MIDiNlMB 



CHICAGO, JANUARY i. 1895. 



Single Copy 



Cents. ^O. 56. 



AN AMATEURS SUCCESS. HOW MR. GEO. W. BRAMHALL. SOOTH ORANGE, N. J., GROWS CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 



Chrysanthemums. 



flow AN flMflTEUR GROWS CflRYSflNTflE- 

 MUMS. 



Only want of space should limit the 

 number of varieties in an amateur's col- 

 lection; care should be taken however, to 

 have each one distinct from the other. 

 The trifling increase of care needed in 

 growing one hundred plants of as many 

 varieties is fully repaid in the constant 

 interest, and delight of comparison at all 

 stages of their growth. 



I advise the addition each year of the 

 certificated varieties of the preceding sea- 



son. They will no more than replace the 

 former favorites that degeneracy and 

 competition have relegated to the "rot 

 pile." Do not confine the choice of the 

 new varieties to the prize winners; 

 robustness and decision of color have too 

 long been the aggressive prerequisites to 

 prize winning. Within reason and good 

 taste such qualities are essential, but 

 their too general and exclusive prevalence 

 at our flower shows, through which the 

 public are educated, have left it for the 

 amateur alone to know and to enjoy that 

 bevy of frailer beauties, whose chaste and 

 dainty tints and contours please, rather 

 than dazzle with their wealth, but are 

 neither big nor "yallar" enough to be 



exalted to the showbench, and possibly 

 have never taken the second breath in the 

 commercial life of their race. I do not 

 wish to banish the monstrosities, for 

 which I confess a barbarous fondness, 

 but I do plead for the little and retiring 

 beauties to the amateur who can save 

 them before they perish from the cata- 

 logues of the few' flower-loving commer- 

 cial growers, who still have the temerity 

 to print their names. But lew of thissort 

 appear in the photograph (taken Novem- 

 ber 1S94), as in the language of the pho- 

 tographer -'they don't take good pic- 

 tures," but some of them are mentioned 

 in the appended list of varieties recom- 

 mended to be grown by the amateur. 



