Mapping the history of school gardens

Urban Farm DB summary

This chapter explores historical aspects of the current school-gardening movement, showing how gardens were taken up in educational theory by Comenius, Rousseau, Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Montessori, and examining how ideas for children's gardening developed in the late 19th century and how children were viewed as beings to be "cultivated." It discusses how the garden emerged as a further space where children could be civilised -- moulded and shaped into particular kinds of beings -- and analyzes early US school gardens of the 20th century. It analyzes texts produced about and for "children's gardening," focusing on how garden writers sought to encourage gardening and an interest in the natural world.