Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1917 — VALUE OF HOME GARDENS [ARTICLE]

VALUE OF HOME GARDENS

Distinctly Educational, Apart From the Pleasure Derived From the Work of Cultivation. There are various angles from which to praise the home garden work in which 15,000 Washington-children engaged this spring. It helps make for a city beautiful; the children’s waste time is gmployed; thrift Is developed. But one of the chief benefits ia educational. This gardening teaches things that cannot be learned Inside a classroom. The youth gets the joy of_ “seeing things grow.’’ He acquires a capital counter-irritant for the supposedly artificial atmosphere of the bouse. He gets in touch with the laws of nature, the pulse of living things, the great creative forces. He works in good, wholesome flirt. He learns something of where his food comes from. He loses the illusion of the tin can, hermetically sealed, germ proof, wax paper school of household economy. We mtfst live in cities, and living in them does not bring half the evils that the “back to the farm” advocates would have us believe. But we make our cities difficult to live in by not doing the things children' are doing—keeping our feet on the ground, and keeping in touch with Mother Earth.