High Plains Horticulture: A History

8: Forging New Paths in Ornamental Horticulture

129 p I n a year-end essay in 1906, their twentieth year in business, the publishers of Field and Farm editorialized on “a gradual change coming over the customs of our agricultural people so that their surroundings take on the aspect of eastern environments.” By this they meant not only better-built homes and well-maintained yards and gardens but also the amenities of a “higher civilization ” such as rural mail service, neighborhood telephone systems, Grange and lyceum associations, women’s clubs, and farmers’ institutes—all helping to reduce the drudgery of rural life as it had long been known. To be sure, those amenities by no means reached all rural homes, but they were sufficient for the publishers to conclude that the region’s residents were “becoming more easternized year by year and are gradually growing out of the wild and wooly traditions of the good old pioneering days.”1 Despite its name, Field and Farm not only catered to the “intelligent agriculturalists ” on the isolated homesteads and in the small communities of the arid West but also appealed to city dwellers involved in the cultivation of 8 Forging New Paths in Ornamental Horticulture 130 Forging New Paths in Ornamental Horticulture gardens, whether as professionals or amateurs. Indeed, Field and Farm was headquartered in Denver, which, since the late 1880s, had distinguished itself as the principal city of the mountains and plains. Since its founding in 1886, Field and Farm had editorialized in favor of gardening , tree planting, landscaping, and horticulture generally. In fact, in their first year, the editors successfully urged Governor Benjamin Eaton to proclaim Colorado’s first Arbor Day, noting that Colorado’s neighbors, Nebraska and Kansas, already celebrated that holiday. In his proclamation, Governor Eaton tied together planting trees for the present and putting down roots for the future, between “beautifying our homes, cemeteries, highways, public parks and landscape” and “making thoughtful provision for the happiness of those who are to come after us.”2 Besides encouraging residents to volunteer a day to plant trees, Eaton urged public school teachers throughout Colorado to engage their students in “proper and practical observance” of Arbor Day. For the first annual celebration , Field and Farm reported that Denver students assembled in City Park from 10:30 until noon; each school was assigned a grove or walkway named for the occasion to honor a national or local notable, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Colorado’s first territorial governor, William Gilpin. Students at the various locations listened to short speeches—including readings from writings of the respective notables—and celebrated with songs, making the park “ring with the noise of their glad young voices.”3 Celebration of Arbor Day was regularized in 1890, with the third Friday in April officially declared a holiday in all Colorado public schools. Teachers and principals were required to engage their students in the planting of trees and other civic exercises; school superintendents had to report annually to the state forester on Arbor Day activities within their respective counties.4 Despite the published rules, the editors of Field and Farm grew increasingly critical of the failure to achieve practical results. After Arbor Day 1896 passed with little school activity statewide, the editors lamented that the holiday had become “a good deal of a farce,” but it could have been an “occasion of grand achievement.” Turn every schoolhouse grounds into an arboretum, the editors suggested, so that students could easily study all species of trees growing in Colorado. In addition to serving as one of the most attractive sites in any community, school grounds could also provide space for gardens where children could both learn and work. By way of precedent, in France gardens existed at 30,000 public schools where primary schoolteachers were required to give practical instruction in horticulture.5 Forging New Paths in Ornamental Horticulture 131 While the editors of Field and Farm promoted the narrowly practical and vocational benefits of teaching children about horticulture, Colorado’s superintendent of public instruction from 1898 to 1904 held a much broader view of the function of the school garden in the curriculum. To be sure, children in rural schools should receive practical training in horticulture and agriculture. Beyond that, however, Helen Thatcher Loring Grenfell (1863–1935) envisioned the school garden as a valuable aid in teaching the basic principles of the natural sciences to all children, both rural and urban. Responsible...