LITTLE GARDENS 



Chuckleson-Jermynsldes no longer drives In the 

 park with a pug and chrysanthemums, but with 

 a terrier and a bouquet of castor leaves and scar- 

 let beans. And there are nurserymen in the land 

 who go right along raising chrysanthemums as 

 if nothing had happened to make them believe 

 they shouldn't. They create new strains every 

 year, and within the last quarter century they 

 have sent specimens to the exhibitions that would 

 have been an astonishment to our parents — big, 

 fuzzy heads like those of football players, 

 shapely globes of white, red, pink, magenta, yel- 

 low, orange, disks of crimson dashed with gold, 

 open, sunny faces, knobs of close-set petals, nests 

 of petals frazzled like those of the poppy, sober, 

 formal, well-proportioned blossoms — In fact, 

 there is no end to the variety. The big examples, 

 that we see In the greenhouses of the dealers and 

 showmen, are the results of unnatural stimula- 

 tion and forcing; they have been treated to 

 strong manures, and enlarged by disbudding; 

 that Is, the buds of the plant are nipped back to 

 a single one at the end of each stalk, so that the 

 strength formerly Imparted to fifty blossoms is 

 centered In half a dozen. Put your giant Into 

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