One illustration, a half-tone reproduction of a photograph showing the interior of the greenhouse with girls at work.
WHERE GIRLS LEARN TO WIELD SPADE AND HOE
To go to school in a potato patch; to say one's lessons to a farmer; to study in an orchard and do laboratory work in a greenhouse—this is the pleasant lot of the modern girl who goes to a school of horticulture instead of going to college, or perhaps after going to college.
If ever there was a vocation that seemed specially adapted to many women, gardening would at first glance be the one. From the time of
"Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?"
down to the busy city woman who to-day takes her recreation by digging in her flowerbeds, gardens have seemed a natural habitat for womankind, and garden activities have belonged to her by right.
In various parts of the country there have now been established schools where young women may learn the ways of trees and shrubs, vegetables and flowers, and may do experimental work among the growing things themselves. Some of these schools are merely adjuncts of the state agricultural colleges, with more or less limited courses of instruction; but, just out of Philadelphia, there is a school, to which women only are admitted, that is located on a real farm, and covers a wide range of outdoor study.
One begins to feel the homely charm of the place the moment instructions are given as to how to reach it.
"Out the old Lime-kiln road," you are told. And out the old Lime-kiln road you go, until you come to a farm which spells the perfection of care in every clump of trees and every row of vegetables. Some girls in broad-brimmed hats are working in the Strawberry bed—if you go in strawberry time—and farther on a group of women have gathered, with an overalled instructor, under an apple tree the needs of which are being studied.
Under some sedate shade trees, you are led to an old Pennsylvania stone farmhouse—the administration building, if you please. Beyond are the barns, poultry houses, nurseries and greenhouses, and a cottage which is used as a dormitory for the girls—as unlike the usual dormitory as the school is unlike the usual school. A bee colony has its own little white village near by.