This paper explores how popular representations of the slum and the gutter play of children were used to elaborate a discourse of appropriate environments for the education of children under the age of five in the UK at the beginning of the twentieth century. The question of the ‘proper’ place for children was subject to wide discussion, ranging from proponents of free kindergartens (later, nursery schools), such as Margaret McMillan, to the government’s Consultative Committee. The objective is to analyse how rhetoric found expression in innovative institutional structures and policy outcomes. The empirical data for the paper is derived from annual reports published by Froebelian free kindergartens in London, first-hand accounts by infant school head teacher Clara Grant, and on the Report of the 1908 Consultative Committee. The findings illuminate the differing views of discussants as institutions and policy began to develop and anticipate future political debates about provision. They suggest that there was general consensus as to the desirability of free kindergartens/nursery schools and that the Froebelian garden in the city was conceptualised by all players, with varying degrees of explicitness, as an arena for societal change as well as offering a new educational model for young children.