Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

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I am also going to tell of the work clone by the Civic Association in the city of Philadelphia. By this means they will learn of the tributes we are paying to the soldiers here and thru the knowledge of these tributes we hope there will be formed a closer bond of sympathy between the two countries. Under present conditions we cannot afford to think only of the esthetic. Intensive horticulture development is an important factor in the production of food to meet the shortage which is likely to occur this year, and one of the most interesting phases of my work will be to look into the means by which they are solving this problem and in the way they are managing the small places and in handling the labor situation, which is equally difficult in all countries today. Many of the beautiful old gardens of England and Scotland are on my list to be visited for the purpose of broadening my knowledge along this line of gardening which fits so well with the present. Very truly yours, EMILY EX LEY. All will be interested to hear that Miss Beatrice Williams is now with the A. E. F. in France. She is at present on a small farm just outsid,e of Paris, where she is finding much enjoyment in raising a flock of chickens. (Letter from Eleanor Fullerton, ’21, who is on leave of absence to act as private secretary to her father while he is in France as an expert agriculturist for the American Committee for Devastated France.) Hotel Star, Paris, May 16, 1920. Dear Wise Acres: 1 can’t tell you so much of interest after all, because we have been stalled here in Paris for two weeks and we don’t get out to Blerancourt until the 19th. We have been on a trip up beyond Ainzy-le-Chateau to see the big plateau supposed to be an absolute agricultural impossibility. It is full of barbed wire and duds and shell holes, but they are so covered with clover and grass and flowers that there is no fun in it. If nature would grow wild things, whv can’t a Frenchman grow anything he pleases? The folks here see that now so they have decided that our job is not there. Hence we are to have a little garden in Blerancourt and use Planet Jrs. exclusively and try to show the people how they can save a liftle time and energy. It is almost amusing to see them using “Scriptural methods,” as Dad calls them. Well, after we have run our little Planet Jrs. back and forth for a week or so we are going on a tour of the regions of the Aisne and the Somme and wherever else we can see “bad land” and territory supposed to be impossible. We expect to come back—I should say “go” back laden with photographs and detailed accounts of all we have seen. 15

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Letters Miss Lee sailed for England on the steamer Baltic, of the White Star Line, on May 22nd, arriving in Liverpool ten days later. Her ship letters tell of a pleasant voyage. “I will be really sorry when we reach port, but we have been planning a wonderful trip and have it fairly mapped out now,” she writes. Her companion on the trip is Miss Hilda Loines, of Brooklyn, member of the Council of the Farm and Garden Association, and of the New York Horticultural and Botonical Societies. She is much interested in all progressive horticultural work and thought, and in the object of Miss Lee’s trip—the study of schools and gardens. Another letter written from Chester tells of gardens seen in that vi cinity and of their future plans. On leaving Chester, they were to go to Dublin to see the Botonical Gardens and to visit Sir Horace Plunkett, the well known Irish patriot, who has devoted his life to the rehabilition of Ireland, and who has travelled in this and other countries in search of information and experience which would be of use to this cause. The great increase in agricultural wealth in Ireland owes much to his leadership. Recrossing to Holyhead, a few days will be spent in Wales, then to London where several weeks will be spent in visiting the gardens of that part of England. Among the interesting people to be seen will be Miss Helen Wilmott, who writes about roses, and her garden, and Miss Gertrude Jekyl author of “Home and Garden,” “Old West Surrey,” and other books, who lives in Surrey, between Godaming and Guilford, a wonderful woman who has spent her life in her garden but deserted it during the war to work in munition plants. Now old and spent and almost blind, she can return to her garden. Her house, almost as wonderful as herself, is built of oak beams cut from her own place and of the old Surrey flints; it was designed by Sir ;Edwin Luty.ens, the architect of the New City of Delhi, in India, and many other houses in Surrey, and furnished with old oaken furniture and pewter ware. When Miss Lee returns there will be many things to hear about. She expects to reach Ambler about the middle of August. —EMMA BLAKiSTON. From Miss Exley on her proposed trip to England this summer:— Philadelphia, June 19, 1920. Many thanks for your letter this morning, asking for a little outline of my trip to England for Wise Acres. Thru the American Forestry Association, I have received introduc-rions to Jrmes A. Maco'm, Escp, of Roads of Remembrance Association, London. Roads of Remembrance are being planted thruout the British Isles in memory of the soldiers as we are planting tribute trees in this country. They are interested in our tree markers and some of the shield markers used by the American Forestry Association are being sent over for their inspection. 14

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We are fearfully handicapped by being unable to speak French. We may be violently interested in a subject and crazy to know what the other fellow thinks about it, but when one can only say “tres bien” and “il fait beau” conversation languishes. Now I shall proceed to relate what we saw on that trip to Vauxaillon —in more or less detail. The villages are being slowly rebuilt and the people are being taken care of as best possible. They are living in dugouts in places still or in bare shelters, but before another year has passed 1 think they will be fairly well taken care of. They are clearing their small bits of land and planting their market garden crops as usual. There are many little grain fields, and it is startling at first to see a military grave or a pile of unused shells in the centre of a field. Of course, the roadsides are pretty well lined with barbed wire that has been cleared out, and there are filled-in trenches—and some that are not filled in—and shell holes everywhere. But they will go in time. The biggest change one notices in going into the devastated regions from the outskirts of Paris is the rough and unkempt look of the land. There are fields that are painfully ragged and left to wild growth and the trees are half dead or entirely gone—a thing not to be tolerated in prosperous France. There the very forests are clear and carefully taken care of—“Nature’s pruning being supplemented by Man’s”—and an untilled field is an unseen thing. The farther on you go the more noticeable this is. The little plots that are under cultivation are as neat and carefully tended as any in the country, but they are so few compared to amount of territory. Wherever there is a home, of any size or kind, there are flowers. Brilliant peonies and poppies and pansies and spicy pinks and wisteria vines, and wherever there is a wall or a fragment of a wall there are grape vines trained over it with all the care ever expended on the wonderful specimens in the Luxembourg Gardens. The fruit trees are pitiful. Most of them are either dead or in pretty bad shape. Of course, there are many orchards that were destroyed by the Huns—nothing left but rows of stumps—but there are a great many full of wonderful old, beautifully trained trees simply girdled and left there standing, dead. It means the loss of so many years and so much care and work that it is appalling. Don’t you folks worry about the condition of the soil on the battlefields. The French experts have been talking for a ‘year and a half about top soil and bottom soil and poisons in the soil and gases and chemical actions, and they can talk till doomsday, but such alfalfa and clover and grass and flowers I never saw as are growing on that battlefield in the centre of the Chemin des Dames. And at this time of year, the field is just full of Star of Bethlehem—I would much rather think of them growing on the battlefield than the poppies, wouldn't you ? It gives you a feeling of reverence and perfect content that the poppies don’t bring to your mind. I was glad to find them there. I wish you all could have seen the seed gardens of the Vilmorin’s outside of Paris. Houses full of calceolarias and fields of poppies and pansies and sweet peas, and a huge rock garden and wonderful old trees and—well, it’s the most wonderful place I have seen yet. Miss Nicolson would love it, as you all would. Loyally yours, ELEANOR FULLERTON. 16