While in many cases, especially in large cities, the necessity was recognized of getting the children out of the great desert of brick and mortar into the open air and into companionship with life in the field, the garden, the brooks, and the woods, it had nowhere resulted in a systematic effort to aid the children of an entire city in that way until it was tried in Berlin.  Of course it is well understood, not only abroad, but in New York and in other large cities of this country, that something must be done to alleviate the want of space and fresh air, and so recreation piers and roof gardens are provided, excursions of schools into parks are undertaken, open-air playgrounds are instituted, and similar efforts are made tending to mitigate the evil effects of city life; but all these efforts are merely sporadic or temporary; they do not attack the evil at the roots; moreover they are only drops in the bucket when compared with that which is necessary.

This tendency to cooperative and collective action has resulted in this particular case in thousands of the children’s "Arbor Gardens" round about the city.  It is an experience “en gros,” one of such dimensions that cavil ceases and admiration rises supreme.

The German poor are very poor indeed, but parents were induced to rent, at a price of 4 marks ($1) or about 20 cents a month from May to October for the summer season, a patch of land in the suburbs of Berlin unfit for farmland because cut up by railroad tracks and newly laid-out streets.  On one of these patches a family might erect an arbor, or a small structure of boards with a wide veranda and a corrugated iron roof, for housing themselves and children during the summer months.  The dwellings are of the most primitive kind and rather flimsy; no permanent structure can be allowed, for at any time the owner of the land may give notice to vacate for the purpose of erecting a row of houses, railroad buildings, or other permanent structures.  The tenants themselves build fences of wire or plant hedges to keep the different plots apart.  On these patches the children, under the guidance of teachers, parents, and appointed guardians, began to sow flower seeds, plant shrubs, vines, and trees, or raise kitchen vegetables, each group or family according to its own desires and needs.  Since the “arbors” are small they do not decrease the arable land of the allotments much, and there is still room left for swings, gymnastic apparatus, and similar contrivances, as well as bare sandy spots for little tots to play in.  The various allotments are mostly uniform in size and are reached by narrow three- or four-foot lanes, on which occasionally are seen probationary officers or guardians who keep the peace and settle cases of disturbance.

The “arbor gardens” are established on every square rod of unused land round about the city, on vacant lots, far out to the borders of the well-trained woods and royal forests.  Small tradesmen, laboring men, civil officials of low degrees, etc., have found it profitable to forsake their tenements in the city and move kith and kin into those “arbor colonies.”  The tenements in Berlin are as bad as in our own big cities, only better policed.