Carnation Culture in Canada 



plants at his boyhood home. After coming to San Francisco he gratified his taste for 

 flowers, trees and shrubs, and built a greenhouse in his garden. In the beginning of the 

 year 1871 he concluded to associate himself in business as a florist with Mr. F. A. Miller. 

 a practical gardener, still retaining his position at the flour mills. Subsequently, the 

 latter position was abandoned, and his entire time devoted to the florist and nursery 

 trade. In 1875, the eventful and rather disastrous year for San Francisco, when the 

 Bank of San Francisco failed, Mr. Sievers was in the Hawaii Islands superintending 

 the removal of a large number of royal and other varieties of palms, crotons, tree 

 ferns, etc., for which quite a demand had been created ; but when he reached port with 

 a whole deckload of magnificent plants in boxes, the financial conditions were so 

 demoralizing that sales were out of the question and credit impossible, necessitating 

 a new start in business, with more or less success at the beginning, but which has 

 ultimately culminated in a most satisfactory manner, as is now pretty generally 

 known. 



Carnation Culture in Canada 



BY JOHN H. DUNLOP, TORONTO 



There is no commercial flower cultivated in the Dominion of Canada 

 that has made as great progress toward general popularity, during the past 

 ten years, as the carnation. 



As I am writing particularly of the progress made in Canadian carna- 

 tion culture, I will ask my readers to consider for a moment the varieties 

 grown twelve or fourteen years ago, when the area of glass devoted 

 to the growing of carnations was very limited. The varieties then culti- 

 vated, as I now remember, were President Degraw, La Purite, Mrs. Car- 

 negie, and Crimson King. I can remember a bench of the Crimson King, 

 which was growing remarkably well, about fourteen years ago. This bench, 

 but forty feet in length by five feet in width, produced more than sufficient 

 flowers of its particular color to supply the demand in Toronto; in fact, 

 the blooms were frequently offered at $1.00 per 100, and the average whole- 

 sale price of carnations during the holidays and through the winter was 

 but the modest sum of $1.50 per 100. As the Divine Flower was receiving 

 more attention from the florists of the United States and a few firms had 

 branched out as carnation specialists, and devoted their entire establishments 

 to the culture of this flower, and were producing blooms showing marked 

 improvement over the ordinary commercial varieties grown at that time, 

 the possibilities of carnation culture began to be realized. Who will fail 

 to remember with what delight we viewed the first blooms of the varieties 



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