urban and Jennings L.Wagoner, Jr., American Education: A History (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004), chapter 8.
163. Superintendent of Schools, New York City, Annual Report for 1924-25, 271.
164. 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.
165. 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.
166. Florence C. Fox, Cycles of Garden Life and Plant Life, Department of Interior, Bureau of Education Bulletin 25 (1925). The Federation also sponsored a pamphlet by Mary K. Sherman, Natural Science and Nature Study in the School (1920-22).
167. L. Lenore Conover to E. Laurence Palmer, May 22, 1927, American Nature-Study Society Papers, Cornell University Archives, Ithaca, NY.
168. Lawson, "Urban-Garden Programs in the United States" devotes chapter seven to urban gardens in general during the depression of the 1930s.
169. Bullough, Cities and Schools in the Gilded Age, 22-23.
170. Anna Botsford Comstock noted that the Cornell education program was going in this direction in "American Nature-Study Society." Science 57 (February 1923): 184.
171. For a description of such efforts see Arthur Newton Pack, The Nature Almanac: A Handbook of Nature Education (Washington: American Nature Society, 1927).