916 



HOETICULTURE 



December 28, 1912 



THE MISSION OF THE NURSERY- 

 MAN. 



Paper read by C. S. Harrison of York, 

 Neb., at the annual meeting of tbe Minne- 

 sota Horticultural Society in Minneapolis. 

 Dee. 3, 1012. 



Ours is the most ancient and honor- 

 able of all the callings. Our first 

 parents were put in the Garden of 

 Eden "to dress it and keep it." All 

 went well til! they got to stealing ap- 

 ples, when they lost their place. The 

 moral of this is, the nurseryman must 

 be honest. 



What wonders have been accom- 

 plished by our horticulturists. They 

 found bleak and wind-swept prairies 

 and they have transformed them. 

 Groves, orchards and windbreaks have 

 testified to their enterprise and per- 

 sistence. 



There is something in the business, 

 however, besides chasing the dollar. 

 The nurseryman should be a teacher. 

 Too often he lets Tom, Dick and Har- 

 ry carry on his business and he does 

 not raise what they do not call for. 

 The average man does not know much 

 about floriculture and horticulture. 

 He needs information. The horticul- 

 turist should give it. He should him- 

 self be the kite and not the mere tail 

 of the kite. New things of great merit 

 come out but you cannot get him to 

 touch them. It is his business to 

 make a call. That is what he is for. 

 He has no right to degrade his calling 

 by keeping everlastingly in the ruts. 

 We have passed the pioneer stage and 

 now comes the period of home adorn- 

 ment. Our slogan should be "Beauty 

 is wealth;" raise a lot of it and be 

 rich. 



The average farmer knows little of 

 the beautiful things which embellish 

 the home. He needs information and 

 you should give it. It is the province 

 of the horticultural and agricultural 

 papers to enter on a campaign of pub- 

 licity and give wide information to 

 these things. It is easy to under- 

 stand the value of beauty. You 

 build a house like a b^rn and no- 

 body wants it. Make it a poem in 

 architecture and everybody wants it. 

 I saw a team of beautiful chest- 

 nut horses at Bennington, Vt., which 

 cost $40,000. Of course $39,000 was 

 for beauty and style. Perhaps for 

 $300 you could have gotten a team of 

 plugs which could go as far in a day 

 as they could. Your shorthorns, beau- 

 tiful and symmetrical in form as if 

 laid out with a square and compass 

 are worth ten times as much as 

 scrubs of the same weight. A farm, 

 beautifully adorned with an ideal 

 front yard is worth far more than the 

 yard which is a hospital for sick pigs 

 and disabled machinery. 



Horticulture is in a transition state. 

 Nurserymen find themselves stocked 

 up with millions of apple trees they 

 can't sell. The great Stark Company 

 have dissolved and one of them is go- 

 ing into ornamentals on a large scale. 

 Sooner or later you must come to it. 

 You people of the northern states do 

 not realize your condition. There are 

 compensations for your long, cold win- 

 ters. Spring comes and the whole 

 land awakes to a beauty unknown 

 elsewhere. California cannot compare 

 with Minnesota in the beauty and fra- 

 grance of her flowers. Peonies cannot 

 grow there and what marvelous dis- 

 plays they give you at your summer 

 meetings! We must hammer along 

 the lines of the development of our 



SOLANUM CAPSICASTRUM MELVINI 



A MONEY MAKER FOR 

 THE HOLIDAYS 



(Introduced hv us last season) 



Dwarf, busby plants, 12 to 

 15 inches high, covered 

 with brilliant scarlet, con- 

 ical shaped berries, carried 

 well above the foliage. 



AWARDED 

 Silver Medal by Society of 

 American Florists. 

 Bronze Medal by Newport 

 Hort. Society. 

 First Class Certificate by 

 Mass. Hort. Society. 

 First Class Certificate by 

 Oardeners' and Florists' 

 Club of Boston. 

 First Class Certificate by 

 National Gardeners' As- 

 sociation. 



Sow Seeds In .Tan. or Feb. 

 for next Christmas. 



SIngIs pkt. 25c. 5 pkis, Jt.OO 

 lOpkts. J1.50 100 pkts. )12.50 



ODDER NOW AS SEEO IS LIMITEO 



THOMAS J. GREY CO. 



32 South Market St , Bostoi, Miss 



Typewrites your circular letters, fills in a different 

 name and address, and addresses the envelope, 

 as well as your facsimile signature in a different 

 color, at the one operation. 

 The Writerpress prints from type and your stock 

 electros in ink, for your catalogue and office forms 



Send for catalogue and information to 



EDWARD A. HART 



294 Washington Street 



SALES "AGENT 

 Suite 349 



BOSTON, MASS. 



perennials. I repeat if there are no 

 calls, make them. 



A few years ago we had a splendid 

 lot of peonies. No call for them. 

 "They are the old ill-smelling 'pinys' 

 our grandmothers raised." Your 

 speaker was the first to publish a 

 peony manual, the first in any lan- 

 guage. The first edition cost $75. A 

 man in Minneapolis borrowed a copy 

 and bought $150 worth of peonies. A 

 lady in Topeka read one and bought 

 $25 worth. We were just closing busi- 

 ness in the fall when an order came 

 for $200 worth. The first edition went 

 and we issued another. We raise a 

 good many but this year we had to buy 

 about $1,500 worth. One year we pur- 

 chased $1,600 worth besides what we 

 could raise. You must enter upon a 

 campaign of publicity. 



Here is the coming flower, the iris. 

 You speak of it and you are met with 

 objection, "Oh, it is nothing but the 

 'flag' which grew in the swamp down 

 east." People know nothing about 

 this resplendent flower, named from 

 the goddess Iris, the rainbow personi- 

 fied. She took all the prismatic tints 

 of the rainbow and wove them in gar- 

 ments of splendor for her child. 



I have been to California, the land 

 of fiowers; to Rochester, the garden 

 of America. I have visited the estates 



of the rich in the east, and have been 

 in the finest parks, but I never saw 

 anywhere so much beauty, splendor 

 and loveliness as people saw in our 

 iris garden. Tliey are the finest 

 drought resisters we have. Last sea- 

 son we had but six inches of rain in 

 five months. It was awful. Dry with 

 hot winds blowing like the blast of 

 death, but we did not lose an iris. 

 Last winter will long be remembered 

 for its terrible cold and fearful 

 storms, yet not an iris died, though 

 unprotected. By a careful selection 

 they will bloom nearly two months. 

 They are ideal flowers for the town 

 and farm. They are cheap. They 

 multiply about ten in two years. I 

 get letters from nurserymen "they are 

 fine but there is no call for them." 

 Then make a call; it is your business. 

 There is more money in them than 

 anything else you can handle. 



We want publicity. It is time for 

 our editors to help along. Too often 

 you send in an article on home adorn- 

 ment or give them a description of 

 some worthy flower and the article 

 comes back to you "no call for it." 

 Plenty of room for the barn-yard but 

 no space for the front-yard. I took 

 an article to an editor once and he 

 shook his head, "I see this is a blind 

 ad. You ought to get $100 worth 



