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December 14, 1911. 



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The Weekly Florists^ Review^ 



29 



BASKETS OF PLANTS. 



Nowadays no flower store can get 

 through a Christmas without a lot of 

 baskets of plants — as well try to get 

 along without cut flowers. When the 

 plant basket came, it came to stay. 

 In its original form it was a compara- 

 tively simple affair, but it made a hit. 

 The hit was as much with the retail 

 florists as it was with the flower buying 

 public, for the florist had found it dif- 

 ficult to get as many cut flowers as he 

 needed for his holiday trade and he 

 welcomed all additions to the supply. 

 The public was, of course, more or less 

 tired of the regular items of cut flower 

 stock and gladly bought the plant ar- 

 rangements. The plants cost hardly so 

 much as the cut flowers, so there was 

 room for the florist to exercise his dex- 

 terity in building large and compli- 

 cated baskets and hampers of them. 

 Of course they went to extremes — when 

 any new thing makes a hit the nat- 

 ural tendency is to run it into the 

 ground. But the basket of plants is so 

 good a thing that it can't be killed — 

 overdoing wouldn't extinguish the 

 plant basket, as it does the things that 

 have no real merit back of them. 



Naturally there was a reaction — there 

 always is where anything is carried 

 too far. But the reaction did not drive 

 the plant basket off the scene of the 

 Christmas scramble; not a bit of it. 

 Indeed, probably a good many florists 

 would say there had been no reaction, 

 and perhaps they are right so far as 



their own cases or localities are con- 

 cerned. The plant basket was more or 

 less slow to make its way into the 

 smaller cities. Florists there at first 

 thought that their trade would not take 

 to them, and they did not need the addi- 

 tion to the supply of stock so badly 

 as the city florists needed it. It was 

 in New York that these baskets had 

 their first popularity and it was there 

 that they were developed into huge af- 

 fairs that sold at prices that couldn 't 

 last. Better taste came to prevail, and 

 now the plant arrangements seen in 

 the stores patronized by even the 

 wealthiest people usually are compara- 

 tively modest affairs. They are not 

 the miscellaneous mixtures of other 

 days, but are put together with as much 

 skill and artistic appreciation of form 

 and color values as are shown in the 

 best of cut flower designing. 



With comparative simplicity in the 

 baskets of plants there has come a 

 much wider sale for them. - In almost 

 every town throughout the length and 

 breadth of the land the flower stores 

 show plants more or less in holiday at- 

 tire. In the first place little thought 

 was given to natural arrangement. 

 Now many plants are sold in the pot in 

 which they were grown, only the pot 

 is put into some fancy receptacle; or 

 the plant is shifted to a basket, or an 

 appropriate piece of pottery — some- 

 thing in which its individuality will 

 be given expression rather than be 

 smothered in a mass of foliage and 



bloom. The change in style has been 

 of advantage to everyone; it has let 

 everybody into the game — sellers and 

 buyers; it has increased the supply and 

 variety of stock and added immensely 

 to the number of sales. 



CHRISTMAS CUT FLOWERS. 



In the last few years we have heard 

 a great deal about the sale of plants at 

 the holidays,, and after each one of 

 these festivals we are told that it was 

 a "plant Christmas," or a "plant 

 Easter." But the fact remains that 

 cut flowers still constitute the best 

 selling part of the stock. Not only do 

 customers enjoy sending boxes of 

 flowers to their friends, but they really 

 prefer, if the truth were told, to buy 

 cut flowers for their own holiday uses. 

 Many a free spender who wants to re- 

 member hig friends for Christmas sends 

 each a box containing a dozen Beauties. 

 Metropolitan florists frequently have a 

 number of such customers; men who 

 simply hand out the addresses of those 

 to whom the gifts are to be sent, and 

 after having left quite an order such a 

 customer almost invariably calls up 

 later to add a few names at first over- 

 looked. 



A good many retail florists have 

 pushed the plant end of the business 

 at Christmas simply because cut flow- 

 ers have been high and the opportu- 

 nity for profit, even at the high retail 

 prices, less than the opportunity to 



Inexpensive Arrangements of Plants and Greens, Such as Thesf, Are Great Sellers at Chrutmas. 



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