20 



The Florists^ Review 



JUNH 17, 1920. 



J. Horace McFarland as chairman. The 

 executive committee was given power 

 to fill any vacancies in its body or to 

 add to its number. 



The platform in the hall was most 

 tastefully and elaborately decorated 

 with palms, ferns and decorative 

 baskets and vases of peonies. 



J. H. P. 



KANSAS CITY, MO. 



The Market. 



Business has been lively all the 

 month. Contrary to the usual run of 

 affairs, there was no dull period follow- 

 ing Memorial day and the last week has 

 been active with graduations, weddings, 

 entertainments of various sorts and a 

 considerable amount of funeral work. 



Stock has moved well and there has 

 been enough to meet all demands. Car- 

 nations have begun to show the ad- 

 vance of the season and roses are show- 

 ing some effect of summer heat, but 

 thus far there has been no stock poor 

 enough to be worthless. 



Various Notes. 



Henry Kusik & Co. are getting some 

 fancy greenhouse gladioli from local 

 growers. Thsy have received some nice 

 carnations from Denver. Orders for 

 roses have been so heavy that they 

 could not keep up with them some days. 



The Pinehurst Floral Co. has been 

 cleaning up daily. Besides cut flowers, 

 it is selling many bedding plants and 

 ferns. It has had heavy calls for lilies 

 of the valley. 



The Kansas City Wholesale Cut 

 Flower Co. had splendid crops of del- 

 phiniums, roses and gladioli last week 

 and also some fine carnations. It had 

 plenty of sweet peas up to Thursday, 

 June 10. 



Mr. and Mrs. Robert McGrail have 

 bought a .'j-acre tract on Blue Ridge 

 boulevard, in the Witthar restricted ad- 

 dition. They intend to build a country 

 home next spring. 



The Pinehurst Floral Co. has taken a 

 .'i-year lease on the fourth floor at 1121- 

 112.3 Grand avenue, where it is now 

 located. It lias secured the room on the 

 south side of the building, adjoining 

 the room they now have, and in July 

 will begin remodeling. 



Miss Lou Boggcss had the biggest 

 week for funeral work preceding Me- 

 morial day that she ever experienced. 

 Saturday, May 29, she had a $75 blanket 

 order and half a dozen other funeral 

 orders. Funeral work is still heavy 

 with her. 



The T. J. Noll Floral Co. is receiving 

 a nice line of supplies and is rapidly 

 getting the new wholesale place into 

 shajie for lianrlling business. It had 

 some especially fine gladioli among 

 other good stock last week. 



.John Stevens has about finished 

 cle.ining u]> his wrecked greenhouses 

 ;i.nd is ])reparing to rebuild his entire 

 range. 



The real e.^tate dealers' convontion 

 brought a heavy week to the Muehle- 

 bach Flower Shop. They had a big 

 dinner in tho Colonial ballroom of the 

 Muehlebach hotel, for which 4-foot rose 

 trees were used to decorate the tables. 

 Among the branches of the trees were 

 small electri*^ light bulbs and m.nssed 

 about the base of the trees were various 

 flowers. About the chandelier in the 

 midrlle of th'^ room were large sprays 

 of colored pampas grass. Another en- 



tertainment was a luncheon for the 

 women members and wives of delegates. 

 The favors were old-fashioned bou- 

 quets, 400 of them. Besides the various 

 social affairs at the country clubs and 

 hotels, there were numerous orders for 

 corsages and boxes. 



E. A. Humfeld was on a jury from 

 Monday, Juno 7, until Friday, June 11. 

 He has commenced to bench his roses 

 at the Independence greenhouses and 

 has a good crop of delphiniums coming 

 on. Although he has refused nearly all 

 bedding and box orders this season, he 

 is ahead of last year. 



Jacob Hepting has taken possession 

 of his greenhouses again. 



Nelson Jarrett has a considerable crop 

 of oriental poppies. The plants were 

 brought from Japan by a native gar- 

 dener and several growers around here 

 bought some. Mr. Jarrett has been 

 selling only the blooms, but he will be- 

 gin to sell the plants in August. 



Adolph Mohr has enjoyed a satis- 

 factory seas<5n and has cleaned up well. 

 He is now beginning to plant cyclamens 

 and begonias for the holidays. 



August Luther, Jr., is planting mums. 

 His bedding work has been exception- 

 ally good. 



S. Bryson Ayres has begun improve- 

 ments at his Sunny Slope Seed Farm. 

 He will add 5,000 square feet of glass 

 to his range for the culture of sweet 

 peas. He also has plans for enlarging 

 his retail store, which will double the 

 space. About five times as much stock 

 was sold for Memorial day as a year 

 ago. His cut of peonies was between 

 30,000 and 40,000. 



More than sixty exhibitors contrib- 



uted to the display of forty-eight classes 

 of flowers in the fifth spring show of 

 the Amateur Flower Gardeners' Asso- 

 ciation at the Hotel Muehlebach 

 June 12. 



Miss Louise "Tobler has returned from 

 a month's visit in the south. 



Two effective window displays last 

 week were Samuel Murray's blue hy- 

 drangeas and the red gladiolus display 

 of the W. L. Rock Flower Co. 



Among the visitors last week were 

 P. A. Manson, Pleasant Hill, Mo.; Mr. 

 and Mrs. P. A. Simonson, McPherson, 

 Kan.; Mr. and Mrs. William Hassel- 

 man, Independence, Kan.; J. C. Stein- 

 hauser, Pittsburg, Kan., and Miss Dix, 

 Leavenworth, Kan. 



Miss Nayr, of Chicago, is visiting 

 Miss Hayden. 



Eric Fransden is erecting a new boiler 

 room and installing a new boiler at his 

 greenhouses. 



A crew from the American Green- 

 house Mfg. Co. arrived from Chicago 

 Thursday, June 10, and has commenced 

 to build the Longview greenhouse. 



A. F. Barbe is planting mums. 



J. G. Eggleston has been doing as 

 much bedding work this month as he 

 did at the height of the season in 1919. 



Miss Helen Brown, daughter of Mrs. 

 M. Brown, of the W. L. Rock Flower 

 Co., proved herself a heroine in a re- 

 cent motor accident. Miss Brown and 

 seven school children, whom she was 

 taking home after classes in a motor 

 bus, were pinned beneath the car when 

 it was struck by another and over- 

 turned. She calmly directed the rescue 

 work. J. E. K. 



DEMAND CAUSES SCARCITY. 



An Assertion Proved. 



During tho extreme scarcity of cut 

 flowers last winter, the writer, in sev- 

 eral articles in this column, took the 

 stand that the cause of the shortage 

 was increased demand. This statement 

 was made after careful investigation; 

 that is, the market was carefully 

 watched and it was found that, while 

 at all times stock was scarce, yet there 

 was as large a volume of stock being 

 used as in pievious years. 



All will remember that the scarcity 

 of flowers >\as attributed to weather 

 conditions, and time and again there 

 were predictions of gluts coming as 

 soon as conditions became favorable. 

 To be certain no mirage had been lead- 

 ing me on, I determined to watch condi- 

 tions even more closely, so ns to make 

 no mistake as to what the cause of last 

 winter's shortage really was. 



There are three points in this inves- 

 tigation which I think, if we analyze 

 them carefully, will convince the most 

 skeptical that the greenhouses of the 

 country are not sutficient to take care 

 of the increased demand for flowers. 

 The first thing to which I wish to call 

 your attention is the fact that at this 

 writing there has been no great glut 

 of stock. Of course, in some sections 



there may have been, after the weather 

 became warm, an oversupply of such 

 stock as sweet peas, but even this was 

 nothing compared with the gluts we 

 liave known, and this condition did not 

 arrive until the season was over. Any 

 glut we may now have will be caused 

 by outdoor stock and greenhouse produc- 

 tion has nothing to do with this. 



Scarcity of Bedding Plants. 



The second point is the scarcity of 

 bedding plants this spring. There are 

 several reasons for this, but they can 

 all be traced to tho increased demand 

 for flowers. The first of these is the 

 fact that many of the smaller growers, 

 who at one time produced a large pari 

 of the bedding plants used, have turned 

 their entire ranges to cut flowers; the 

 demand and high prices that were avail- 

 able were the cause of their devoting 

 their attention to this branch of thr 

 business exclusively. The next point 

 in the present plant shortage is the fact 

 that in these days of automobiles the 

 class of people who were plant buyers 

 have moved from the congested part of 

 our cities to the suburbs and, in many 

 cases, out into the country. The man 

 who lived in a city row with a yard 

 perhaps 15x30 feet now has a vegetable 

 garden in the back of his home and a 

 lawn with a flower bed and borders in 

 the front. These are the two points 



