CHAPTER V 



SIDE LINE POSSIBILITIES FOR THE RETAIL 



GROWER 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING— IS IT WORTH CONSIDERING? 



TO become an efficient landscape gardener takes years of 

 study, hard work and experience; a coUege education should 

 go with it, too. When I mention landscape gardening as a 

 florist's side Une, I do not wish it to be understood that I claim 

 to be myself an efficient landscape gardener, or hope ever to be one 

 competent to compete with professional men in that line. But as 

 a result of personal observation and experience in what a florist 

 would term "outside work" extending over thirty-five years, I 

 claim that there are a lot of opportunities awaiting every pro- 

 gressive florist or retail grower in the smaller cities and towns, 

 especially the suburban towns, to get acquainted with, and to do 

 work pertaining to, the laying out of the small home grounds. Such 

 work starts at the very beginning with the selection of the site for 

 the residence and continues up to the time the grounds are com- 

 pleted in every detafl. It will often include the excavation of the 

 basement, draining, rough grading, the making of the lawn.i the 

 planting of trees and shrubs, the building of a terrace, the laying 

 out of a formal, a Rose, or a sunken garden, the building of pergolas, 

 the construction of driveways and concrete walks, brick walks or 

 walks made out of stones, the building of water gardens or Lily ponds, 

 swimming pools, septic tanks, concrete curbing or gutters for a 

 drive, the laying out of a perennial border, and everything pertaining 

 to work on the home grounds. 



I realize fully that no one man is capable of doing all these 

 things perfectly, who does them as a side line of his main business; 

 or even of doing them as well as if done by the man who is 

 devoting his entire time to it and always has. But there are only 

 too often occasions when such a man can't be had; when there is 



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