170 GARDENING WITH BRAINS ^ 



enables anyone to put the stamp of his own 

 personality and taste on the plants with which 

 he experiments, and to have a flower garden 

 differing from all others in the world. 



PETUNIAS AND DAHLIAS 



How proud and happy Mrs. Thomas Gould of 

 Ventura, California, must have felt when she 

 was able, after some years of artistic selection 

 and hybridizing, to give to the world her 

 "painted lily," alias the improved petunia, 

 known and prized everywhere as the Giant of 

 California. The old-fashioned petunia a cen- 

 tury ago had one conspicuous merit the rich 

 perfume it exhaled at nightfall. In all other 

 respects it was gradually made more attractive, 

 and Sir W. J. Hooker referred to it as one of 

 many plants in which "the art and skill of the 

 agriculturist had improved nature." In size, 

 form, and color it continued to be beautified, 

 till the climax was reached in Mrs. Gould's 

 strain, no two plants of which give identical 

 blossoms; to watch the buds open is one 

 pleasant surprise after another. 



A few years ago I was simply stunned by an 

 exhibit of dahlias in a florist's window on Tre- 

 mont Street, Boston. From the simple, crude, 

 original form to the latest developments of the 

 cactus dahlia, here they were, a demonstration 

 of horticultural genius. The new race of 

 dahlias, as developed and improved by Burbank 



