6 



J. T. LOVETT, LITTLE SILVER, N. J. 



ample: a strong, vigorous plant of almost any variety will yield a wealth of bloom the first 

 year; the early flowering kinds, in a few weeks from planting. On the other hand, a small 

 plant of the same variety, if it does not fail outright, (the chances are more than even that 

 it will), must at best struggle along, producing but a few sickly flowers late in the season. 

 Herein is the Nurseryman's "winter of discontent." It is much less expensive to produce 

 these small and immature plants than strong, well developed ones ; yet the poor ones come 

 in direct competition in price with the high class grade — and the pity of it is that but few 

 who plant or wish to plant Hardy Perennials, are able to discriminate and determine of 

 whom they should buy. Just here, I wish to state I grow all my Hardy Perennials with- 

 out using stimulants of any kind and without forcing. At the autumn exhibition of the 

 American Institute held in New York, in competition with many prominent growers of 

 Hardy Perennials, I was awarded first prize for " Best 50 varieties" of these flowers ; the 

 highest prize given. Also at the Chrysanthemum. Show of the same Institute 1 was 

 awarded " Two Special Prizes" for Hardy Perennials. These prizes, however, I esteem 

 of little value as compared with the fact that those who have bought of me in years past 

 continue to do so regularly aud, in a great many instances, are so well pleased with results 

 obtained that they induce their friends and neighbors to order of me also. 



WOKDS OF AN ENTHUSIAST 



Do you want to be an artist? The man who can put a beautiful landscape on canvas, 

 who can paint the Carnation and the Pose so finely as to represent them, who can arrest 

 the processions of summer flowers as they pass by, and put them on perpetual exhibition, 

 is a genius. Any man who could go into one of our great floral parks and put the varied 

 expressions of the Peony, the Phlox, the Gaillardia and Columbine, with the radient and 

 stately Delphinium, upon canvas, so the whole scene would represent a perpetual summer, 

 would immortalize himself. He who copies nature most faithfully wins greatest renown. 

 Do you know that the original transcends the copy and that you can produce the original 

 and the artist can be at his best only a feeble imitator? Take a live flower in all the pro- 

 digality of its loveliness — a living, breathing thing — exhaling delicious fragrance ! When 

 it goes into a picture it can be only a corpse of itself; so nature rises supremely above art 

 and the painter can only touch the hem of her garments. 



Did you ever watch the flowers as they were making their toilets? No lady of fash- 

 ion displays more exquisite taste or greater care in adornment. There must be a touch 

 here and another there. The outer petals must be just so large, the inner must wear ju^t 

 such colors. * * * Look around you; see the Columbines, the Lillies, the majestic Oriental 

 Poppies; all busy at work, intent as blooming girls to put on their choicest garments. 

 You call these things into life, but where in all the wide earth is the genius who can tran- 

 scribe this work — these ever changing robes of beauty — yea, the life of these radient hosts 

 that put themselves on dress parade to reward you for your interest in their behalf. Nev- 

 er warm hearted maiden, in the radient glow of her first love, ever tried to make herself 

 more attractive than these dainty flowers, which array themselves in all the witchery of 

 their loveliness that they may give you welcome. 



What would you think of a picture on a vast scale, one hundred by two hundred feet, 

 every portion of which was aglow with the choicest and finest representations of the choic- 

 est garden of flowers? Such a production would put a man at the very front of his profes- 

 sion. A building would be erected for it and crowds would come to visit it. What if he 

 could so reproduce them that the spectator could breath their very breath and could see 

 them making their toilets? Now, it is possible for you, my friend, be you man or woman, 

 boy or girl, in one tenth of the time it would take to train a painter to reproduce the liv- 

 ing forms in all their delicacy, with the tints of the rainbow woven into their garments, 

 with touchings and pencilings and tracery far more exquisite than ever came to human 

 genius. See that Oriental Poppy ! It is seven inches across. It is fashioned into a flower 

 of dazzling brightness. Look within ! See those delicate, tremulous stamens ! See that 

 seed pod! Could human skill mould its equal ? See those pencilings, all done in jet! 

 Put it on canvas? No — such an object is the despair of the artist ! What an immense 

 amount of the highest skill nature displays in making that single flower; and yet, last year 

 you got a little root, like a small parsnip, the size of a pencil, and lo, this is your reward. 

 Your skill and success are such as no human skill can fairly represent. So you are an ar- 

 tist, far transcending the mere copying art. All around you are those masses evoked by 

 your skill. No deft hand, however well trained, can reproduce them. You see an inter- 

 pretation of God's love to man. Every radient, graceful form is but an expression of His 



