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.

Then the director, a trained woman landscape gardener, tells you all that this school of horticulture has accomplished since its founding five years ago.

“Women are naturally fitted for gardening, and for some years past there have been many calls for women to be teachers in school gardens, planners of private gardens, or landscape gardeners in institutions for women.  Very few women, however, have had the practical training to enable them to fill such positions, and five years ago there was little opportunity for them to obtain such training.  At that time a number of women in and about Philadelphia, who realized the need for thorough teaching in all the branches of horticulture, not merely in theory but in practice, organized this school.  The course is planned to equip women with the practical knowledge that will enable them to manage private and commercial gardens, greenhouses or orchards.  Some women wish to learn how to care for their own well-loved gardens; some young girls study with the idea of establishing their own greenhouses and raising flowers as a means of livelihood; still others want to go in for fruit farming, and even for poultry raising or bee culture.