44 
House & Garden 
EXPERIENCES WITH DAHLIAS 
JOSIAH T. MAREAN 
For the past twelve years Supreme Court Justice Marean has 
made the growing of fine dahlias his especial hobby. In the 
creation of new varieties he finds a delightful pastime and that 
deep satisfaction which comes to one who, though well past 
three score years and ten, is still active among his own flowers. 
His flowers have won many prizes and amply justify the pride 
of their creator in them. It is a privilege and pleasure to be 
able to present to the readers of House & Garden this 
article from a man who has done so much for the develop¬ 
ment of one of our finest garden flowers. — Editor. 
D URING many years of 
gardening one of the 
first things that I have 
learned is that it pays to con¬ 
fine oneself to the really su¬ 
perior things. When one 
considers the time and ex¬ 
pense given to growing plants 
and flowers, the initial cost 
for the procuring of the ma¬ 
terial pales into insignifi¬ 
cance and therefore plays no 
important role whatsoever. 
It has therefore been my prin¬ 
ciple to purchase for my pri¬ 
vate gardens always the 
choicest that money can buy, 
rather contenting myself with 
fewer flowers, if necessary, 
so long as they be superior. 
This principle I followed 
some fifteen years ago when 
I became interested in dahl¬ 
ias of the better sorts as then 
available. Soon the growing: 
of these plants became a great 
hobby with me and I began 
to realize what a source of 
pleasure and excitement it 
would be to create a new 
strain, finer than any exist¬ 
ing, through careful selection, 
segregation and patience. 
Indispensable Flowers 
After amusing myself for 
a few years with my dahlias, 
they became a great fascina¬ 
tion, and, particularly at the 
autumn of my life, I have 
become enamored of these 
beautiful flowers, which, in 
my opinion, are indispensible 
and which make the garden 
gay throughout the fall until 
the heavy hand of the frost 
descends upon them and 
ruthlessly destroys in one 
night that which it has taken 
an entire season to create. 
From year to year I have grown at my coun¬ 
try place at Green’s Farms, Conn.—which is 
in a very beautiful, rolling section of country 
between Bridgeport and Norwalk on Long 
Island Sound, with a wonderful view of Long 
Island in the distance—three or four thousand 
seedlings, using only the best seed procurable 
from my own plants. This scheme I am still 
pursuing; it affords me the same sort of ex¬ 
citement which as a boy I found in my matinal 
visits to the fish-lines set the night before. 
Now and then something worth while was 
pulled out of the water. 
A great man is born once in a while, but 
JL/eVICK 
The view through 
the arch into Judge 
Marean’s formal 
garden shows the 
effective way in 
which the dahlias 
are combined with 
other flowers 
the majority of children, 
whatever their parentage, 
turn out to be just plain 
‘‘folks”. Dahlias follow the 
same law, and out of the mass 
I have found each year only 
a few worth saving. These 
I remove from the seedling 
garden and try them out in 
my ornamental gardens be¬ 
fore selecting further. 
Hybridizing 
When one gives some 
study to the natural laws 
which govern the evolution 
of a superior strain of dahl¬ 
ias, which I have done for 
some ten or twelve years, one 
will find that what is called 
the hybridist, who laborious¬ 
ly combines two existing va¬ 
rieties, is wasting his time. 
No matter what their parent¬ 
age, not more than one in 
five hundred new varieties 
thus obtained is in any way 
superior to, or the equal of, 
its immediate parents. The 
rest are just common stuff. 
The matter of hybridizing 
may just as well be left to 
the bees, only seeing to it 
that none but the best exist¬ 
ing varieties are growing in 
the neighborhood. Out of 
the twenty-five thousand 
seedlings which in the last 
twelve years I have grown 
from seed taken from the best 
of my plants, I have obtained 
only about fifty varieties 
which I consider superior. 
W hether they are superior or 
not I leave to their record in 
the American Dahlia Society 
Shows of the last six years. 
I doubt very much whether 
the deliberate hybridist can 
exhibit any better results. 
Of course, new varieties of some sort are easily 
produced by any amateur. But the evolution 
of a superior strain is a work that demands 
a long period of time, infinite patience and 
great expense. 
It seems impossible adequately to describe 
dahlias as to form and color; none is of any 
pure prismatic color and few adhere strictly 
in form to any of the types which have been 
arbitrarily adopted for their description. I 
have divided my dahlias into two classes-— 
those of superlative and unrivalled merit for 
both size and beauty, and those which fall a 
(Continued on page 76) 
“ Hercules”, a dahlia 
of enormous size, is 
tangerine color 
blended with deep 
yellow. This and 
other photographs 
by courtesy of John 
Scheepers, Inc. 
