File:The American florist - a weekly journal for the trade (1903) (17518514893).jpg

Title: The American florist : a weekly journal for the trade
Identifier: americanfloristw27amer (find matches)
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors: American Florists Company
Subjects: Floriculture; Florists
Publisher: Chicago : American Florist Company
Contributing Library: UMass Amherst Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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r.903' The American Florist. ^93
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PHALAENOPSIS AMABILIS AT DR. SCHIFFMAN'S, ST. PAUL, MINN. Phalaenopsis Amabllis. The accompanying illustration shows a group of Phalfenopsis amabilis from a photograph recently taken at the estab- lishment of Dr. Schifimann, at St. Paul, Minn. Dr. Schiflfmann has had much jnccess in the cultivation of phalaenopsis ^nd finds good demand for the blooms. P. Stuartiana is also in bloom at the present time. Dr. Schiffman has recently returned from Europe and will go to the orient next month, returning in May with a large collection of orchids, includ- ing about one thousand plants of P. Schilleriana and a number of Vanda Sanderiana. Garden Competitions. The Parisians have discovered with intelligence and good taste that the ordi- nary flower show has little to do with gardening as a branch of the arts. It is all very well, if one likes that sort of thing, to exhibit the largest and heaviest rose that ever gardener over-blew, and take a prize with it. If his ingenuity is perverse enough, he will next contrive some languid and pampered hybrid and take a prize with that, too, adding a third for some flower the color of which he has distorted from its natural hue. These are what the circus bills call feats of strength and agility, and they bear about the same relation to the art ol gardening as the athletic stunts at the circus to the art of sculpture, according to the New York Commercial Advertiser. The crowd on the boards are ready with applause for the one, and the horticul- tural societies and florists' clubs with prizes for the other. Real gardening, in the intelligent view, has little concern with the rarity or the cost of flowers, still less with abnormal traits in them. Gardening becomes an art when it so arranges flowers, shrubs, lawns and trees that they please the taste through the eye by their efiects of line, mass, space and color. It is akin to the art of the painter with the ampler colors, the more brilliant lights and the broader spaces that nature gives the gar- dener. In the ordinary garden about the suburban or the country house, it is land- scape architecture on a little scale. Even the very rich stand in awe of such a big phrase, but the humble commuter applies it when he plans his little garden in the autumn and lays it out next spring. In France there must be prizes for every thing, and as soon as the Parisians dis- covered that flower shows do not reward real gardening, they found a way to do it themselves. Of course, they "instituted a competition" among the gardens of Neuilly, a prosperous, intelligent suburb like our Oranges. Thirty householders entered their gardens, and in an appointed week the jury visited them. Artists as eminent as Dagnan-Bouveret served on it, and it finally bestowed the prizes for "delicious" combinations of color, "beautifully arranged" beds, and the like. In one garden even the despised yellow daisies of our fields were so artis- tically disposed as to win a prize. Here in America our rich occasionally have their names, with an incongruous Latin termination, fastened to some product of their gardener's ingenuity, and then boast vaguely of it. They should set their gardeners to the prac- tice of the real art of gardening, and Newport and Lenox should "institute their competitions," like Neuilly. They would want to visit each other's gar- dens with the iurv and make the occa- sion a function to which a discreet public might be admitted at a high price, as they are at a horse show, to provide a suitable number of admiring onlookers. The richer and more ambitious suburbs could do likewise in their own way, just as they now have their horse shows, and gratify every reasonable curiosity about each other's "grounds." The mere com- muter in his turn would no longer have to be content with an "item" in the locsil paper when his garden happened to con- tain an abnormal carnation or an over- loaded rose bush. He might win a week's competition, as at Neuilly, and be for seven days in his neighbors' eyes. Meanwhile, and not altogether accident- ally, the true gardener might receive his merited deserts. Baltimore, Md.—Leamon W. Leach has a new insecticide for which he claims much. Denver, Colo.—The Scott Floral Com- pany (Phil Scott and E. J. Reynolds) announces that the new store, 839 Six- teenth street, corner of Champa street, wUl be occupied after January 1. Bloomington, III.—"Business is very quiet," saysF. A. Baller,"and the weather unusually severe. I have often noticed that when winter sets in unusually cold and stormy that we are very apt to have considerable respite later." HoopESTON, III.—The establishment of Andrew Peterson & Company is now in first-class shape. The carnations, roses and pot plants occupy houses 70x120 feet and the conservatory, 25x70 feet, is well filled with ornamental stock. The ofiice, a neat brick structure, is a cozy, comfortable place and well equipped for business.

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