DeSoto times. (Hernando, Miss.) 1879-1898, 1890-11-27
RAISES SEEDS AND BULBS.
How California Woman Developed
Large and Profitable Business.


How a California Woman Developed a
Large and Profitable Business.
In LITTLE town in Southern California
there dWells a cultured and refined
women Who has opened new occupa-
tion to the women of tho State. She is
an enterPfising and successful horticul-
turist and her profits for this season
yield an income that would represent
quite muniticent sum lying idle in
bank or invested in four per cents.
The manner i'll which this lady has
built up her business is in itself a val
liable lesson to those who may wish to
follow in her footsteps. She came to
California the wife of a comparatively
poor man, who had his way to make in
the world. A small family of children
came to them, and to these she gave the
devotion of a loving and intelligent
mother But the time came when the
children had so grown shat sho was re-
lieVed from tho chain of engrossing
duties that tie young mothers hands,
and in their home she felt the need of
many little articles of luxury that are q
necessity to persons Of education and
taste. She had not the money to pro-
vide books and pictures and little ele-
gancies to grace their daily life, and
with a woman's ingenuity she set her
brain to work to devise some manner of
procuring these without any large ex-
penditure Of money. She found in a
certain column of little magazine an
Exchange" column in which all sorts
of articles were offered in ex-
change for bulbs and plants and
curiositios. In the course of the home
training she had given her chill
dren sho had encouraged their in
terest in the natural sciences by
long walks along the beach and excur-
sions to the woods, and they had brought
back from these trips wealth of natur-
al curiOSities, shells and delicate ferns,
sea weeds and all the curious wash of
the sea, as we'll as rare ferns, birds
nests, beautiful MOSES, seeds and plants
from the woods. She had always been
a flower lover, and with her children's
and her husbands help she had kept
their little garden so skillfully culti-
waited and so rich in bloom that it
had been the admiration of the vii
lago.
Here, then, was her opportunity She
at once placed hor5elf in correspondence
with several whose offers of exchange
attracted her attention, and found
ready market for all the curios and |
plants she could spare. The demands |
for the first were soon exhausted but |
the market for roots and plants instead
Of dwindling, grew steadily, month after
month and year after year. by degrees
she became known to one or two promi-
nent Eastern florists, probably chiefly
through her Gala lily bulbs, which they
discovered were so much finer and |
healthier than any they could raise that
hey were glad to engage all that she
'ould furnish them. She was, probably
he first person in California to ship
'alla lily bulbs in any quantity to East
piece for the bulbs, price which
rrew less and less as the market became
,etter supplied; but when the demand
or the callas was supplied, other plants
nd seeds took their place.
Soon the time came when her little
arden could no longer meet the de-
nands made upon it, and several acres
we're purchased in the outskirts of the
own, hothouses were erected, nurseries
tarted and the lady embarked in the
alling Of a tloriculturist.
The business is a young one still, but
rests on sure foundation, for every
top has been carefully taken, and there
) no speculation about it. The children
bright, talented, Industrious young
eople now trending on manhood and
omanhOod-are active partners in the
establishment, and devote to it all the
me they can spare from their studies.
employs several men all the wear
,und, and it yields an income that will
eadily increase.
The lady who has conducted her own
,terprise to such successful issue
oints out the fact that nearly million '
ollars annually leaves the United c
tates to purchase foreign plants and {
eds and bulbs, and that almost all of t
ese importations might be supplied in {
.lifornia, and by the women of the c
ate if they will only have the energy c
I'd courage to establish similar gardens. |
San Francisco Examiner. /
IN the recent Wyoming election q t