48 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HORTICULTURE AND LAND- 

 SCAPE GARDENING. 



President J. L. Snyder: 



Sir: I submit the report of the department of Horticulture and 

 landscape gardening for the yegr ending June 30, 1907. 



Course of stiidi/. The new course of study adopted by the faculty 

 permits this department to inaugerate several desirable changes in its 

 schedule among which are the following: 



The futility of requiring women students to take the same work 

 given to men students, especially the courses in vegetable gardening and 

 fruit growing, has long been apparent to us. The men have had much 

 preliminary work that the women have not; moreover few women 

 students are interested in commercial fruit growing and vegetable 

 gardening, but they are interested in such subjects as the planting and 

 care of home grounds, flower growing, window gardening and the home 

 vegetable and fruit garden. The new schedule provides for two special 

 courses, elective to women students only, covering this work. 



A second improvement is in the distribution of time. We have had 

 15 hours a week for junior fruit growing and 13 hours a week for 

 sophomore vegetable gardening, and all students in the agricultural 

 course have been required to take these long professional courses. This 

 time is now cut in half, and the courses given are amateur, not profes- 

 sional, the professional work being given in the junior and senior years 

 to those students who have elected horticulture. In other words, a, dis- 

 tinction has been made between amateur and professional- horticulture, 

 and the amount of time given to the former has been reduced in order 

 that there may be ample time for professional training in the senior 

 year. 



A third advantage is the opportunity that the student now has to 

 specialize in his senior year on one branch of horticulture. Formerly 

 all horticulture students took the same work throughout. But we must 

 recognize that what is commonly called horticulture includes several 

 very distinct lines of work. There is no more relation, for example, be- 

 tween the two horticultural subjects, greenhouse industrj^ and pomology, 

 than between vegetable gardening and agronomy. Moreover, this de- 

 Iiartment teaches landscape gardening, which, as a profession, is not 

 horticulture at all but an art, based partly on horticulture, partly on 

 engineering and partly on architecture. So the demand has arisen for 

 sjsecial training in each one of the several distinct branches of this de- 

 partment. Just as the agricultural department is now splitting up into 

 agronomy, animal industry, dairying and poultry industry divisions, 

 etc., so the horticultural department must eventuall}' split up into the 

 several distinct divisions of landscajie gardening, pomology, greenhouse 

 industry and vegetable gardening. Tliis division will be much slower with 

 us than that now in progress in the agricultural department because the 

 commercial interest represented are not as large; but it will inevitably 

 come in response to the increasing demand upon the college for more 



