School gardens and beyond: progressive conservation, moral imperatives and the local landscape: Fid-Bau Portal

School gardens and beyond: progressive conservation, moral imperatives and the local landscape

Robin, Libby

New educational theories swept the British world around the turn of the century. The school child was no longer an ‘administrated unit’ or an ‘information receptacle’, but rather a ‘growing flower’² There was a growing awareness of Swiss and German theories of the school as a ‘kindergarten’, or flower garden where the flowers were young children, an idea which had also been taken up in various ways by the French and the Americans. ‘With this renewed culture of child-lite, the literal culture of flowers has fitly been keeping trace’, observed the British professor of education, Patrick Geddes. He noted the first steps were an indoor flower-shelf, which prospered despite fears from administrators that ‘watering might wet the floors’, then window boxes developed, then finally a full ‘school garden’ in the playground ‘where even trees may be planted’.³ The British school gardens were very organised. Miss Latter's diagram shows eighteen kitchen garden plots, each 4′ × 2′, then on the other side of the 18″ path, eighteen flower garden plots, each 3′ × 4′ 6″, separated by 6″ paths. The layout of this garden was designed to make it clear that it is a serious ‘classroom’ exercise.