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—1941—

STEELE’S PANSY GARDENS

PORTLAND, OREGON, U.S. A. HOWDY FOLKS:

Spring is the season for flower shows so why not drop around for our own display and be a judge yourself. If you come in April, early in the season you may be in time to see the largest blooms of the year. If you prefer to wait a few weeks you will get in when the widest range of color shows, May or June.

If you are partial to Jumbos you will like our new hybrids, of immense size and colors you have never seen before. For instance, there is a periwinkle blue, delicately tinted at the top of the upper petals and gradually deep- ening to brilliant violet at the base of the lower petal and in contrast two brilliant spots of orange yellow at the center

The ladies go for the orchid tones and our jumbo beds are full of these. Some of our visitors admire the light blue fluted edges of the more delicately tinted ones while others prefer the pink shades. A striking type is shown in our new color plate. We call this a copper Jumbo and it is a great favorite of our own staff as well as many of our customers. There are so many variations of this type in the strain that it may be said to be a typical Jumbo hybrid. During the past few years we have paid special attention to the bronze types and the results have more than justified our efforts to improve on size and color. Many show a smoky blue fluted edge while some shade into salmon tones or deepen into rich brown with a violet hue which defies description.

The high light of the Jumbo strain, however, is the huge yellow, favorite of the true pansy fan. The self with only a few sunburst rays is found in every tone of yellow from the soft creamy pastel yellow to the brilliant gold and the blotched form is as often seen and in equally wide variation of color. Only white is missing from the Jumbo strain for every color is found in profusion, red, fine light blues, velvety purples, and every combination of color that our friend the bumble bee can mix on his palette.

For brilliant reds and three-tone hybrids you can’t go wrong on Super Swiss ‘400” mixed. This strain has been receiving a great deal of attention in our gardens over a period of more than ten years and it contains the finest color range we can produce by painstaking selection and hybridization. All inferior types have long since been rogued out and nothing but the most perfect and largest blooming stock reserved. This strain is a companion to the Jumbo strain and has been developed especially to complement the color range of that variety, and the size is almost equal to that of Jumbo.

We tell our customers they will be better satisfied if they buy pansies in mixture, using only a limited quantity of separate colors if they are partial to some special coloring or type. These cheerful little fellows are fond of company, true cosmopolitans. They resent being separated into stiff little rows of purple or red and show a strong tendency to revert to type. The true lover of pansies likes the gorgeous display he may have from a bed of mixed colors and if every bloom shows some variation in its complexion he feels that nothing is lacking for his enjoyment unless it might be more space to have more colors and more funny little faces to greet him as he walks by.

And for a couple of hot tips to get that expert touch on your pansy display we will say that a smaller amount of fertilizer at shorter intervals will give much better results than a great deal piled on a few times during the growing season. We have also found that pansies respond to winter and spring cultivation with amazing results. In short, pansies need lots of care and cultivation and they respond with a display of beauty which will reward your efforts a thousand times over.

Don’t forget! Highway No. 99E. Come this year, sure.

Voraeh NS tied

DONALD M. STEELE

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