CHAPTER IV 

 HOW TO SUCCEED WITH FLOWERS 



To grow flowers successfully one thing, perhaps 

 above all others, is needed. This is plain, ordinary 

 gumption. 



It is all very well to say that flowers will grow 

 for those who love them; that so and so has only 

 to put a stick in the ground and it will blossom, 

 and that sort of chatter. One might as well assert 

 that good bread, cake and preserves are products 

 of affection rather than of skill. As in everything 

 else, there is a certain knack in growing flowers. 



This knack comes uncons.ciously to some, being 

 bred in the bone. Others, who are the great 

 majority, have to acquire it. Usually the process 

 of learning is a slow one, not because it need be 

 but because of the wrong notion that the heart 

 is the guide of guides. 



Far from it; the head it is that leads to success 

 in the garden. The hands are the chief aids, and 

 once in a while the feet are called upon to do 

 more than walking. Heart, in the sense of senti- 

 ment, has been known to be absent altogether. 

 But it ought to be there always, only properly 



