April, 1907 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



A Corner of the Flower Farm in Harvest Time 



ticularly strong in floriculture. One man to every one thou- 

 sand five hundred square feet of glass is the average; though 

 many more are needed if the crop be violets, for the little 

 plants must be kept clean and the delicate flowers picked with 

 extreme care. 



Fortunately the harvest of flowers has every advice and 

 attention from the experts of the Bureau of Plant Industry 

 at Washington, who place at the disposal of growers all the 

 secrets of foreign flower culture in the French Riviera; in the 

 nurseries of Holland, which are actually lower than sea level; 

 on the seed farms of Germany, and in Belgian nurseries, 

 which do so large an international trade in potted azalias, be- 

 gonias, lily bulbs, and gloxinias. 



When the flowers are ready for market they are consigned 

 by the growers to the city wholesalers, whose fifteen per cent. 



commission must cover 

 heavy rent, cold storage, 

 appliances, boxes, ice pack- 

 ing, advertising, and labor. 

 Perhaps the most important 

 single concern in the city is 

 a co-operative association 

 which grew out of the res- 

 taurant headquarters for 

 flowers. There are one hun- 

 dred and fifty members, and 

 these handle eight hundred 

 thousand dollars' worth of 

 cut blooms every year. 



The florists of New York 

 City, by the way, are some- 

 thing more than mere keen 

 and intelligent men of busi- 

 ness. They have a genuine 

 love for the beautiful, and 

 have unquestionably done 

 much to improve public 

 taste and spread true ap- 

 preciation of flowers 

 throughout the city's mil- 

 lions. It was by reason of 

 their efforts that the hideous 

 formal bouquet of other days passed away — a strange bunch 

 of camelias and tube-roses in a cardboard funnel edged with 

 silk! 



Nowadays flowers are massed with a delicate and accurate 

 appreciation of color values; while one has but to look in 

 the window of any one of New York's palatial floral estab- 

 lishments to realize that the men who handle a business so 

 significant of the nation's taste are themselves natural born 

 artists of no mean order. 



And on every hand there is an increased appreciation of 

 flowers. No show windows are more attractive than those of 

 the city florist, who will often crowd his windows with his 

 choicest blooms. The floral beauty of many a wedding, ball, 

 or other festivity will carry its message of beauty to the sick in 

 the hospitals and even to the poor in their homes. 



