Social Order of the Garden Hoe
THREE years ago one man in Kansas City, a man who had in his soul the love of growing things and the desire to dig in the soil, transformed an unsightly back yard into a flower and vegetable garden. Since the cultivation of the soil, especially by amateurs, begets a social desire for conversation, this gardener enticed his neighbors one by one into his back yard and showed his growing wonders. Occasionally a dish of fresh lettuce or a basket of string-beans was passed over the fence to a neighbor’s kitchen; and bunches of old-fashioned flowers now and then gladdened an old lady who had remembrances of the unconventional gardens of her earlier years. It was natural that the man’s neighbor on either side should catch his enthusiasm. He was consulted and willingly explained that beans grew on vines and required supports; that potatoes should be planted in rows; and that it was not necessary to use a whole potato for each plant; and so on. The result was that these three neighbors (and their families) became so intimate over their back yards that it was decided to pull down the dividing fences and to make the three gardens one. This contagion spread from lot to lot until every back yard in the block was in cultivation, and the fences had all disappeared. Everybody knew what everybody else was planting, even down to the varieties of each vegetable, and a spirited rivalry sprang up. The man who produced ninety quarts of strawberries from a plot of ground twelve by thirty-five feet, was so lifted with pride that he told the reporters, and received honorable mention in the Kansas City “Star.” Another was raised from obscurity by his marvelous beans. “We run the place as one big family,” explained the man who started it. “The unkindest thing we ever do to one another is to send a neighbor a dish of truck finer than he has raised in his own garden.” From this man’s experiment have already sprung two results of infinitely more worth than all the vegetables that have been raised. Every man in the block has a new object in life — one that makes him hurry home as soon as business hours are over; he wants the fun of digging in his garden. The second result affects the whole block and sweetens the atmosphere of the neighborhood; there is a community of interest that brings neighbors into close relationships. This certainly is worth while.—September “World’s Work.”