HORTICULTURE AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN. 75 



involve too great a tax upon physical strength and in which capital 

 is not a requisite. While school gardening has already spread 

 throughout many of the principal cities and towns in this part of 

 the country, there is still room for its development in each city or 

 municipality in which it does not already exist. 



Teaching of Horticulture and writing on allied subjects form a 

 large part of what women can do in the way of earning a living 

 from their knowledge of horticultural subjects. The latter hitherto 

 has been one of the means by which woman has contributed most 

 to Horticulture. This is a very important branch, for it is through 

 the literature on the subject that the interest of the general public is 

 aroused and the future generations will get the greatest benefit of 

 what has already been accomplished. 



As to the modes of studying these various phases of Horticulture, 

 as I have already mentioned, it often happens that a young woman 

 has been brought up in the business. In that case she has little 

 need of going to a school to perfect her knowledge along her chosen 

 line. As there is no training, particularly in the raising of flowers, 

 fruits, and vegetables, so valuable as the training one gets from the 

 continued practical work of helping others of more mature experi- 

 ence and competence. There are, however, horticultural schools. 

 All the State agricultural colleges, I believe, open their doors to 

 women, and statistics show that a few women enter each of these 

 colleges every year. In the far West, at any rate, at the Washington 

 State College, at Pullman, there are more women in proportion 

 than in the more Eastern colleges. In the East there are private 

 horticultural schools where one may obtain knowledge along these 

 lines. One of these is Lowthorpe, the School at Groton, Massa- 

 chusetts, which, however, pays more attention to its landscape 

 classes and to the side of Horticulture which bears upon the land- 

 scape values, than it does to commercial floriculture, although that, 

 too, receives some attention. Since the Massachusetts Institute 

 of Technology has eliminated its special course in landscape archi- 

 tecture the Lowthorpe School is the only school in the Eastern 

 States where women may study landscape gardening to a full extent. 

 A school of Horticulture for women is about to be opened at Chelten- 

 ham near Philadelphia. This school aims to give more attention 

 to Horticulture than to landscape work, and includes in its cur- 



