Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1916 — VISIT TO PEONY FARM A DELIGHT [ARTICLE]

VISIT TO PEONY FARM A DELIGHT

Editor For First Time Views Acres of Varicolored Blossoms On Now Famous Farm.

June is not only the month of pinks and roses and brides, for there has been added to this list of rare June specialties the peony, not a new flower but one to which Waiter L. Gumm, of Remington, has given a new meaning and an added delight by years of study and work, and which has become one of the fairest and most fragrant of flowers as a result of his well-applied energy and wisdom. The editor of The Republican and his family visited the faYm Sunday for the first time. We had heard of it and ihad a confused idea of several acres of peonies but had never surmised that it could be half so charming d? 1 sweet in fragrance as it is. In flower culture it seems that there is no end to attainment when some lover of them sets about to .mprove on nature’® generous offerings. But success doe® not come spontaneously and Mr. Gumm'fe peony farm did not spring up in a night nor a year nor in ten years, but is the result of many more years of rtudy and labor and is founded upon still more years of close communion with nature. Twenty seven years ago the Writer was a printer apprentice in the office of The Remington News. At that time the apprentice was called the “devel” and his progress was slow at learning the trade. He did the odd jobs and tlvv kept him busy. The editor of The Remington News was Charles P. Hopkins, who was himself a lover of nature and of flowers. He early after locating at Remington formed a friendship for Walter L. Gumm and years ago they strolled the woods together in search for rare things in nature. Mr. Hopkins took the writer to Mr. Gurnm’s home within a week after his arrival in Remington and at that tin}£ Mr. Gumm had many flowers which he Cared for so well that they presented a splendid attraction and on Sunday afternoons every person about in Remington visited Mr. Gumm’? home, just as every Rensselaer person in the years long past visited on almost every Sunday the old “artesian well.”

So Mr. Gumm’s Study of flowed has been one of years and hi» success with them has been a gradual growth and has finally led his main endeavors to the culture of peonies. He has built a magnificent home at the southeast part of Remington, the house oqcupying an eminence of several feet above the land where the peonies are grown and now he lives in the midst of his flowers and finds as much happiness in them rvs he does in the profit from their sale. Upwards of 500 distinct kinds have been developed. Single white ones with great yellow centers and flavored like the magnolia of the south, others like water-lillies, others like roses, red, white and piink, others as large as chrysanthemums and resembling them so closely that at a short distance they can scarcely be distinguished from that flower. The most delicate shadings, the purest white, the deepest red and all growing-in long rows over tho four acres of the main field. As Mr. Gumm ushered us through the great fields he mentioned the names of the more pronounced varieties, giving the technical name as well as the American name. But there are many unnamed varieties, which he hats developed by the pollen -exchange method and the planting ofTthe seed the following season. TKfcre are not enough appropriate names for all and so he has named only the best of the new kinds, those with the rarest fragrance and the most distinct shapes. To many persons the idea prevails that there is no fragrance from peonies but this is an error in the modernized bowers. The rose has nothing on the peony m this respect. Their flavor is almost as varied as their Shape and they gather from the air and the soil the aroma in proportion apparently to the genius of the nature lover whose labor enters into their development. Hundreds of persons drive from .many miles away to see the famous peony farm of Walter L Gumm and influenced by the gerat beauty place generous orders with him for the plants, which are best out in September, October and November, and this year he is booking many orders for fall delivery. For a long time Mr. Gumm followed the practice of giving to each visitor a bouquet o the flowers but he found thalt this could not be kept up. The drain of the flowers told on the strength of the plants and affected their seed bearing and it became necessary thus to discontinue this practice. Of coarse, an editor is always an exception and Mr. Gumm gave us a bouquet of about four dozen, a mammoth cluster of varicolored and vari-acemted flowers that will radiate their influence in the home until (the last of them has faded. :f Truly, a visit to the *Gumm peony farm is worth while and we recommend it to our many readers as about the most enjoyable thing they can do