WblAiSTA HORTiCULTUEAL SOCIETY. 363 



WOMEN IN FLORICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE. 



BY >niS. SYLVESTER JOHNSON. 



We are told tbat in the first garden there grew everything that was 

 useful and beautiful. It was planned and planted by the divine hand. 

 The best there was to give— indeed, the best that could have been given— 

 a rural home. 



The love of home and the beautiful are ours by divine inheritance. 

 And there is no home so humble or so small but that its beauty may be 

 enhanced and it be made more attractive by its outdoor surroundings. 

 Woman, who is the homekeeper, with her love of neatness and order, is 

 well fitted for the cultivation of flowers and the adornment of her 

 grounds and gai'den. It is her province to extend her domain beyond 

 the four walls of her house out into the fresh air and sunshine, which 

 are so health-giving and necessary. Nothing can be more ennobling than 

 the cultivation of our gardens and flowers. We see so many wonderful 

 things in the mechanism of flowers, and they help us to look away from 

 nature unto nature's God, and we silently worship Him. 



I feel that I can say very little, if anything, to this audience tonight 

 of benefit, but if I could reach the ear of the poor mother, who, per- 

 chance, has only a narrow bit of ground in city or village that is often so 

 unsightly, I would speak to her of the benefits she and her family might 

 receive by the careful cultivation of this ground. And she would be sur- 

 prised at the amount of vegetables that she could have by utilizing all 

 that she could possibly spare. She could have early vegetables and others 

 that are so necessary for her family use. I would ask her to border 

 her little paths with fiowers and have vines over the walls. I was going 

 to say that she could have common fiowers, but there are no common 

 flowers; all are beautiful, from the commonest flower beneath our feet 

 to the -most expensive. The mother, with her outdoor surroundings, 

 would give a better inheritance to her children. 



And having taught her children the love and care of each germ, blos- 

 som and fruitage, they, too, would be tenderer and purer, and something 

 better, and each, in time, would go out to make better homes for them- 

 selves. 



Flowers, as I have said, are within the reach of all who love them 

 and take enough interest in them to care for them. I will speak first of 

 vines. They are so beautiful and occupy so little room, with the sweet- 

 scented blossoms of the young honeysuckle, climbing roses, the passion 

 vine, wifh its wonderful fiowers and ivylike leaves, all together go to 

 make a veritable Eden of our homes. 



