TREE PLANTING IN SCHOOLS

Evening Star, Issue 19352, 11 September 1926, Page 17

TREE PLANTING IN SCHOOLS

m AMERICAN EXPERIMENT

Tree planting, with seed beds and nurseries as features in th'e work programme, has been instituted as a part of the regular public school curriculum at the Forest Park Junior High and Central Street Schools at Springfield, Massachusetts. Miss Fannie A. Stobbings. supervisor of Nature work in the schools, believes that this will be extended to the schools throughout tho city. So far as is known, this departure is the first example m this country of such work pursued in a definite and systematic way by public school pupils. The City Park Board, the Chamber of Commerce, and tho State Department of Conservation, as well as the school authorities, are co-operating in support of tho plan. A plot of land was set aside in Forest Park for tho planting of trees, and seedling trees were provided from tho State nursery at Amherst. Several thousand trees already have been planted on the plot. Seed beds will be established wherever land is available near the school buildings. Seeds gathered by the pupils may be planted there, and the seedlings transplanted later. Plans are ill the making to establish other small nurseries near various schools, similar to that started in Forest Park. Superintendent Zenos E. Scott, of the school system, is watching the experiment with great interest. Terming this work a natural outgrowth of what has been done in tree study in the schools for some time past, Miss Stebhings said : “ Tracing a tree from the feed through infancy and on to maturity must result in greater respect for tre© and plant life. It may be regarded as the culmination of study carried on from the earliest grades, and observation of the trees .that shade the school grounds through tho season, from tho time they bud in the spring until the ripening and falling of the leaves iu autumn.

“The work we shall do will include tho planting of both conifers and deciduous trees. By this means we believe that a lively and ever-growing interest in forestry and the conserving of trees in our streets and parks may be stimulated.”