bers of a club have not yet reached a point of knowledge where this is 
possible and yet are in earnest in their desire to learn, they could, to 
begin with, follow a definite program planned by some experienced per- 
son. The best way to learn to garden is to garden, and with study or 
discussions as well, the advance would be more assured. 
Would it not be well for each Club to have a definite program for 
a year's study mapped out in advance, and have different members 
allotted their different topics, as parts of the whole? 
The first requirement for Garden Club membership should be that 
each member be ready to take her definite part. Merely "on-look- 
ing" members never added anything to any serious enterprise toward 
learning. They are always the most formidable part of any audience. 
No one who is really doing anything minds having others who are also 
doing things listen to her, but she does mind the unresponsive attitude 
of the women who only come to listen. It is these members who kill 
the informal freedom of Garden Clubs which is their life. 
If Garden Clubs are for the dissemination of information toward 
the general advancement of amateur knowledge, the austere idea of 
formality must disappear. If members of garden clubs are in earnest 
there should be none of the "timidity" which members all talk about. 
If members are elected because they are in earnest, real garden clubs 
will exist. If members are elected because they happen to be a part of 
a social community, real garden clubs will not exist; they will become 
merely tea clubs with a smattering of lectures thrown in as a raison d'etre 
for the gatherings, and the few earnest gardeners in the group will pick 
up what crumbs they may when, with a definite amount of study and 
knowledge these earnest women might have made much more of their 
time. 
There is nothing more needed in this rapidly developing country 
than the intelligent enlightenment of the average woman on garden sub- 
jects in all their varied phases. We do not need any more organiza- 
tions for superficial knowledge. Cannot the Garden Club of America 
ask each club to submit a program for the logical outlay of the energy 
of its members, with more enlightened knowledge of the great principles 
of the flower garden as a result in view? The unfolding of a subject 
which is so vast and so fine would bring to many a woman an interest 
of which, in the beginning, she little dreamed, and which at present she 
seldom gets. 
Martha Brookes Hutcheson, 
Garden Club of Somerset Hills, N. J. 
September 1, 1915. 
