What a National Botanic Garden Should Mean to the 
Women Gardeners of America 
David Fairchild, United. States Department of Agriculture 
The United States of America is one of the few countries in the Three Impor- 
worid which has no national botanic garden worthy of the name. It tant 
is true that we have privately endowed gardens and excellent city- Matters to 
owned gardens, but there is no great national garden. The plant lov- Which Gar- 
ing women of England and Japan have often asked why there is a den Club 
lack of knowledge among the women of America in regard to the Members 
cultivation of flowers and flowering shrubs and the beautification of Should Give 
their yards. No country in the world which approaches ours in Immediate 
wealth has a greater dearth of understanding and appreciation among Attention 
its women of the beautiful flowering plants with which their door- 
yards could and should be decorated. There are many reasons for 
this, first among which is perhaps the fact that our cUmate has greater 
extremes of heat and cold than occur anywhere in England or the 
continent of Europe, and many of the gorgeous flowers and flowering 
shrubs that have made English gardens so famous will not thrive for 
us. But there is another reason which centers in the non-existence of 
a great federal botanical garden from which a stimulus should radiate, 
encouraging and assisting those women who have a taste for gardening. 
A national botanical garden is a place into which should be poured 
all the useful and ornamental plants of the world which are adapted to 
cultivation in that particular spot. While it is true that on any one spot 
only a small fraction of the plants of the world can be grown, it is also 
true that, without a center such as that afforded by a botanical garden 
or arboretum, there is no place where a woman interested in orna- 
mental horticulture can go and see the new plants or can read and get 
information about them. It is the logical place in which to maintain 
collections of varieties of ornamental plants which are correctly named. 
The amateur members of the Rose societies and Iris societies and 
Peony societies would make pilgrimages to the garden to study these 
collections and select the new varieties shown there for their gardens. 
The nurserymen would welcome heartily the naming of their varieties, 
so that there would not be the ridiculous mistakes in varietal names 
which do occur and which so discourage the amateur gardeners. 
With the estabHshment of a National Botanic Garden in the City 
of Washington, which would be made possible by the passage of 
Senate biU 4485, presented at the sixty-sixth Congress, second session, 
there should be started a stimulus for ornamental horticulture as weU 
as practical horticulture, the value of which would be hard to overes- 
timate. 
Gardening in this country is entering upon a new stage — the de- 
velopment of the forms best suited to our pecuUar cHmates. These 
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