File:American homes and gardens (1907) (18155673961).jpg

Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesga41907newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
A Corner of the Flower Farm in Harvest Time ticularly strong in floriculture. One man to every one thou- sand five hundred square feet of glass is the average; though many more are needed if the crop be violets, for the little plants must be kept clean and the delicate flowers picked with extreme care. Fortunately the harvest of flowers has every advice and attention from the experts of the Bureau of Plant Industry at Washington, who place at the disposal of growers all the secrets of foreign flower culture in the French Riviera; in the nurseries of Holland, which are actually lower than sea level; on the seed farms of Germany, and in Belgian nurseries, which do so large an international trade in potted azalias, be- gonias, lily bulbs, and gloxinias. When the flowers are ready for market they are consigned by the growers to the city wholesalers, whose fifteen per cent. commission must cover heavy rent, cold storage, appliances, boxes, ice pack- ing, advertising, and labor. Perhaps the most important single concern in the city is a co-operative association which grew out of the res- taurant headquarters for flowers. There are one hun- dred and fifty members, and these handle eight hundred thousand dollars' worth of cut blooms every year. The florists of New York City, by the way, are some- thing more than mere keen and intelligent men of busi- ness. They have a genuine love for the beautiful, and have unquestionably done much to improve public taste and spread true ap- preciation of flowers throughout the city's mil- lions. It was by reason of their efforts that the hideous formal bouquet of other days passed away—a strange bunch of camelias and tube-roses in a cardboard funnel edged with silk! Nowadays flowers are massed with a delicate and accurate appreciation of color values; while one has but to look in the window of any one of New York's palatial floral estab- lishments to realize that the men who handle a business so significant of the nation's taste are themselves natural born artists of no mean order. And on every hand there is an increased appreciation of flowers. No show windows are more attractive than those of the city florist, who will often crowd his windows with his choicest blooms. The floral beauty of many a wedding, ball, or other festivity will carry its message of beauty to the sick in the hospitals and even to the poor in their homes.
Text Appearing After Image:
'

Note About Images