"On the amateur lady gardeners of America rests the future of 
horticulture in America." Mr. E. H. Wilson of the Arnold Arboretum 
made this statement with scheming conviction and not without con- 
sideration. 
It is rather a call to arms, isn't it, and we who have taken our 
stand not too publicly as exponents of better gardening, can we afford 
to ignore it? 
We must admit that the really good man horticulturist is rather 
better than the good woman horticulturist but as we think over the 
people we know who have gardens, we come to reaKze that it is 
usually the woman of the family who has the deepest and m.ost 
abiding interest in growing things. It is she who plans, orders, praises 
and complains. Her superintendent or gardener may be the medium 
through whom her likes and dislikes reach the nursery or seedsman 
but if she is any sort of a gardener, their expression is an ultimatum. 
There are manifold troubles besetting the gardener's path just 
now: scarcity of labor, results of enforced neglect during the war. 
Quarantine 37, enormously increased expense, and if we are downed 
by all these things our gardens and with them the gardens of the 
future mil go. We need not argue for or against the value of our 
craft. We stated our position and belief when we formed the Garden 
Club of America. Now the object of our association in that Club 
is to ensure the future of horticulture and fulfill our destiny. 
Increased expense is an economic question we cannot hope to 
solve as a separate issue but with what money we have to spend we 
can do a few good things instead of a number of insignificant ones. 
Our decreased labor we can use wisely, too; and have you thought 
how much our Member Clubs can do toward influencing and training 
young [gardeners? We can hold out, the hope of adequate pay 
for thoughtful and disinterested work. We can recognize gardening 
as the "oldest, most honorable and most elevating of callings" and, 
as such, a profession worthy to be studied and esteemed. Perhaps 
some of the things we lost through neglect were not worth having 
and surely we have found out what things we have really missed and 
cannot do without. And if we will just read the modest pages of the 
Bulletin we shall find out what Quarantine 37 is doing to us and 
what we can do about it. 
There are problems for us to solve and work for us to do and 
their solution and accomplishment will result not merely in small 
personal pleasures and attainments. If we will garden finely, acquir- 
ing knowledge, overcoming obstacles, restraining trivial likings, 
demanding right simpKcity, though the desert may be slow to blos- 
som our trail may soon be easily followed. 
For the little that each one of us can do a reward has been offered. 
