Mrs. Charles Kiissell, Mine Jules Boiiche and Kobin Hood were 

 blooming generously in November. It was the first week and 

 everything was as trim then as when I saw it first in late June. 

 We cut violas cornuta in mid-November. The Iceland poppies 

 had an unusual blooming season of four months ; nothing was per- 

 mitted to go to seed. 



I ask every Amateur to strive for a better and still better 

 garden. There can be no question about your succeeding. Be 

 enthusiastic, be imaginative and, above all, be insistent witli your 

 gardeners. If they are in a rut, they must leave their rut. I 

 regret to say that a certain sensible, honest, painstaking and con- 

 scientious gardener tells me that in his opinion most gardeners 

 are in a rut. "We are an obstinate lot," he smilingly said, and I 

 smiled too, and silently agreed with him. When I asked him if it 

 was true (as I had heard) that many gardeners were averse to 

 reading and keeping in touch with the new flowers and the im- 

 proved old flowers, the hybrids, etc., the new and improved meth- 

 ods, he admitted that it was a fact, / kneic it was, but I wanted 

 his admission of it. It is rather inexplicable, don't you think so? 

 I suppose we can only attribute it to the "rut." A very clever and 

 enthusiastic Amateur tells me that every fine and specially cov- 

 eted thing she personally orders, or is responsible for, never suc- 

 ceeds and always dies sooner or later, and any seed that she orders 

 ''never did well," yet this head gardener has been in her employ 

 nearly twenty years ! 



A perfectly healthy splendid specimen plant of Chinese 

 hibiscus brought directly from a friend's greenhouse under the 

 most favorable conditions promptly died in her own greenhouse I 

 W^hen our gardeners find that we will not tolerate such methods, 

 methods that are suggestive of "sabotage" with our precious living 

 things, it will stop, and it will not stop until then. I think it is 

 just as criminal to wantonly allow a lovely plant to die as to 

 throw a wrench into piece of machinery and wreck it. I could 

 have cried when I saw a friend slip her flower-cutter up her 

 sleeve, when her head gardener approached us. I asked her if 

 he objected to her cutting roses. "No, he didn't," but she said 



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