June 2, 2008
 In May 1914, the first official meeting of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association was held in the big red barn of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, the forerunner of Temple University Ambler. About 400 women and men listened to speakers covering topics as diverse as small fruit culture to raising broilers for profit.
The mission of the Association was to “promote agricultural and horticultural interests among women, and to further such interests throughout the country.” The founding members of the group — Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women founder Jane Bowne Haines, Louisa Yeomens King, Elizabeth Leighton Lee, Elizabeth Price Martin — would shape the future of public and private horticulture for years to come.
For the Farm and Garden Association, history is about to come full circle.
On Thursday, June 5, the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association will kick off its annual National Meeting in the Temple University Ambler Formal Gardens. The 3-day event — which will take place at Ambler, in Plymouth Meeting, and at gardens throughout the region — is being hosted by the Ambler Keystone Branch of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association, which was established at the Ambler Campus in 2005.
“When we were conducting research for our 2005 Philadelphia Flower Show exhibit — Progressive Women in Horticulture — we uncovered a rich history of women’s contributions to the region through their passion for gardens. Much of the formative activity of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association, an organization with its own rich history and compelling mission, took place on this campus,” said Jenny Rose Carey, director of the Landscape Arboretum of Temple University Ambler, who helped found the campus branch of the organization with former Director of Development Kathy Beveridge. “It is in honor of this strong historical connection to Ambler, and in the interest of bringing together women who share a passion for rediscovering the history of women in horticulture, agriculture and design, that we felt forming an Ambler branch of the Association was only natural. We called it the keystone branch since this location is the keystone of the organization’s history — it’s a link back to their heritage.”
 The June 5 special ceremony, which will begin at 8:30 a.m., is expected to bring together more than 100 members of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association to commemorate their contributions to women’s history, horticulture, the rich history of the campus, and their desire to help preserve that history by supporting the creation of a new campus Welcome Center at the site where the campus’ original greenhouse stood right across from the barn where the organization held their first meeting.
“What we are hoping to do is convert the potting shed, or head house, which remains at the former greenhouse location, into a welcome center. We anticipate that the building will include a display area highlighting the history of the campus, the legacy of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women and the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association, and their contributions to the horticultural movement and to women’s history in general,” said Temple University Ambler Dean Dr. James W. Hilty, who will formally welcome the organization to its founding site. “We are very grateful to Faith and Joseph Tiberio and other supporters, who have helped us bring the plan to this stage. Our Landscape Architecture students have already created some preliminary designs for the former greenhouse site — we would like to implement a design that marks and commemorates the greenhouse, which was built by the women of the Horticulture School and reflects their many contributions to the campus and to history.”
 The Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association has a rich history that current members continue to build upon. During World War I the Council on National Defense in the U.S. requested that the Association organize various women’s groups with agricultural interests to form the Woman’s Land Army of America. The Land Army trained 20,000 “farmerettes” to work the land and provide food for U.S. and European citizens and troops. This effort prevented the starvation of thousands of European families during the War.
The story of the Association and other important horticultural groups formed during the same time period — the Garden Club of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, and the Garden Club of America in 1913 — were explored in vivid detail by students and faculty during a Best of Show-winning Philadelphia Flower Show exhibit in 2005. The Progressive Women in Horticulture Exhibit won Best of Show in the Academic Educational category, earning a perfect score of 100 from the judges.
Not quite a century after the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women welcomed its first students — all five of them —  the trail-blazing efforts of the horticulture school were commemorated with a historical marker presented by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 2002. On that day, which brought together alumni from all across the country, it was Faith Tiberio who coined the perfect rallying cry — “Ah women!”
“These women felt very strongly that women should be skilled in landscape design, horticulture, and gardening and that idea only intensified during this period of time. In 1917, when women were pressed into doing the work of men, the Ambler school stressed that women learn these important skills,” said Tiberio, vice chair of the 4-H Foundation, a former trustee of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and a Past President of the New England chapter of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association.
The School of Horticulture and the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association were formed “at a time when women were being denied entrance into institutions such as Harvard,” Tiberio said.
“They needed their own venue and they got it. I think (School of Horticulture founder) Jane Bowne Haines said it best — ‘The trained hand with the trained mind, means mastery, power, and success.’ This is as relevant today as it was then when Haines and others established the School of Horticulture and later helped form the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association,” she said. “having a branch of the Association at Ambler, back where it all began, is like a coming home for the Farm and Garden.”
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| The Keystone Branch of the Woman's National Farm and Garden Association, established in 2005 at the Ambler Campus. |
You don’t need to be a professional in the green industry to be a part of the group, Carey said.
“All you need is an interest in gardening, agriculture, or design,” she said. “I think it will be interesting to explore how the campus and the Association have developed over the last 100 years. I’d like to explore and celebrate women in horticulture and design and their contributions throughout history — this is truly a celebration of a rich, evolving history.”
The Women’s National Farm and Garden Association was established at a point in history “when women were organizing into groups for the first time.”
"This was a period before women had the right to vote — essentially they weren’t full citizens — but they wanted to make a difference in their communities,” Carey said. “For the first time they realized that by joining forces they could make more of a difference. Basically they were trying to change the world — if women were running things, how would they do things differently.”
The rise of these “exceptionally organized” groups and institutions, Carey said, “was in part a thirst for knowledge for themselves, though it was also about passing on that knowledge to others.”
“Jane (Bowne) Haines was a social reformer at a time when there wasn’t very much available for women. She felt that horticulture and agriculture would be considered socially acceptable jobs for young, educated women and that it could provide them with a better future,” she said. “The garden clubs were involved in civic beautification and conservation decades before it ever became buzzwords. They looked at the world in terms of what we were doing to it — cutting down trees, spoiling the waterways — and what we could do to make it better. We have their foresight to thank for many of the green spaces, the open space, and arboreta that we enjoy in the Philadelphia region today that otherwise may never have been preserved.”
For more information contact the Landscape Arboretum of Temple University Ambler at 267-468-8400.
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