Although Mr. Rockefeller’s place at Tarrytown is the largest competitor in the New York market for violets, there is no local monopoly in that, and the local producer with personal attention can do well.

In the Country Gentleman an account is given of a violet farm on the north shore of Illinois, where two women are supplying local florists..  One of them says:  “We started our farm last spring in the face of most discouraging prophecies from our friends and the keenest competition of violet growers of New York.  But we believed we could be successful.  We had studied the best scientific methods of growing the plants, had imported the best soil obtainable, and built a greenhouse fully adapted to our needs, so we just went ahead and we found it to be a paying proposition.

“Our first experiment was in using cuttings from the violet farm of a lady at Lansing, Michigan, who has been a most successful grower.  These did not thrive, and we next imported 3000 cuttings from the Tarrytown neighborhood, where violet culture has been most successful.

“The first rule is to keep the temperature of the greenhouse between forty-five and fifty degrees.  Violets are spring flowers, and wither and droop if the temperature is not at the right degree.  Most people think the double violets have no fragrance because most of those that we get lose their fragrance in transit.

“We supply 2000 flowers a week, and as they reach our patrons within two or three hours at the most from the time of cutting, they retain their fragrance.  They are also larger and of a deeper color than the New York flowers.  Next year we hope to go in on a much larger scale.

“While the work is not hard, it requires infinite care and vigilance when the little plants are growing.  As a career for a woman, violet growing offers greater inducements than anything I can think of.”

Then, surely, others can succeed in other flowers at other places.  While there is little choice between the standard styles of greenhouses for violets, there should be abundant provision for supplying fresh air, either from the sides or top, whichever is chosen.  The system of ventilation should admit of operation either from the inside or the outside of the house, as fumigation with hydrocyanic acid gas is sometimes necessary, in the fumes of which it is impossible to enter, unless with a gas mask.

The arrangement of the house should secure the greatest possible supply of sunshine in December and January, and the least possible during the growing season, when, as Miss Howard points out, it is necessary to secure as low a temperature as possible, so as to obtain good, vigorous, healthy-growing plants.  The best site is a level piece of ground, or one sloping gently to the south.