GUIDEBOOK FOR 1935 
Page 3 
FLOWER APPRECIATION GROWING 
During the last three years, several of the 
great seed houses, for the first time in their 
history, saw their sales of flower bulbs and 
seeds exceed the vegetables. The increasing 
number of flower shows, the rapid rise of the 
garden club movement, the turning of people 
to a more simple social life, the general in¬ 
crease of leisure time, the well known relaxa¬ 
tion of nervous tension while puttering in the 
garden have all led to this rapid growth of 
flower appreciation. Undoubtedly, gardening 
is becoming increasingly important as a re¬ 
creation. 
Moreover, a great increase in floriculture 
activities of rural non-farm families has been 
brought about largely by the irregularity of 
industrial employment, shorter working hours, 
improved highways and the automobile. 
77,000 people paid admission to the Ameri¬ 
can Gladiolus Society Exhibition at Chicago, 
1934, being 8% of all the people who entered 
the gates of the Century of Progress during 
the days of the show. 
Here in America the men have a long way 
to go to equal the floriculture enthusiasm of 
the average Englishman, but our increased 
leisure is rapidly making our men folks more 
flower conscious. And when they learn that 
many of the gladiolus of today have tripled 
the size of those commonly grown only six 
years ago, with an even wider range of colors, 
textures and types, naturally more and more 
men join the ranks of gladiolus enthusiasts 
who appreciate that this most wonderful of 
all flowers, easily the King of all cut flowers, 
is one of the easiest, quickest and cheapest to 
grow of all. 
VARIETIES TO BUY 
If you will permit us to make suggestions, 
we would offer the following advice: Unless 
your sole purpose is prize-winning in Exhibi¬ 
tion Type Classes, choose varieties first for 
their beauty of color and for their adapta¬ 
bility in decorative values in your own home. 
Let size of florets and number open be second¬ 
ary considerations, unless your rooms be 
large and your vases massive. 
The newly created Decorative Type Classi¬ 
fication now leads the way to selection of win¬ 
ners that have won, not because of size and 
number open, but for sheer beauty of clean, 
glistening, harmonious colors, beauty of form 
and adaptability to decorative use. 
If you are only beginning to grow gladiolus, 
avoid cheap mixtures and collections, choos¬ 
ing the often unbeatable yet inexpensive sorts 
such as Minuet, Marmora, Betty Nuthall, 
Mr. W. H. Phipps, Dr. F. E. Bennett, Golden 
Dream, Magna Blanca, La Paloma, Senorita, 
Olive Goodrich, Helen Wills. (The first six 
named are within the first nine best sorts 
voted in the 1933-34 American Gladiolus 
American Gladiolus Society Award 
for Most Points Won in First 
“Open to AH’’ Divisions 
© 
Society Symposium.) All obtainable for a 
few cents apiece. 
If you already have such varieties you can 
usually keep ahead of the average gladiolus 
enthusiast by buying the new “world beat¬ 
ers” which are now being offered for the first 
time at popular prices, such as Picardy, Frank 
J. McCoy, Commander Koehl, Mother 
Machree, Salbach’s Pink, Salbach’s Orchid, 
Red Phipps, Pauline Kunderd, General 
Kuroki, Grand Slam, Blue Danube, Bagdad, 
Maid of Orleans, Pelegrina. These are the 
sorts, the large bulbs of which will hardly be 
in sufficient world supply to meet the demand. 
Likewise our supply. Wherever you buy, if 
you wish large bulbs of these, or of Magna 
Blanca or Mr. Phipps, and put off ordering 
them until March, it is likely to be just too 
bad. Having these or desiring to grow, in most 
inexpensive manner, a stock of the newest 
“world wonders,” if the price of the large 
bulb is appalling you will buy a medium or 
small bulb of such exquisitely wonderful sorts 
as Mary Elizabeth, Dorothy Dow, Rosemarie 
Pfitzer, Star of Bethlehem, Mozart, Mildred 
Louise, Reverie, Southern Cross, D. A. Hay, 
Mrs. E. J. Heaton and the orange beauties, 
Mrs. H. Bromley Ambler and Tanager. 
Over 90% of all the varieties we offer are 
“large flowered” (4 inches diameter and up), 
