February 4, 2010
 Saturday, March 13, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.,
Temple University Ambler, Learning Center Auditorium, 580 Meetinghouse Road
Registration Fee: $115
Early Bird Registration: $95 per person by March 5
Special Student Price: $50
DOWNLOAD AN EVENT REGISTRATION FORM HERE.
“The students in the first two graduating classes were, in the true sense of the word, pioneers. We were venturing into a completely new field for women and had no way of knowing what opportunities the future might hold for us.” — Louise Carter Bush-Brown, recollecting her time at the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, the forerunner to Temple University Ambler, in the early 1900s
The early part of the 20th Century was a time of momentous change for women in the United States. Often called the Progressive Era, the role of women began to dramatically shift thanks to those who joined together in sisterhood determined to make a stand against the poor social, economic, and environmental conditions resulting from the Industrial Revolution.
While the suffragettes were fighting for the right to vote, the likes of Jane Bowne Haines, founder of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women; Ernestine Abercrombie Goodman; Mrs. J. Willis Martin; Mrs. Francis King; and Elizabeth Leighton Lee were fighting a battle of a different sort — the right to choose their own futures.
In charting their own futures, these women would lay the groundwork for transforming Philadelphia (and well beyond) into one the premier garden centers in the country; provide invaluable support to a globe entrenched in world war; and establish centers for higher learning that continue to produce some of the best and brightest horticulturists and landscape architects to this day.
On Saturday, March 13, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Temple University Ambler will host Farm Faithfully, Garden Gratefully: Progressive Women and their Influence in the Landscape — 1900-1940, a one-day symposium that will highlight the role of American women who designed and maintained significant landscapes during the beginning of the 20th century. The event, which will be held in the Ambler Learning Center Auditorium, will include nationally acclaimed speakers, many of whom will have their books for sale and will be available for book signings. A wine and buffet reception will be held on Friday, March 12, from 6 to 8 p.m., in Learning Center Room 302, to meet the speakers.
“Temple University Ambler is an important location for women’s history in the United States, with our blue and gold state historic marker that signifies the campus as the site of the  Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, established in 1910, and the site of the founding of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association in 1914,” said event coordinator Jenny Rose Carey, Director of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. “This symposium gives us a chance to explore some of that history — we’ve wanted to do something like this for a very long time. We want to give people the opportunity to learn more about these historic, iconic women of the early 20th century who were so influential in horticulture, agriculture, and design.”
Following the day’s speakers, the event will conclude with a full “Tea” hosted by the Ambler Keystone Branch of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association, an organization that can trace its origins to the earliest days of Temple University Ambler’s forerunner, the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women. Farm Faithfully, Garden Gratefully (which was a motto of the Woman’s National Farm & Garden Association in the 1920s) is sponsored by Temple University Ambler, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the Woman’s National Farm & Garden Association.
Symposium speakers will include Judith B. Tankard, an art historian specializing in landscape history. She is the author of seven books and taught for more than 20 years at the Landscape Institute of the Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University. Tankard will speak about her recently published book, Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes, which highlights the career of one of the foremost landscape architects of the early 1900’s and one of the earliest women to take up the profession. Farrand, with James Bush Brown, designed Temple University Ambler’s distinctive Formal Perennial Gardens in the 1920s.
Landscape Architect CeCe Haydock will speak about Edith Wharton, The Europhile: Influencing American Gardens. The lecture will provide insight into the acclaimed author. Wharton, a life-long European traveler and eventual resident, influenced American garden design with her book Italian Villas and their Gardens (1904); her gardens, most notably The Mount in Lenox, MA; and her close friendship with her niece, landscape architect Beatrix Farrand.
Author Elaine Weiss will present Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army of America in the Great War. Weiss, whose book Fruits of Victory was published in 2009, will share the story of the Woman’s Land Army (WLA). Many of the women from the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture were officers in the WLA “and it is fitting that the ‘farmerette’ is now returning to her proud history at Ambler,” said Carey.
Marta McDowell, a teacher at The New York Botanical Garden and Drew University and author of Emily Dickinson’s Gardens, will present Ladies’ Mantle: The Garden Club in the Garden State. She will explore the early history of the Garden Club movement and its place in the social and cultural context of America.
 Rounding out the day will be Carey herself, who will highlight the role played by the Philadelphia women who founded the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, the Garden Club of America, and the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association.
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 they 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 on Farm Faithfully, Garden Gratefully: Progressive Women and their Influence in the Landscape — 1900-1940, please call 267-468-8000. To download a registration form, visit www.ambler.temple.edu/arboretum/bloom.htm.
CONTACT: James Duffy, 267-468-8108, duffyj@temple.edu, release available by e-mail
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