A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK 



— the experiments with which they are constantly 

 busy — are there any others besides painters, com- 

 posers, poets, sculptors, who can give to Americans 

 what these are giving ? We need flowers. Every 

 man, woman, and child of us is hungry for flowers. 

 No man can grow or even sell flowers successfully 

 unless he values them at more than money. But 

 it is the hybridizer, the man or woman of gentle- 

 ness and patience, of intelligence, perception, and 

 deep love of the art that brings into this tapestry 

 of life a lovely curious pattern through their own 

 threads of color, a freshness of design only to be 

 wrought by the creative mind. 



As each midsimamer comes and opportunity 

 presents itself for sights of fields or shows or single 

 specimens of the gladiolus, I wonder how interest 

 can wander to any other flower than this. There 

 is a magic in a subject which has such variants; 

 there is fresh pleasure in each change of form, of 

 color, of marking; and in these last years, as all 

 the world of horticulture knows, the beauty of the 

 gladiolus has increased tenfold through its hj'brid- 

 izers. I have elsewhere written of my penchant 

 for the smoky or dusky hues in this flower, in 

 Prince of India, for example; but not long since a 

 great basket of gladiolus spikes was sent me for 



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