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BERTRAND H. FARR 



Bertrand H. Farr died at his home in Wyomissing, Pa., on 

 October nth, only a few days after a sudden apoplectic stroke 

 and only three days preceding his sixty-first birthday. Death 

 has thus removed a leader in the field of American floriculture; 

 one whose work and accomplishments have been conspicuously 

 noteworthy. 



Mr. Farr was born in Vermont. At an early age he moved 

 with his parents first to Wisconsin and then into Iowa. He 

 attended public schools in Iowa and at the age of twenty went 

 to Boston, Mass., where he studied music for several years. 

 Thereafter for a period of about twenty years he was engaged 

 in business, chiefly that of selling musical instruments. It was 

 this work that at last took him to Reading, Pa., and led to his 

 having a home at Wyomissing. 



It is said that when Mr. Farr was a small boy his aunt gave 

 him a peony root which he planted and cared for and that its 

 flowers inspired in him the love for flowers that was so strongly 

 developed in later years. While a student of music in Boston, 

 he spent many hours among the plants of the Hovey gardens. 

 Throughout the years of conducting a music store, flower-growing 

 was his hobby, until in 1910 this hobby became his business and 

 he was happy. This was but a natural development. First his 

 home-garden collection of flowering plants spread over vacant 

 lots until several acres were under cultivation. Then a farm was 

 purchased and the Wyomissing Nurseries Company was es- 

 tablished. At the time of Mr. Farr's death the nursery was being 

 removed to a still larger farm nearby. The business had been 

 incorporated and will now be continued by those who were 

 associated with him. 



Mr. Farr was widely known as an authority on the peony and 

 the iris. His own collections of these plants were most com- 

 plete, about thirty acres of land being taken for the irises alone. 

 In his breeding of the iris, several thousand seedlings have been 

 grown, but of these only 36 were considered by him as sufliciently 

 good to be offered for sale in his catalogue of this year. For eight 

 years Mr. Farr was president of the American Peony Society and 

 spent much time at the trial gardens of the Society in the difficult 

 work of systematizing the names of the nearly 3000 varieties. 



