Decetmbbb 15, 1910. 



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The Weekly Florists^ Review* 



29 



(^ livery, and 4f business is good it is an 

 all-night's job. The man who has a 

 range of greenhouses at his back usu- 

 ally can call on his greenhouse help for 

 the making up of plant arrangements, 

 or at least for the wrapping of orders 

 put up by the store people. Frequently 

 such help is to be had from greenhouse 

 establishments that grow for the whole- 

 sale market and in which the Christmas 

 rush is over sooner than with the re- 

 tailer. 



If there is any time at which room is 

 valuable it is when preparing the holi- 

 day deliveries. It is bad enough to be 

 crowded within the narrow walls of a 

 small store when the selling is going 

 on, but it is worse to be without space 

 when orders are being put up and ar- 

 ranged for delivery. If the benches of 

 a conservatory are available, or if there 

 is plenty of open floor space at hand, 

 the work is greatly simplified. 



The best way of handling the Christ- 

 mas orders thus far devised is to set 

 apart a certain place for the deliveries 

 of each wagon or route. Then all hands 

 attack the pile of orders and as each 

 one is finished the package can be 

 placed on the spot designated for that 

 particular route. In the big stores, 

 where many hundreds of deliveries are 

 to be made, the custom is to place one 

 man in charge of the wagons and to 

 have the order clerks turn their work 

 over to him as rapidly as the parcels 

 are completed and tagged. He then 

 can see that each package goes to the 

 right section and eventually to the 

 right wagon, so that when the wagon 

 starts out it will have everything in- 

 tended for that part of town, so that 

 no second trips will be necessary. If a 

 wagon goes without its entire load, or 

 if it takes articles which should go on 

 another route, a vast amount of time 

 will be consumed and much dissatisfac- 

 tion is sure to result. 



Practically every retail florist who 

 has built up a large volume of business 

 appreciates that prompt and accurate 

 delivery are among the essential fea- 

 tures of the service given. In such 

 establishments the holiday delivery is 

 carefully planned days before the work 

 is to be done, and there is no store do- 

 ing 80 little business that the man at 

 the helm can afford to neglect this part 

 of the holiday preparations. 



COBSAGE OF CATTLEYAS. 



Corsage bouquets have been ex- 

 tremely popular this season. Large 

 numbers will be sold for Christmas, 

 and, especially where the recipient of 

 the gift will participate in the social 

 activities of the day, nothing could be 

 more satisfactory, so it is good business 

 to push the sale. The highest class of 

 corsage bouquet calls for the use of 

 cattleyas, as in the illustration on this 

 page. This bouquet was made with cat- 

 tleyas, valley and adiantum, but in 

 place of the adiantum the leading stores 

 are using the now popular Mexican ivy. 

 The lighter green of the ivy combines 

 well with the flowers and it has the 

 advantage of adiantum in that it does 

 not wilt down, for when the adiantum 

 has lost its freshness it destroys the 

 appearance of the entire arrangement. 



Far more bunches are made of violets 

 than of any other flower, and it usually 

 is a pleasing touch to set in the center 

 of the bunch a few spikes of valley or 

 a single perfect gardenia. 



The corsage bunch for gift purposes 



G>rsa£c Bouquet of Gittleyas and Valley. 



may be elaborated to any extent the 

 purchaser wishes by the use of expen- 

 sive hampers. This is in better taste 

 than to make the bunch itself too 

 large, and the florist makes the same 

 profit on the sale of the receptacle 

 that he does on the flowers. The sup- 

 ply houses not only offer a wide range 

 of choice in these boxes, and baskets, 

 and hampers, but also carry large lines 

 of ties of colors to match the flowers 

 used. . 



THE INDISPENSABLE CYCLAMENS. 



"What is more useful than the cycla- 

 men? There is no other inexpensive 

 Christmas plant that passes it in popu- 

 larity. The improvement in varieties 

 and the more careful cultural methods 

 now employed have done much to give 

 it a leading place at this season, but 

 a prime factor has been its adaptability 

 to all sorts of purposes. There is 

 scarcely one of the big anid expensive 

 plant combinations which does not in- 

 clude a cyclamen, and individual plants 

 are fine sellers when merely transferred 



from the ordinary red pot to some such 

 fancy receptacle as those shown in the 

 illustration on page 33. There is sim- 

 ply no end to the variety which can 

 be created through the use of cycla- 

 mens of the various colors in recep- 

 tacles of this kind. The store man can 

 scatter them all through his holiday 

 stock and have no two exactly alike. 



LOBRAINE THE LUXURIANT. 



The Lorraine begonia is one of the 

 plants that it simply is impossible to 

 do without at Christmas. The illustra- 

 tion on page 36 shows a plant photo- 

 graphed last Christmas in the store of 

 a retailer who once declared that never 

 again would he handle Lorraine; its 

 keeping qualities were too transient for 

 him. But the fact was that his custom- 

 ers insisted on having the begonia; 

 if they couldn't buy it of him they 

 would go elsewhere. So now he gives 

 them all the Lorraines they care to buy, 

 and when asked about the keeping qu ^ 

 ity merely states that the plant-^iT 



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