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FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
155 
individual part in making it. The club 
women of Florida can work this magic 
in our environment in short order, if 
community is all that is needed to start the 
ball rolling. Three women can make for¬ 
ty men so uncomfortable by their never- 
ceasing prodding that they can accom¬ 
plish any civic reform they set their hearts 
; on. I know this because I’ve seen it done, 
and I’ve seen just one woman do it. It 
doesn’t really need three. 
The Florida Grower has an editor who 
took it into his head after his visit to 
Miami last summer, to see the State of 
Florida as resplendent with the gorgeous 
blooms of the Royal Poinciana as was 
the charming city that entertained our 
Society last May. 
He set about finding seeds in large 
quantities, and offered them through his 
journal to those who would plant them, 
and by the success of his scheme he’s in 
a fair way to see his ideal realized in the 
next five years. This gentleman had a 
broader field for his endeavor than most 
of us have, but there isn’t a newspaper 
man in the State who might not have done 
the same thing long ago if he wanted to 
beautify his State and recognized his 
possibility for doing so. 
As club women it lies within our power 
to distribute far and wide in our vicinity 
seeds and plants; and not only to do this, 
but to take up the study of artistic plant¬ 
ing to get the best results from the means 
at hand. Magazines and photographs sug¬ 
gest ideas to be copied, and these should 
be saved and kept on record for use when 
the right time comes. I am hoping some 
day to run across some civic reformer 
who may be called on and paid for his 
services to give illustrated lantern lectures 
on artistic homes and gardens. It doesn’t 
cost any more to build an artistic home 
than it does an ugly one, but it needs ed¬ 
ucation along these lines to get architects 
out of the old rut and their patrons en¬ 
lightened on the possibilities of their re¬ 
sources, and then we will have as much 
to be proud of as California has. 
Can you imagine anything uglier than 
the average country school house ? If 
you’ve ever seen the attractive school 
houses designed by Gustave Stickley, of 
“The Craftsman,” you’d know there is 
no excuse for the atrocities we house our 
children in and allow our taxes to be used 
for. A soft brown, green or orange stain 
softens a rough .exterior into tints that 
never offend the eye, but do we think of 
remonstrating against the ugly dirty-gray 
paint that is so often used to paint the 
outside of the average school house built 
of wood? 
Occasionally one runs across a cement 
block house which oaint cannot mar, but 
this can be built on as ugly lines as the * 
wood box type. This is a good line for 
some reform work, but we must have an 
ideal to- present before we can accomplish 
much. 
For several years this desire for more 
artistic homes for the working man and 
his family has been stirring in me, and I 
have accumulated quite a lot of material 
from magazines and journals that have in¬ 
terested themselves along these lines. This 
same thing may be done by a body of 
club women and in a short time a great 
quantity of matter may be gathered and 
used as it is needed or demanded. There 
