February, 1918 
A Roseless Garden. 
[ Continued from page 15. ] 
should I, when I can have Ida Van or 
Mrs. Wait for fifteen cents or less? 
“By the middle of June some of the 
more floriferous dahlias will begin 
blooming and will continue until the 
first killing frost of November or late 
October. But the smiting suns of sum- 
mer will take the vividness from their 
colors and will dwarf them in size. 
But when September and October shall 
come with their days of softest sun- 
shine, with their nights so enchanting, 
that you fear to go to bed lest you 
miss the flitting of some new moth, 
lest you lose some notes in the con- 
cert of perfume that a thousand flow- 
ers are breathing forth to their lords, 
the stars, then, O, then, you should see 
the dahlias ! 
“The Kalif with his gonfalon of crim- 
son, Minnie Burgale, most glorious of 
dark Reds, Margarite Bouchon, with 
blooms that seem water lilies float- 
ing, not on silver waves, but in seas 
of gold light, the Grand Manitou with 
flowers so huge and bizarre you can 
hardly believe they have not been made 
by the hands of some intoxicated ar- 
tist of China or Japan, and last, but 
by no means least the old-fashioned 
but indispensable A. D. Livonii with 
blooms so numerous you weary before 
you have finished counting them, all 
shall be there. 
“In July and August the Auratum 
and Lancifolium Lilies, the Hermocal- 
lis and Funkias must furnish the col- 
or, while the tube roses, especially that 
Mexican single tuberose, must furnish 
the perfume. By the end of August 
and during the first part of September 
Nerine Sarniensis will suddenly leap 
from the ground without a single leaf- 
let and lift a parasol of scarlet silk 
while the pale pink of the Belladonna 
Amaryllis nearby will tone down the 
intensity of its companion. 
“Of course, I shall have annuals — 
lots of them — but few varieties. I pre- 
fer the old, tried kinds. There shall 
be great bonfires of Salvia Splendens 
against which break the white foam of 
sweet alyssum in a vain but perpetual 
endeavor to extinguish their flames. 
Clumps of poppies shall send their 
soporific scents through the airs of 
early summer and when they have 
ceased blooming will be pulled up to 
make place for zinnias which have al- 
ready been started in paper pots, or 
may be the crimson of the poppies 
will be followed vinca occulata with 
blooms of milk splashed with a single 
drop of claret wine. I shall have 
patches of pansies and to soften them 
down there will nearby be nests of 
lobelias with azure petals that look 
like bits of fallen sky. But above all 
and before all there will be petunias. 
Where is the annual that can compare 
with them? Easy to germinate, grow- 
ing in almost any soil and blooming 
as if the soil and the air were an in- 
exhaustible source of beauty and fra- 
grance, they shall hold the place of 
honor in my garden as they hold it in 
my heart. In the more formal parts of 
the garden there will be Chinese wool 
Olje Slower (Grower 
flowers which, strange to say, live up 
to their catalogue reputation. I can 
not get along without some vines, two 
mainly, Ipomaea Coeluha Coclestis 
and Cardinal Climber. I will also have 
Antigonum Leptopus and Clematis 
Paniculata. But first and foremost the 
ipomaea. All day long on the cooler, 
cloudier days they shall display their 
bowls of blue and each vine I know 
will daily furnish five hundred flowers. 
The Cardinal Climber will do almost 
as well with its myriad crimson stars. 
“Such, my friend, is the roseless gar- 
den I shall have on my new lot. The 
beauty of it is, that you can have all 
these flowers the first year. All ex- 
cept the peonies. No anxious waiting 
for the slow establishment of the plant 
as with roses, shrubs and many peren- 
nials.” 
"It will cost me something to raise 
such a garden,” you say. 
"To be sure. But it also costs some- 
thing to get drunk and to drive automo- 
biles. And you do not get for nothing 
base ball games, theatre tickets and 
church sociables. But, listen, this is the 
way to get flowers: Stay away from a 
play you were going to see and you can 
buy you a hundred Gladioli, America; 
stay away from two and you can get 
Madame Mounet Sully. Cut out mov- 
ing picture shows for a month and 
you can buy you a bushel of cormlets 
guaranteed to be man-sized corms in a 
year or two and sufficient in quantity to 
plant an acre of ground. Think of it, 
Beau, a whole acre of Gladioli ! Who 
would not abstain from moving pic- 
tures for even a year to be the proud 
possessor of an acre of Gladioli? I 
could manage the corms, all right, but 
it is getting the acre of land in this 
town which gives me pause. 
“ No ; such glory is not for yours 
truly.” 
Catalogues and Price Lists. 
J. D. Long, Boulder, Colo — Seed catalogue 
and garden guide which Mr. Long calls “de- 
cidedly different.” It really is different and it 
contains a lot of valuable information— 34 
pages and cover. Gladioli are given the 
place of honor among the flowers. 
S. E. Spencer, Woburn, Mass.— Wholesale 
price list of Gladioli for 1918. 
Fred W. Baumgras, 423 Pearl St., Lansing. 
Mich.— Retail price list of the popular va- 
rieties of Gladioli with directions for culture 
and care. 
A. P. Bonvallet & Co., Wichert, 111.— Re- 
tail list of Gladioli with illustrations. Eight 
pages with colored cover. 
Homer F. Chase, Wilton, N. H. — Eight 
page retail catalogue of Gladioli with colored 
illustration of the variety Mrs. Watt of 
which Mr. Chase makes a specialty. 
C. W. Brown & Son, Ashland, Mass. — 
1918 retail catalogue of Gladioli, 12 pages. 
The Brown novelties, Mongolian. Mrs. O. W. 
Halladay and A. W. Clifford are especially 
featured. 
M. F. Wright & Daughter, 1332 Eckart 
St., Fort Wayne, Ind.— Eight page retail 
catalogue of Gladioli with especially good 
descriptions. The Kunderd varieties are 
especially numerous in the list. 
23 
Geo. J. Joerg, New Hyde Park, L. I., N.Y.- 
Wholesale price list of Gladioli for 1918. 
Ralph E. Huntington, Painesville, Ohio.— 
Fifty-two page illustrated catalogue of As- 
ters, Gladioli, Roses, Peonies, hardy peren- 
nials, etc., finely printed and with colored 
cover and extra good descriptions. 
Richard Diener Co., Kentfield, California. — 
Finely printed catalogue of the William 
Diener specialties, 22 pages and colored 
cover. The Diener originations of Gladioli 
are especially well described and illustrated. 
Four beautiful colored illustrations of Petu- 
nias are contained in the catalogue and 
altogether the catalogue is an unusual one 
and should be in the library of every flower 
lover. 
Munsell & Harvey, Ashtabula, Ohio.— 
Special list of 1" to Gladiolus corms. 
Many of the best known commercial sorts. 
Age and Gladiolus Corms. 
[Continued from page 13.] 
are not without instances of forms 
which rarely produce more than one 
crop of flowers on the same branch. 
The grapes, raspberries, blackberries 
and others come to mind in this con- 
nection. 
Now, in which class is the Gladiolus ? 
Nobody knows. To definitely settle 
the matter, some of our Gladiolus en- 
thusiasts should take, say, a dozen 
corms of some form that has flowered 
only once and an equal number of 
cormels from the same form and let 
the plants settle it by growing them 
side by side under exactly similar con- 
ditions. Each successive season, the 
best'of the old corms in the first group 
should be planted, and the same num- 
ber of the best cormels from the second 
group, taking care not to use any that 
had flowered once. Probably a very 
short time would tell whether the old 
corms really deteriorate. If the new 
corms produced from cormels are more 
floriferous, the sooner this is known 
the better, for it would have an im- 
portant effect on the sale of such stock. 
At present, it is the custom of the 
amateur gardener to save the old 
corms for blooming and the cormels 
are usually thrown away. Though 
one line of experiments would be fairly 
convincing, a number of trials would 
be much better. A careful record of 
such work would be a valuable con- 
tribution to science. 
Note by the Editor— 
Next month we will have a short article 
on the same subject and our correspondent 
takes the position, contrary to accepted 
usage, that Gladiolus corms do not grow old. 
We wish that we could believe this and evi- 
dence on both sides of the case will surely 
be interesting to all growers. If Gladiolus 
corms do not grow old as has been thought, 
it will surely be interesting and valuable 
information to those who make a business 
of growing Gladiolus corms for market. 
The New Amsterdam sailed from 
Holland on January 25th and was ex- 
pected to arrive in New York soon after 
the first of February. A large quan- 
tity of Holland grown Gladiolus corms 
makes up part of the cargo. K. Vel- 
thuys, Hillegom, Holland, is reported 
to have over one and one-half million 
in the shipment. 
