Pioneer Information
Born in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Haines was raised on her family’s 100-acre estate, where her father had established a fruit and shade-tree nursery. She learned the fundamentals of horticulture at the Wyck House, the family’s home in Germantown. There Haines studied plants in the formal garden first created by her ancestor Caspar Wistar Haines in 1790. She earned a B.A. in 1891 and an M.A. in 1892 from Bryn Mawr College. Haines was a History Fellow at the college from 1892 to 1893, and an associate librarian from 1895 to 1898. She studied at the New York State Library School in Albany, New York, from 1898 to 1899. Haines worked at the Library of Congress for two years, returning home to assist with the operation of the family nursery.
A founder of the Garden Club of Philadelphia, Haines made it her goal to establish a school of practical horticulture for women in the Philadelphia area. To help reach this goal, she traveled to Europe to visit several gardening schools. Upon her return to Philadelphia, Haines purchased a 71-acre farm near Ambler, Pennsylvania, transforming it into the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women in 1910. It was modeled after two horticultural colleges she had visited in England and had a philosophy of learning by doing, where students would apply what they had learned in the classroom in the school’s garden and orchard. After World War I, landscape architecture and business management courses were introduced. In 1958 the school merged with Temple University’s Ambler Junior College, and men were admitted to the program for the first time. Haines passed away at the age of 68.
