Every day and all day the rows of sweet peas are thoroughly picked over, the flowers are bunched in separate colors, being sorted over after picking and 



put in water in a cool cellar. One hour's work of each of the gatherers is shown above 



Selling Flowers in a Summer Colony — By Annie A. Frost, ? 



Massa- 

 husetts 



[Editor's Note. — This is the second article showing how an amateur gardener, beginning the cultivation of plants purely as a hobby, 

 has gradually developed a market for the cut flowers. Last month it was shown what could be done on the Pacific Coast, and this month we 

 present a story from New England. Of course, there must be like experiences in other parts of the country. We want to know about 

 anyone who has taken up gardening as an amateur, and in one way or another has turned the experience into a source of revenue, whether by 

 the sale of cut flowers or plants, or by any other means. Each particular case has a special interest on account of the local conditions, and 

 no two experiences can be alike. We want to know about other similar experiences, and will pay cash for any acceptable articles.] 



ALWAYS, from the earliest days of my 

 recollection I had an instinctive 

 desire to have some growing plants around 

 me — indeed the love of flowers has been, 

 and still is for that matter, an absorbing 

 passion. As a little girl when my father 

 lived in apartments above the store which 

 occupied his daily attention, so I am told, 

 I used to manifest my longings by digging 



The growing vines adjoining the sales stand attract 

 attention and give a guarantee of freshness 



up a root of grass, using as a trowel a table 

 fork borrowed from my father. This insig- 

 nificant little house plant I would set in a 

 little soil in some odd box, raked up from 

 the household rubbish and give it an honored 

 position on the window sill. I tell this to 

 show that I take no credit to myself for the 

 development of these later years when my 

 "sweet pea farm" has earned more than a 

 local reputation. 



Although I now plan each year what I shall 

 do for the next season's supply of hardy 

 old-fashioned flowers I must say that the 

 trade has been forced upon us rather than 

 that I deliberately entered in the field of 

 commercial production. I did not deliber- 

 ately plan to make a business of raising cut 

 flowers for sale. But as we had the place 

 and demands came for flowers, I began 

 to respond on a very small scale and to-day 

 you can see the results in my almost three 

 acres of garden. 



It was something like sixteen or eighteen 

 years ago — really I can't state exactly — 

 that the first trade was made. Marblehead 

 was not then the centre of a "summer 

 visitor" . colony that it is to-day. An 

 56 



occasional tourist would happen along once 

 in a while and it is to the growth of this 

 element that I attribute my present 

 developments. 



The beginning was purely accidental. 

 I was in my garden of old-fashioned flowers 

 — a small plot in the front of the old farm 

 house where I and my husband had made 

 up our minds to settle and indulge my 



One of the subsidiary gardens, where nothing but 

 sweet peas is grown 



