Page 122 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

business men are buying foreclosed farms as a hedge against inflation. If you
are looking for a small place of your own on which to raise the things you
intend to sell, you may find just what you are seeking from one of the
insurance companies or land banks. Other things being equal, the man who is
going to raise things to sell, and whose capital is limited, should get as close
as possible to his market.

He Cultivates Violas for the Market

I

N TREE-STUDDED Lafayette Square, a spacious park a little over a mile
from San Francisco’s business center, F. W. Davis’ hobby of viola growing
has become a profitable business, a business which has unsuspected money-
making opportunities for all those who love flowers. The viola looks like a
pansy except that instead of the pansy face thin dark rays spread out from a
yellow center. A hundred years ago the Swiss viola found in the Alps was
blended with the pansy bringing forth a blossom resembling both the violet
and the pansy.
Mr. Davis, a graduate of the Royal Horticultural Society of England, has

been interested in flowers for sixty years—all his life. He has had charge of
nurseries and chose viola raising as his hobby because of the opportunity it
gave him to experiment and bring forth new creations in size, shape and
color. For twenty-five years, while in charge of the Balboa Nurseries in San
Francisco, he put all his spare time into the development and evolution of the
viola. He finally had one that he thought worth while and when a sufficient
supply was ready he took them to a leading florist.

The viola was an immediate sensation. So instead of a hobbyist Mr. Davis
became a commercial grower with a demand constantly exceeding the
supply. He soon needed more ground and was fortunate in leasing the historic
place up in the heights of Lafayette Square. While the park is owned by the
city, the mansion and its grounds are still under private ownership.

There are twenty-five plots four and one-half feet wide and from thirty to