134 
House & Garden 
Kunderd r . 
Jof s of growing 
the gorgeous ruffles! 
Kunderd ruffled varieties have 
opened up entirely new thrills— 
and possibilities—in the garden¬ 
growing of gladioli. The origin 
of this new type has brought in 
thousands of enthusiasts, who find 
“Kunderdii” not only easy to grow, 
but to give a wonder-range of 
color and surpassing beauty never 
before attained even in gladioli. 
Grow Kunderd Ruffled Gladioli 
this year! Surprise your garden 
friends with the new varieties! 
Your enthusiasm will be keen, for 
never have you—or they—seen 
such exquisite creations in this 
family of flowers! 
Superior New 
Plain Petal Kinds 
With the new ruffled strain has 
come many distinctly improved 
plain-petal varieties which have 
immediately won national pres¬ 
tige. Marvelously beautiful kinds, 
like Mrs. Frank Pendleton, Mrs. 
Dr. Norton and Paramount, stand 
unrivaled! Do you realize what 
such blooms will mean to your 
garden next summer? What will 
the happiness of growing such 
flowers mean to your enthusiasm! 
The joy these blooms give the 
gardener is simply wonderful! 
Kunderd Primulinus 
lead the world 
No other strains of primulinus 
hybrid gladioli compare with the 
new Kunderd creations, not alone 
in the ruffled feature (which is our 
production), but also in the re¬ 
markable and varying butterfly 
and orchid-like forms. Some have 
ruffled petals, some plain and some 
intermediate. No other primu¬ 
linus even resemble these wonder¬ 
ful flowers! To grow and know 
such varieties as Alice Tiplady 
(universally recognized as the 
finest variety of all), Arlon, 
Salmon Beauty, Myra, etc., is 
really an education you just can’t 
afford to miss if you love flowers! 
Write to-day — NOW — 
for my FREE Catalog. 
Don’t delay getting this 
Gladioli Handbook, 
which not only describes 
nearly 400 varieties (with 
28 in color) and contains 
my personal cultural in¬ 
structions, but LISTS 
MANY SPECIAL 
MONEY-SAVING COL¬ 
LECTIONS. 
A. 
E. KUNDERD, Box 2, Goshen, Indiana, U. S. A. 
The Originator of The Ruffled Gladiolus 
Kunderd Gladioli 
are wonderfully 
prolific bulb mak¬ 
ers. This group 
of over 300 bulb- 
lets is typical. 
Realize what this 
means to increas¬ 
ing your stock of 
the finer vari¬ 
eties. 
Getting Started With Perennials 
(Continued from page 132) 
folks are dishonest, but in too many 
instances they are merely the jobbers 
who handle the seed crop. They often 
do not even know first hand the man 
who grows the seed and sometimes put 
themselves to very little trouble to 
find out about him or his seeds. In 
many cases they merely take the 
grower’s word for the quality and let 
it go at that. I have seen photo¬ 
graphs of my own delphiniums, a 
strain which in a way I feel justified 
in calling mine as I have worked with 
it for some ten or twelve years, dis¬ 
played in a full page advertisement of 
a certain strain of delphiniums for 
which the extravagant claim was made 
that they were the best in the United 
States. It was a rather handsome 
photograph and made a very attrac¬ 
tive page, and all delphiniums are 
more or less alike, but why not show 
a picture of the thing you have to sell? 
The moral of all this is, buy your 
seeds whenever possible of the man 
who has grown them. I like the way 
some of the European seed houses 
have of prefixing the firm name to 
the names in their catalogue of such 
seeds as they have grown themselves 
in their own grounds and are willing 
to take some responsibility for. We 
pay a little more for this insurance of 
quality but it is well worth the price. 
THE SEED BED 
As for the actual growing of the 
plants from the seeds there are several 
ways of going about it. Many people 
have a permanent seed bed located 
in some more or less out of the way 
place, where all seeds are put to ger¬ 
minate and the seedlings left till they 
are large enough to be transplanted. 
I have tried this method with partial 
success. With me the trouble has been 
that the ground would dry out too 
fast for me or some vagrant chicken 
would happen along and upset all my 
plans and plants at one fell stroke. On the 
whole I have had the best success from 
sowing the seeds in flats out of c'oors 
at any time from early spring to mid¬ 
summer. The flats are easily moved 
about and the little seedlings pro¬ 
tected from too strong sunlight or 
heavy rainfall. The earth in the 
boxes will stay moist longer if the 
boxes are placed directly on the 
ground. The seed bed needs slat or 
muslin awnings and it seems to me 
more attention than the flats. At any 
rate I have had better success with the 
flats and seedlings when I have tried 
seeds from the same packet in both 
ways. Those grown in the flats and 
transplanted to rows in the vegetable 
garden have invariably proven larger 
and sturdier plants when fall came. 
There are some exceptions to the 
above, a patent one is the oriental 
poppy. As the poppy will only bear 
transplanting at certain seasons, the 
most favorable time being very early 
spring, it is safer to sow the seed 
where the seedlings can be given pro¬ 
tection and left through the winter 
undisturbed. Very early in spring one 
can do almost anything with them. 
They may be lifted out of the 
ground, separated, and reset with the 
greatest freedom. The oriental poppy 
like the phlox may be grown from root 
cuttings. 
Seedlings of foxgloves and colum¬ 
bines come on better if they may be 
set in a shady spot to grow up. Under 
favorable conditions columbine seed¬ 
lings will develop into good sized plants 
the first season. If, however, they are 
set in a dry sunny location they will 
remain almost dormant until the cooler 
weather of early fall. 
EARLY SOWING 
By sowing seed very early it is 
sometimes possible to have certain 
perennials flower the first season. This 
seems more generally true of such as 
normally bloom in the latter part of 
the summer, as hardy asters, chrysan¬ 
themums, etc. The gaillardia and the 
Chinese delphinium usually flower the 
first season even when sown in the 
open. The tall hybrid delphiniums often 
bear flowers the first year, though to 
be sure of this it is sometimes neces¬ 
sary to start them inside. Then again 
there are some species that I have 
never known to flower until the second 
year; among them the pinks, colum¬ 
bines, and lupins. Usually, however, 
even if the flowers appear the first 
summer, the plants do not attain their 
full size until the second or third year 
of their summers’ growth. 
A GARDEN BET WEEN WALLS 
EDITOR’S NOTE : In the November 
issue on the Bulletin Board we men¬ 
tioned the interesting work that Charles 
Chapin, a life termer at Sing Sing, has 
been accomplishing in the improvement 
of the grounds at that prison. Shortly 
after this the Editor received from Mr. 
Chapin a description of the work he 
has been doing. Quite apart from a 
remarkable human document this let¬ 
ter is a brilliant and encouraging record 
to all gardeners who woidd make the 
wilderness to blossom like the rose. 
Dear Mr. Wright: 
Please overlook my tardy acknowl¬ 
edgment of your generous and much 
appreciated gift, but the big hearted 
flower growers and seedsmen of Ameri¬ 
ca have so overwhelmed me with their 
liberal contributions to our prison 
garden that almost every moment, of 
my time has been devoted to planting, 
part of it by the light of an electric 
torch. In the meantime my much 
neglected typewriter has gone almost 
stale with disuse. You will get an 
inkling of the amount of work I have 
had to do when I tell you that I 
have, with the aid of competent and 
willing inmate helpers, planted more 
than a thousand iris, more than ISO 
peonies, uncounted thousands of per¬ 
ennials, ioo rose bushes and more 
coming, and today we finished planting 
upward of 6,000 spring flowering 
bulbs—Hyacinth, early and late Tulips, 
Narcissus, Jonquils, Lilies, and Crocus. 
Besides, we have planted a row of 
Blue Spruce, all of them 9 ft. 6 in. 
high and of uniform foliage, a strik¬ 
ingly handsome Retinispora specimen, 
twin Oriental Spruce, the most perfect 
specimen of Japanese Blood Leaf 
Maple I ever saw, four Chinese Thuya, 
six Chinese Juniper, two Swiss Stone 
Pine, two Douglas Fir, two Norway 
Spruce, and about 200 flowering shrubs 
of almost every standard variety. 
Between plantings we have converted 
stretches of hard trodden cinder into 
luxuriant lawns. And it has been the 
best fun I have ever known in all of 
my long life, so interesting that I am 
no longer conscious of steel bars and 
frowning walls. Best of all it has 
afforded me an opportunity to be of 
some use to others, and supplied an 
excuse for “carrying on” even in this 
Tartarean abyss. I know of nothing 
so purifying to a sick soul as garden¬ 
ing, and I am but a raw amateur, 
(Continued on page 136) 
