The WNF&GA was founded in 1914, as the Women's National Agricultural and Horticultural Association, "to promote agricultural and horticultural interests among women, and to further such interests throughout the country." In 1916, the name was changed to Woman's National Farm & Garden Association, using the singular form to reflect the importance of the individual, as well as to accommodate the name of a similar organization in England. The founders included
Jane Bowne Haines,
Louisa Boyd Yeomans King,
Elizabeth Price Martin, Elizabeth Leighton Lee, and
Hilda Loines. King served as its first president from 1914 to 1921. During
World War I, with Loines as a key organizer, WNF&GA joined other groups in organizing the
Woman's Land Army of America: women agricultural volunteers replaced men called into military service. The temporary workers were known as "farmerettes." In 1940, the organization opened a shop in
30 Rockefeller Plaza, offering for sale items supplied by members: produce, preserves, crafts, needlework, and items for children. At their peak in the 1940s, there were nine Farm and Garden Shops, with four more locations in
New York State, as well as shops in
Boston;
Winston-Salem, North Carolina;
Gary, Indiana; and
Ann Arbor, Michigan. The retail program was still active in 1960, but had ended by 1984. The Sarah Bradley Tyson Memorial Fellowship, named in honor of the organization's second president, was established in 1928. It was the organization's first memorial scholarship program. A fellowship named for Grace E. Frysinger was first awarded in 1957 by WNF&GA and the
Associated Country Women of the World to support "furthering international understanding and goodwill" among their memberships. The organization was an early promoter of
horticultural therapy, describing the investigations of Elizabeth Hall in an article in its magazine in 1925. In 1952, Alice Wessels Burlingame initiated a workshop that led to a nine-year study, published as
Therapy Through Horticulture. In 1984, WNF&GA established a scholarship in Burlingame's name for undergraduate students in the field of horticultural therapy. In 1952, WNF&GA established the Mrs. Francis King Dogwood Garden at the
United States National Arboretum, through one of several gifts made by the organization and its divisions to the Arboretum. To celebrate the WNF&GA's diamond jubilee, the organization donated a pavilion in the Arboretum's Gotelli Conifer Collection; it was dedicated on 9 June 1989. In 1995, the organization initiated Project Sew in collaboration with the South African Women's Agricultural Union. Completed in 1999, the project provided
treadle sewing machines (which required no electricity to operate), as well as fabric, yarn, and other sewing-related supplies to rural women of
South Africa as a way to clothe their families and to provide income. The organization's archive is housed at the
Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. ==Membership, officers, and organization==