£1000 FOR A BUNCH OF SWEET PEAS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLV, Issue 216, 19 September 1911, Page 2

£1000 FOR A BUNCH OF SWEET PEAS.

Of the gentler arts of life there is ii,oiie in which the British people take a warmer interest than gardening and none in which they shine so conspicuously (remarks the London Daily Mail of July 29). Indeed, in this province they are far in advance of any people, as a tour through any of our city suburbs of British villages will show. This interest, so universal, so deserving of encouragement, has been immensely" stimulated by The Daily Mail competition for the best bunch of sweet, peas.... Six months ago we- offered, a first prizte of £1000 and two other money prizes of £100 and £50, with over 100 silver medals and 1000 bronza medals. The result was that 100,000 people at once began to grow for the competition the most charming of English flowers over the whole length a;>d breadth of the British Isles.

To-day we have the happy task of announcing the winners. "The first prize, of £1000 goes to a Scottish manse, to Mrs Fraser, of Sprouston, Kelsb, the wife of a. minister who himself secures the third prize of £.*SO. The second prize of £100 is carried off by an amateur from the Isle of Wight. No competition on such a scale has ever been organised before id horticulture, and none has been marked, by greater success. Some 30,000 bunches were submitted to the judges—tfie best judges in England—and all who- saw the feast ■of color and beauty at the Crystal Palac© will realise that there is no flower at once so various, so lasting, io decorative, and so democratic as this, bloom which every garden and every pot can grow, but which only yields its rarest excellence to those who have mastered the true gardener's patience and skill.