This article explores the history of school gardens in educational projects linked to four scholars at Teachers College (Bigelow, Dewey, Kilpatrick and Carney) during the early twentieth century. It concludes that gardening activities were designed primarily for urban children who lacked experience in farming. The role of gardening in experimental schools in the North is compared with proposals for rural schools in the Midwest and for segregated schools for Black youth in the South. Various logics are identified by analysing the educational arguments used to promote or dismiss school gardening, and the rationales for educating or retaining a certain type of labour force. A combination of these arguments appears in Dewey's vindication of the emergency production of foodstuffs during the First World War. The different logics point to the paradox connecting the themes of a 'return to nature' and 'love of labour' as constants in the school gardening discourse.