26 FRITZ BAHR'S COMMERCIAL FLORICULTURE 



might start and succeed. It is but one of a hundred other, perhaps 

 better ways, yet the reading of these notes may lead someone to 

 think of a better way, and thereby help him. 



To start today in the florist business a man wants to locate 

 where things are humming, where they do things. I don't know of 

 a better section than the great Middle West. That is not to say, 

 however that similar opportunities are not to be found in the East, 

 and South, or along the Western Coast. The smaller inland towns 

 are good places to live in, but it is the big cities that are making 

 the most headway. Around almost any of these cities, often for 

 a distance of thirty miles or more, we find the suburban sections 

 where are located the homes of those doing business in the cities. 

 It is in these suburbs that there is, to my mind, the best field today 

 for the retail grower to start into business. 



In localities where there are already one or two florists, there is 

 room for another, and wherever as yet there is none, conditions are even 

 better. To hunt up such a place is the first thing, and if it is done 

 in early Spring and you mean business, you won't have any trouble 

 in getting all the work you can attend to putting people's home 

 grounds in order. If you have no money, don't say anything about 

 it to the parties you work for, who are in need of shrubs and peren- 

 nials, but do your work well and stick to it. Make arrangements 

 to take care of a place for so much a month during Summer. Plan 

 to work ten or twelve hours every day. 



WORKING UP A STOCK 



If you get a few dollars, buy seeds of biennials and perennials 

 and sow them in a frame outdoors on a piece of land you have rented 

 for a year. You won't need sashes till Fall and by that time you 

 will have a nice lot of Pansies, Bellis, Myosotis, Larkspur, Canter- 

 bury Bells, Foxgloves, Hollyhocks, Gaillardias, Columbines, Core- 

 opsis, Shasta Daisies, Pyrethrums, Achillea, Gypsophila, Sweet 

 Williams, Border Pinks, Heliopsis, Rudbeckia and others. Seed of 

 most of these sown in early April will give you salable stock that 

 Fall and the following Spring. Of course, the Pansies, Bellis and 

 Myosotis you sow 'ater. Thirty-five dollars invested in seed will 

 give you thousands of plants worth hundreds of dollars a year later 

 on. In the Fall, invest in a few sashes the Foxgloves and Canter- 

 bury Bells will need them and some of the others are better off 

 covered. Work hard that first Summer and please everybody, and 

 no doubt you will have charge of most of the places during the fol- 

 lowing Winter. If not, work at anything that comes along, it doesn't 

 make any difference what. By the following Spring you have not 

 only your labor for sale, but stock, too. Everybody wants hardy 

 stock, and you will want someone to help you do the work in Spring. 



