OTHER PRODUCING CENTRES 77 



At Biggleswade, and elsewhere in Bedfordshire, fields 

 of flowers alternate with fields of vegetables, the 

 varieties grown including narcissi, wall-flowers, corn- 

 flowers, asters, stocks, pinks, sweet peas, chrysanthe- 

 mums, and scores of others. From Biggleswade itself 

 the local growers will send away about 1,000 boxes 

 on exceptionally busy days in July, the average from 

 June to September being 500 boxes a day. Each box 

 contains about three dozen bunches, with twenty or 

 so blooms (according to variety) in a bunch. 



Coupled with the demand for cut flowers which, as 

 one authority has said, people to-day will buy ' almost 

 before purchasing their daily bread ' there is the sub- 

 stantial trade in flowers in pots, though the tendency 

 on the part of the growers is to favour the former 

 rather than the latter, as involving less trouble. Count 

 must be taken, too, of the business done in the sale of 

 bedding-out plants for the gardens of those suburban 

 villas which, with the extensions of our large towns, 

 have increased so greatly in number of late years. 

 These same gardens have likewise given a decided 

 stimulus to the trade in seeds and also in foliage plants, 

 the latter especially being in ever-increasing demand, 

 independently altogether of the large market opened 

 out for palms, ferns, crotons, etc. the result of hot- 

 house culture for table or indoor decoration. Mr. 

 Assbee told, also, in his paper of the trade which has 

 sprung up in small boxes of mixed foliage plants in 

 ' thumb ' pots, saying that one firm alone he knew of 

 sold 2,500,000 annually. 



At Terrington I had the opportunity of seeing the 

 ' bulb farm ' of Mr. Frank Law, who occupies altogether 

 116 acres, of which from 30 to 40 are devoted to 

 bulbous flowers, 20 to chrysanthemums, from 10 to 12 

 to herbaceous plants, roses, etc., 5 to peonies, and 



