Posts Tagged ‘shrubs’
early schools – the exotic and the common
In my Aunt’s book about early schooling in Nova Scotia, she tells an amusing story about field days at school:
… I recall another field day when Dr. DeWolfe, Miss Harris, and Miss Baker came with shrubs to our school. The shrubs were ten cents each. My mother had always longed for a weigela and a snowball and we were delighted that at last she could have her wish, for both these varieties were among Dr. DeWolf’s collection. They were duly planted at my home on the bank of the French River. One turned out to be a high bush cranberry and the other a spiraea, but today we still refer to them as the “snowball” and “weigela” and, I may mention, they have many an offspring throughout our province.
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I must have seen the high bush cranberry and spiraea many times at my mother’s old home, but I don’t remember them in particular. I do remember the gardens, lush with rose bushes, tiger lilies, and grape vines.
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Copyright 2016 Jane Tims
Arbour Day in New Brunswick – 1888
In a previous post, I wrote about the importance of trees in the school yard and the celebration of Arbour Day in schools in Nova Scotia during the early 1900s. One room schools in New Brunswick also celebrated Arbour Day.
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The 1888 Annual Report of the Schools of New Brunswick, by the Chief Superintendent of Education, reports on 1888 Arbour Day celebrations in New Brunswick, years before the first official Arbour Day in Ontario, Canada (1906). The purpose of Arbour Day celebrations in the school was:
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to encourage the improvement and ornamentation of school grounds and thereby of cultivating on the part of pupils habits of neatness and order, and a taste for the beautiful in nature …
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In 1888 New Brunswick schools celebrated Arbour Day on May 18. In the whole province, students planted 6,571 trees, 650 shrubs and 393 flower beds!
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Copyright Jane Tims 2016
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