220. The profusion of blooms thai a bush-grown chrysanthemum will give is a revelation. The florist pinches off all shoots but one, which therefore develops a 

 giant flower. The large-flawered chrysanthemum is hardy, but it is well to protect from wind and excessive cold if a long season of bloom is wanted 



Campaigning with Chrysanthemums— By J. N. Gerard a 



CONFESSIONS OF AN AMATEUR WHO GREW A COLLECTION OF LARGE-FLOWERED VARIETIES OUTDOORS 

 BEFORE THE CHRYSANTHEMUM CRAZE BEGAN— FIVE- AND SIX-INCH FLOWERS WITHOUT A GREENHOUSE 



Photographs by the author 



IT HAS always seemed to me that the cul- 

 ture of the chrysanthemum has been car- 

 ried in the wrong direction by the amateur as 

 well as the florist. The chrysanthemum is a 

 hardy plant, marvelously responsive to good 

 treatment, easily grown by anyone who has 

 the ordinary understanding of gardening, yet it 

 has been nursed, coddled, and grown in heat, 

 and the consequence has been that our notions 

 are all warped and we have an artificial and 

 wrong point of view. People are not satisfied 

 with anything short of a great ball of a flower 

 of regular form on the top of a rigid stem fur- 

 nished with coarse leaves. These mammoth 

 flowers are undeniably evidences of skilful 

 cultivation, and I can look on them with ad- 

 miration. They have their decorative value, 

 too — in some cases — but the majority of man- 

 kind does not live in great apartments, and 

 mere bulk does not always satisfy. 



Being somewhat wedded to my idols, I have 

 a prejudice in favor of growing hardy plants 

 in the open; and, not being a showman or a 

 dealer, I fail to understand the joy of laboring 

 over my plants to produce flowers on the 

 florist's standards. 



Anyone who knows chrysanthemums knows 

 that they are flowers of infinite variety, both 

 of form and coloring as well as of gracefulness 

 and ugliness. Until one has grown a col- 

 lection of chrysanthemums one never realizes 



what abundance of flowers means. Certainly 

 no other plant with the same care will produce 

 such a mass of really useful flowers in such 

 infinite variety of size, shape and coloring. 

 There seems to be among amateurs a revival 

 of interest in the pompon section, the small 

 flowers of which are less susceptible to frost 

 than the larger blooms, but I see very limited 

 collections of the old forms which used to 

 delight me when I followed the fad in the 

 early eighties; and none of the glass-protected 

 flowers seem to me to possess the virile beauty 

 of those grown in the open and seen in the 

 bright October days with coolness in the air. 



John Thorpe, of pleasant memory, first 

 showed me how much "wood " and how many 

 flowers could be had from a small slip during 

 a single season. I never had a garden 

 lesson which stung me more quickly and 

 effectively, and it was not long before I was 

 growing several hundred plants in the open — 

 and grow they did in the full sense of the word, 

 for a chrysanthemum is a gross feeder, and, 

 providing the roots are right, will give an 

 account of every ounce of nutriment fed to it, 

 such as few other plants will. It is probably 

 for this "easiness" that the real hide-bound 

 amateur hardy plantsman will have none of 

 them. 



At first I grew the plants in pots, and some 

 in a flat, from which they were transferred in 

 162 



the fall to the south side of the dwelling, they 

 suffering little by transfer. About the middle 

 of October it was my custom to build a frame 

 of light scantling, on top of which were placed 

 either coldframe sashes or tarred paper. As 

 the weather became colder a curtain of burlap 

 protected the front at night. With care in 

 watering, the flowers would keep well into 

 November. Of course the place was exposed 

 as much as possible, as plants coddled or 

 warmed up become tender. 



Later, as my collection enlarged, I protected 

 it by a tent some 30 x 16 feet, with a height of 

 14 feet at the ridge. The air in this was 

 modified and kept in circulation by hot-water 

 pipes heated from an adjacent cellar. Here 

 care was also taken to keep flowers as cool as 

 possible by reefing up side curtains whenever 

 feasible. The most strenuous gardening I 

 have ever done was in keeping this tent on 

 earth when the winds blew and the rains de- 

 scended. 



THE SIMPLE REQUIREMENTS 



Really, there is no difficulty in the cultiva- 

 tion of a healthy chrysanthemum plant. It 

 should have good drainage and be in good 

 soil in the first place, and after this it is a 

 simple question of how much manure of 

 various kinds you can give it, with attention 

 to watering. 



