Coming trom the Peony fields. 
Happy? Yes! 
FO R E W O R D HIS TREATISE on the Peony is issued to create a more 
BY JOHN M. GOOD widely spread interest in this grand hardy perennial, by 
telling of its history, its culture and of its superlatively 
Great beauty. To the average person—that is, to ninety-nine out of every one hundred 
flower lovers—the word Peony is fixed in their memories simply as a Red P. eony or a 
White Peony or a Pink P eony, while the actual fact is that the Peony with very small 
outlay and attention on your part will reveal itself to you in such splendor that King 
Solomon nor the Queen of Sheba in all their grandeur could vie with the modern Peony 
in their magnificence. Indeed a plantation of choice Peonies is a veritable paradise of 
loveliness and fragrance. 
Should this little booklet in a measure correct this false opinion that Peonies are a 
subject that may be dismissed by a passing thought, it will then have accomplished its 
mission and thus aid in the wider dissemination of this much neglected plant. 
The above was written for the first edition of ‘“Peonies for Pleasure” just a few years 
ago. The results have fully justified our conclusions at that time, for as evidence of the 
‘more widely spread interest” our sales at first doubled, then trebled, and last fall more 
than guadrupled. When we started in the peony business our annual sales amounted to 
twelve hundred roots simply to color—Red, White and Pink; while now we have sold in 
one season as many as fifty thousand Festiva Maxima, twenty thousand Felix Crousse, 
twenty-five thousand Edulis Superba, ten thousand Monsieur Jules Elie, etc., ete. Surely 
this is evidence of increased interest. 
In conmenting, on the statement, “I believe everyone is Peony mad,” Mr. A. P 
Saunders, Secretary of the American Peony Society, in Bulletin of P. eony News No. 2: says: 
“Tt will be good news to the nurseryman that people are going, Peony mad. It is high 
time they did, too; we are, of course, all Peony mad; at least all the world thinks us so, 
because we have known something of the charm and beauty of the flower, while others 
have been blind to them. What a day would dawn for the Growers if we should drift 
into a Peony mania like the tulip mania that struck the Dutch in the seventeenth century. 
How would some of our friends feel, I wonder, if some fine morning they should be offered 
fora precious root of Le Cygne the inventory of goods once swapped in Holland for a single 
(ee ee ee 
Miss EllaV. Baines, Springfield, Ohio. Page One 
