LANDSCAPE GARDENING OPPORTUNITIES 125 



none for mUes around. And all the time there are any number of neg- 

 lected home grounds or such, as could with very little work be made 

 much more attractive. Other grounds were laid out many years ago 

 and are in need of being remodeled. Driveways of the old type, 

 constructed of cinders with a Uttle top dressing of gravel, need to 

 be made over. Or an owner may wish to have his grounds made to 

 look like others he has seen elsewhere. 



Who but the local florist is the logical man to call upon to do 

 such work in the absence of a professional landscape gardener? 

 Particularly if that florist has his own grounds attractively laid out, 

 as he should have. 



I claim that almost every florist, with just a httle experience 

 and exercise of wiU power, is capable of becoming a practical and 

 efficient man for such work, that is, on smaU grounds at least. 

 And I am sure this subject is well worthy of consideration by every 

 florist who conducts an establishment in a neighborhood where the 

 average home is surrounded by from a few square yards of ground 

 up to a one-acre lot or larger. 



A Gbeat Field and Future in Landscape Work 



There were great landscape gardeners before Napoleon's time, 

 but even our country hasn't always been so wealthy that those other 

 than the very rich could aiford to employ them. During the past 

 thirty or forty years with people prosperous aU over the land, the 

 desire came not only for a higher standard of living but also for 

 better homes and home grounds. This created a demand for trees, 

 shrubs and other hardy stock and for garden literature, all of which 

 in turn helped to create a greater demand for more stock and 

 men capable of laying out grounds, and others able to maintain 

 them. With all that has been accomplished, it is still only the 

 beginning and always wiU be. As long as the nation increases in 

 population and new houses are being built, there is no end and can 

 be none. No matter how many landscape gardeners may appear 

 there will always be all kinds of opportunities for the local florist 

 of a town to develop landscape gardening into a paying side line. 

 There are today many examples of florists who. have been in the 

 greenhouse business all their lives, but never made as much money 

 as they have since they went into outside work. Most of them — 

 the writer of these notes included— didn't know the first thing about 

 it at first. They couldn't have named four different shrubs by their 

 right names, or told what they were good for if you had paid 

 them for it. 



I claim that you cannot learn landscape gardening out of the 

 best book ever written by the best authority. You must start the 

 same way that practically all great landscape gardeners started, 



