Plants Feed Them All: Gardening, Education, and the Science of Plant Improvement

Originally published as “Should Teach Gardening in Public Schools,” Eagle Rock Sentinel, April 19, 1911.

By J. J. Broomall

Original text by J. J. Broomall is in the public domain. Compilation, editorial notes, introduction, biography, and revised text copyright © 2026 by Steve K. Lloyd. All rights reserved. 

More than a decade before J. J. Broomall began writing about the “mission” of the dahlia, he had already set down much of the philosophy that would animate his later work. In this 1911 essay, ostensibly an argument for teaching practical gardening in public schools, Broomall moves quickly into larger questions: the scientific cultivation of plants, the productive possibilities of Southern California, the relationship between plants and human survival, and the prospect of improving food crops far beyond their existing capacities.

The essay is especially revealing in hindsight. Broomall argues that humanity must learn to make each food-producing plant “a more efficient machine for extracting our nourishment from the earth,” a formulation he would reuse almost verbatim fifteen years later in the 1926 version of The Mission of the Dahlia. His educational argument likewise anticipates the 1923 Mission, where he again insists that plant culture should be taught in public schools by teachers who understand what they are teaching.

Yet this is not an early version of The Mission of the Dahlia. The dahlia never enters the argument. Instead, the essay shows that many of the convictions Broomall would later associate with the dahlia’s larger purpose were already present by 1911. What changed in his later writings was the role assigned to the flower itself: the dahlia became the “object lesson” through which he hoped others might be awakened to possibilities in plant improvement that had occupied his own thinking for years.

People who are advocating sending the “Landless Man” to the “Manless Land” apparently ignore the fact that the “Landless Man” must possess some knowledge of what should be done and how to do it. If he does not have the required knowledge, it is extremely doubtful if either the man or the land will be benefited by the experiment.

That there are many men, especially among those living in cities, who are ignorant in regard to the cultivation of plants is beyond question, and in this case ignorance will certainly not result in bliss.

The writer once sold some tomato plants to the manager of a large ranch who inquired if they bore more than one to a plant. That question was about on a par with the one propounded by a city boarder when he desired to know “which cow gave buttermilk.”

The tilling of the soil is becoming more and more of a science, and the farmer or gardener of today must, in order to successfully compete, possess the required scientific knowledge and skill, or his efforts will result in failure.

There is an old saying that “the farmer feeds them all,” but the truth would be more correctly stated by saying that plants feed them all.

Some writers have advanced the theory that the population is increasing faster than the means of subsistence, but from the limited knowledge I have of plant life I am convinced that the earth is capable of providing an abundance of sustenance for many times its present population. I believe that the half dozen counties known as Southern California, by reason of their fertile soil and superior climatic conditions, are capable of, and in time will support, a population of many millions of people.

But to make this possible we must not only know how to cultivate plants, we must thoroughly understand plants and make of each food-producing plant a more efficient machine for extracting our nourishment from the earth. Great as has been the improvement of food-producing plants in the past, it will be even greater in the future.

The study of plant life is not only the most interesting and fascinating of all studies, but the most necessary and vital. More than nine-tenths of what we eat and wear is obtained from Mother Earth by means of plants; our very existence depends upon the growth of plants. Therefore, nothing should be left undone that will aid us in obtaining the greatest possible results from our efforts in tilling the soil.

Agricultural Colleges are doing a good work, and the fact that high schools are taking up the most necessary of all studies is a hopeful sign, but this is not enough. Practical gardening should be taught in the common schools. The great majority of children never get to high school, much less to college, and they are the ones most in need of such instruction.

Every school ground should have its garden plot. More than this, every school ground should be a miniature park instead of a barren waste, as is generally the case. At least one-half hour of each school day should be devoted to teaching this, the most necessary of all studies.

If the teachers are not capable of teaching the children on this subject, and the most of them are not, competent culturists should be employed to teach both scholars and teacher. If this is properly done they will be interested, and will enjoy the time devoted to such work.

Every scholar should know how to plant a garden, how to irrigate and cultivate. They should know, for instance, that melons and cucumbers should never be planted close together, and why. They should know that corn planted in hills ten feet apart would as surely disappoint the grower as it would if planted 10 inches apart, and why. They should be taught the difference in the treatment of “warm plants” and “cold plants,” and why the treatment that would suit one class of plants would be disastrous to another.

They should know that in Southern California it would be as unwise to sow pansy seed in April as to plant melons in October. To be brief, the A. B. C. of plant cultivation should be taught with other primary studies.

One of the results of such an education would be that many an unsightly backyard, and vacant town lot now chiefly used as depositaries for tin cans and dead cats, would be made to “blossom as the rose.”

With the acquired knowledge many families could, by utilizing spare moments, raise plenty of fresh wholesome vegetables for their own use, for it is an easy matter to raise $100 worth of produce on a small town lot. The grower being both producer and consumer, there would be no haggling over prices, nor complaint as to the staleness of the goods.

If our government would use the money now wasted in senseless and useless free seed distribution in educating the people on this subject, I believe it would do a great deal more good.

I have been the recipient, without any solicitation on my part, of probably something less than a half bushel of those free packets of seeds. For good and sufficient reason I never planted but one packet. I was sorry I planted that.

1. Relationship to The Mission of the Dahlia**.** Broomall reused the 1911 phrase describing a food-producing plant as “a more efficient machine for extracting our nourishment from the earth” in closely corresponding form in his 1926 Mission of the Dahlia. The later essay also returns to his 1911 argument that the earth could support many times its existing population. The 1923 Mission develops a different strand of this early essay, particularly Broomall’s advocacy of plant education in the public schools. These relationships make the 1911 article an important antecedent to the later Mission writings, but not an early state of the same work.

2. Later republication. In 1917, portions of this essay were republished under the title Teach Gardening in the Public Schools. The later item identifies itself as a partial republication rather than a new Broomall composition and also reports an earlier appearance in The Pacific Garden. The publication sequence of the Pacific Garden version has not yet been established.

3. Textual readings. The present text derives from a cleaned transcription of the April 19, 1911 Eagle Rock Sentinel witness. The readings “Landless Man” / “Manless Land,” “ignorance will certainly not result in bliss,” and “the half dozen counties known as Southern California” have been confirmed against the newspaper page image.