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Septimbbb 10» 1907. 



The Weekly Florists' Review; 



ft 



Eitablisbment of tlie Iowa Seed G)., Des Moines, Iowa, after the Hail Storm of September 7. 



of a factory can be laid out in a most 

 praiseworthy manner. Here our bedding 

 plants brighten daily the minds of thou- 

 sands of people. 



How many people are not fortunate 

 enough to possess a home with a lawn and 

 flower beds! There is no necessity to de- 

 prive themselves of nature 's gifts, but they 

 can enjoy them in a more modest way 

 by keeping flower boxes, which, no mat- 

 ter how obscure and unassuming the 

 dwelling, give it a homelike air and en- 

 liven the aspect of many an otherwise 

 somber home. 



On the other hand, many beautiful res- 

 idences rely solely upon piazza boxes for 

 their floral display and exquisite results 

 can be obtained in this manner. 



Finally, a few words should be devoted 

 to the homes of our loved dead. There 

 is nothing more soothing to the grief- 

 stricken heart than the sight of well kept 

 cemeteries, bedded with appropriate flow- 

 ers speaking the language of peace and 

 rest. 



How to Use Them. 



There are many and varied ways that 

 the bedding plants lend themselves to; 

 there still remains another problem to 

 solve, namely, "How to Use Them." 

 Here skill in artistic arrangement and 

 harmony of colors is put to a severe test. 



Starting with the beginning of the 

 season, the various Dutch bulbs are the 

 first ones to attract our attention. They 

 are easily cultivated and therefore most 

 appropriate for the amateur. Exquisite 

 effects and color schemes can be carried 

 out. Although their duration of bloom 

 barely reaches more than four weeks, I 

 think they make the most striking dis- 

 play of the season. Only the purest and 

 clearest colors should be selected. Off 

 colors and the peculiar magenta shades 

 are hard to match with pure colors and 

 are best planted by themselves, or far 

 enough distant so as not to detract from 

 them. Mixed beds containing a number 

 of varieties look very well, but beds of 

 all one color show by far better taste. 

 "Where a number of beds are planted, 

 greater attention must be given to work 

 out a harmonious color scheme. Pink, 

 white and light blue blend admirably to- 

 gether; next comes yellow, then red and 

 yellow and the various reds. It is a 

 great deal more pleasing to the eye to let 

 the colors run into each other by degrees 

 than to create too great" a contrast. Col- 

 onies of crocuses, snowdrops and scillas, 

 singly and several together, irregularly 

 scattered on the lawn, look very charm- 

 ing. 



Pansies, bellis and myosotis are also ex- 

 tensively used. Although the pansies 

 come in a multitude of colors, they are 

 mostly used mixed and often with Bellis 

 perennis as a border. Little advantage 

 has been taken of working out color 

 schemes with pansies and yet, if we stop 

 to study their rich tints, tints which I 

 think cannot be found in any other plant, 

 the possibilities are wonderful. 



Following these come the summer 

 plantings with cannas, geraniums, helio- 

 tropes, begonias, petunias, coleus, acaly- 

 phas, abutilon, salvias, verbenas and a 



Please discontinue our advertise- 

 ments in ;. V . .-• 



rVt*^ 



of Rex begonias and violet plants. 

 We were overrun with orders. 



A. B. DAVIS & SON. 

 Purcenville, Va. 



Sept. 14, 1907. 



great number of other plants too numer- 

 ous to be mentioned. 



Treatment of the Plants. 



Nearly all bedding plants thrive and 

 flourish best in full sunlight except tuber- 

 ous begonias and fuchsias, which do best 

 in half shade, where there is plenty of 

 indirect light. Other plants, like some 

 of our hardy palms, phoenixes, latanias, 

 chamserops, and the various fibrous rooted 

 begonias, like Semperflorens, Vernon, 

 Schmitti and fancy-leaved caladiums, do 

 well under both conditions. 



The soil for cannas, musas, ricinus and 

 Caladium esculentum should be very rich, 

 their growth will be so much more lux- 

 uriant, while the rest of the plants, like 

 geraniums, begonias, verbenas, salvias, 



cuphea, ageratums, etc., also need en- 

 riched soil. Care must be taken, how- 

 ever, not to use too much fertilizer, as 

 this would result disastrously, the plants 

 showing an abundance of foliage in place , 

 of flowers. 



Bedding plants, before being set out 

 in their summer quarters, should be prop- 

 erly hardened off. They should be ex- 

 posed freely to the air and sunlight at 

 least two weeks before the planting sea- 

 son commences. Nothing serves this pur- 

 pose better than the hotbed, no matter 

 how much some of the growers are op- 

 posed to this sort of cultivation. It is 

 true that the cost of labor is somewhat 

 higher, but the superior results obtained 

 fully justify the expenditure made, and 

 plants hardened off in this manner suf- 

 fer but very little in transplanting. 



We have plants of every desirable 

 height, from two inches up to eight feet, 

 some with a wealth of flowers, others 

 with richly colored foliage, some with 

 coarser, others with more graceful fea- 

 tures. 



Gmsideration of the Sky Line. 



In the arrangement of plantings one 

 great object, which is one of the great 

 principles in landscape gardening, is in 

 many cases lost sight of, namely, the 

 consideration of the sky line. Especially 

 in large border plantations this should be 

 applied. Here we have tall plantings 

 broken with lower ones, until they finally 

 run out to very low plants at the edge. 

 In fact, in smaller as well as in larger 

 displays, the relation of one bed to the 

 o^her should be treated this way. 



While the beds are more or less for- 

 mal, they should not appear stiff. Every 

 plant should have plenty of room for full 

 development, and where a number of va- 

 rieties are used in one bed, the tall ones 

 should not be massed all together, but 

 here and there one should rise above the 

 lower ones, so as to present a loose and 

 pleasing arrangement, and in this manner 

 every plant will show its valuable points 

 more advantageously. For example, a 

 bed planted only with Ficus clastica 

 would look very stiff, but intermingled 

 with the graceful Grevillea robusta and 

 a border of ivy, it would lose this stiff- 

 ness and present a very pleasing effect. 

 This shows that by careful study we can 

 improve the bad points of one plant with 

 the good ones of another. 



Particular care should be given to the 

 selection of the various tints, blending 

 richly colored foliage tastefully with the 

 more gorgeously tinted flowers, so as not 

 to create too great a contrast. Beds of 



