File:Peonies for pleasure (15773550864).jpg

Happy? Yes! Coming from the Peony fields.
THIS TREATISE on the Peony is issued to create a more
widely spread interest in tliis grand hardtj perennial, by
FOREWORD
BY JOHN M. GOOD
telling of its history, its culture and of its superlatively
great beauty. To trie average person — that is, to nine ty -nine out of every one hundred
flower lovers the word Peony is fixed in their memories simply as a Red Peony or a
White Peony or a Pink Peony, while the actual fact is that the Peomj with venj small
outlau and attention on your part will reveal itself to iiou in such splendor that King
Solomon nor the Queen of Sheha ill all their grandeur could vie with the modern 1 eony
in their magnificence. Indeed a plantation of choice Peonies is a veritable paradise of
loveliness and fragrance.
Should this little booklet in a measure correct this false opinion that Peonies are a
subject that may be dismissed bij a passing thought, it will then have accomplished its
mission and thus aid in the wider dissemination of this much neglected plant.
The above was written for the first edition of 'Peonies for Pleasure just a few years
ago. The results have fully justified our conclusions at that time, for as evidence of the
"more widehj spread interest' our sales at first doubled, then trebled, and last fall more
than quadrupled. Vv hen we started in the peonu business our annual sales amounted to
twelve hundred roots simphj to color Red, White and Pink; while now we have sold in
one season as many as fifty thousand Festiva Maxima, twenty thousand Felix Crousse,
twenty-five thousand Edulis Superba, ten thousand Monsieur Jules Elie, etc., etc. Surelvj
this is evidence of increased interest.
In commenting on the statement, I believe everyone is Peonu mad, Mr. A. 1
Saunders, Secretary of the American Peony Society, in Bulletin of Peony News No. 2, says:
It will be good news to the nurseryman that people are going Peomj mad. It is high
time they did, too; we are, of course, all Peony mad; at least all the -world thinks us so,
because we have known something of the charm and beauty of the flower, while others
have been blind to them. What a datj would dawn for the growers if we should drift
into a Peony mania like the tulip mania that struck the Dutch in the seventeenth century.
How would some of our friends feel, I -wonder, if some fine morning they should be offered
for a precious root of Le Cygne the inventory of goods once swapped in Holland for a single
Miss Ella V. Baines, Springfield, Ohio.