THE FLORISTS' MANUAL. 



67 



Dwarf Dahlias in Pots. 



potatoes will keep so will dahlias; 

 cool as you like but no frost. 



If the amateur has no meansi of 

 propagating, the old root can be plant- 

 ed or divided, leaving an eye or two to 

 each division, and placed in the ground 

 by middle of May; but look out for 

 late frosts if the top has started. 



ONLY A SELECT LIST g E F s T T HE 

 FLORISTS' 



Dahlias 



Are grown by us. 



Remember that in ordering from us you have 

 the advantage of selecting from a stock which has 

 been thoroughly culled ; consequently you buy 

 good varieties as well as good plants. 



THE COTTAGE GARDENS, 

 QUEENS, N. Y. 



DECORATIONS. 



Keeping step with our business in 

 other lines, the decoration of the 

 house, the hall and the church has 

 evolved apace and is with many a 

 florist a leading feature of his trade. 

 Looking back twenty-five or thirty 

 years we can hardly imagine what 

 material we then had with which to 

 fill an order when we were favored 

 with a decoration. Smilax we had, 

 and some flowering plants of very 

 common sorts. With the exception of 

 the chandelier the decorations must 

 have been of cut flowers, and they 

 were hardly worth calling cut flowers 

 for all were short stemmed and jam- 

 med into frames and designs in a 

 very conventional way. 



We can all remember (at least all 

 those whose hair is grey) that at a 

 wedding or reception the chief deco- 

 ration was the banking of the mantel- 

 pieces with cut flowers, and I think I 

 have seen such a bank of flowers, 6 

 feet by 2 feet, that contained as many 

 orders, genera, species and varieties 

 as are usually found in a botanical 

 garden. Of palms there were scarcely 

 any. A few old latanias and occasion- 

 ally a shop worn Seaforthia elegans 

 comprised the stock in trade. Of the 

 ornamental kentias and arecas there 

 were none, and it would not be far 

 wrong to say that with the great ma- 

 jority of those who undertook a deco- 

 ration, of palms or decorative plants 

 there were none at all. 



To trace the progress and improve- 

 ment in our style of decoration would 

 be of no avail. What it is today and 

 what we can look for in the future is 

 what we are after. The basket filled 

 with moss and stuffed full of a variety 

 of flowers on toothpicks is gone for- 

 ever, and so is the bank of moss (often 

 made on a board to fit the mantel- 

 piece) gone never to return. The pass- 

 ing away of that style, as well as the 

 bouquet described in Peter Hender- 

 son's fine little work, "Practical Flori- 

 culture," is not a change of fashion; 

 not at all. It is the awakening and the 

 throwing off of a crude, semi-barbaric 

 education in that particular line. And 

 as pronounced traits of barbarism are 

 occasionally cropping out among the 

 most refined and polished peoples you 

 occasionally see a bouquet that in 

 form and make up reminds you of the 

 dark ages. 



It is a question what brings about 

 these great changes. Was it the sup- 

 ply of better material that suggested 

 a more natural and refined style of 

 decoration, or was it the good taste 

 of our patrons that stimulated the 



taste and originality of the florist? 

 We think decidedly it was the latter, 

 for material of some kinds we always 

 had, and flowers too, but a knowledge 

 of their proper use came by education 

 and it came slowly. Did it ever occur 

 to you how much we are all imitators? 

 There are in our line only a few men 

 of bright and original ideas in the 

 whole country and I am without the 

 postofflce address of those few, but. at 

 the risk of offending some mighty 

 good people I believe these few bright, 

 lights lived (and I trust yet live) in 

 New York and Boston. 



All reformers are abused and re- 

 viled, or considered cranks by the com- 

 mon herd. All discoverers and demon- 

 strators of everlasting truths are held 

 in contempt and spoken of by fossilized 

 brains and robed hypocrites as enemies 

 of mankind. Saints never lived; they 

 are saints when they die, Linnaeus, the 

 colossal brained Swede who demon- 

 strated and published the facts about 

 the sexes in plants, had to eat his 

 words at the command of the church. 

 Just fancy; he had to deny a great 

 truth in nature which is today taught 

 to every student at a high school. 

 Happy is the man (for his mind is his 

 great consolation) who will grasp the 

 truth as great minds reveal it. Let 

 him be penniless, he is yet rich, and 

 a king compared to ignorant affluence, 

 who, ostrich-like, hides its head to all 

 true knowledge except that of acquir- 

 ing wealth far beyond its necessities. 



This is a deviation from floral dec- 

 orations, but I will apply the argu- 

 ment to show that reformers in our 

 line, men who were not afraid to step 

 out of the beaten track, have likely 

 been sneered at by hundreds of fogies 

 who perhaps had nothing to say in ar- 

 gument against a new idea only that 

 the author was "getting gay," or 

 "thinks he's smart." Every time some 

 man of bright ideas bring out an ar- 

 tistic move we ought to be thankful, 

 for by slow degrees our ideas of the 

 artistic part of our business have been 

 moved upward and onward. A move 

 in the wrong direction will soon die 

 out, for upward and onward and prog- 

 ress are as sure to come as that we 

 have progressed from the savage, and 

 have lots of room for improvement yet. 



The last twenty years have given us 

 material that was not dreamed of in 

 the early days. We had smilax, but 

 we did not have Asparagus plumosus. 

 We had, but did not then avail our- 

 selves of the Magnolia grandiflora 

 sprays, the Mountain Laurel (kalmia). 

 Holly was scarcely ever seen. Lycopo- 

 dium (ground pine) was little used. 

 Leucothoe sprays were unknown; also 

 the southern wild smilax. Adiantum 

 cuneatum was used, but in no such 

 quantities as now. And in cut flowers 

 we did not have our long-stemmed 

 carnations, or our magnificent Ameri- 

 can Beauty rose. And the glorious 

 buds of Mermet and Perle or Cornelia 

 Cook were very scarce twenty-five 

 years ago. We had to be content with 

 Safrano, Isabella Sprunt and Bon Si- 

 lene. As for palms, the use of them 



