APPENDIX 

 NOTE ON GARDEN CLUBS 



"Have we progressed in gardening?" asks Doctor Wil- 

 helm Miller in "Country Life in America"; and then pro- 

 ceeds to show that, while deprecating all boastfulness on 

 our part, we have certainly made great strides as to the 

 amount and the quality of our horticultural growth in the 

 last ten years. Doctor Miller adds columns of interesting 

 details to prove his assertion. In a single inconspicuous 

 line occur these words: "First women's clubs devoted to 

 gardening." Insufficient emphasis, it seemed and seems to 

 me, to lay upon the sight of this organization of garden 

 clubs now proceeding with such amazing rapidity. To those 

 to whom the art of gardening is dear, to all heart-felt gar- 

 deners, a significance of the very highest order attaches it- 

 self at once to the spectacle of these clubs rising in every 

 direction in our land — a significance which is really a 

 prophecy, a promise of beauty. 



If the Garden Club of Philadelphia is, as I believe it to 

 be, the first of its kind to come into being in this country, 

 then it is one of the greatest horticultural benefactors Amer- 

 ica has seen, and in time to come many gardeners will rise 

 up and call it blessed. To some people it may seem that the 

 art of gardening is too gentle, too delicate, to admit of its 

 devotees' submission to rules made by ordered groups; on 

 the other hand, it is a complex art; and now so popular a 



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