There can be no doubt that early urban and industrial areas were squalid and foul smelling, and life was hard. The era of the 'dark satanic mills' had arrived. By way of compensation these new industrial workers, in their anomic condition, took to growing plants in pots and small plots by the slums in which they lived; and the plants that they grew were those which reminded them of their previous life, and better times, in the countryside.

They took to growing the unusual and double forms of wild flowers, and especially favoured those with strong perfume. These early 'florists' cultivated and developed plants of exquisite beauty - the Laced Pink, Double Primrose, Gold Lace Polyanthus, and Viola to name but a few.

During the years after World War II there was a massive move away from the vegetable garden to the flower garden, and it was a hayday for the commercial seed breeders. Gardens were flooded with bright colour and the old plants began to disappear.

In the late 1960's John corresponded regularily with the late Mrs Gladys Emerson of The Leeke House in Limavady, Northern Ireland. Mrs Emerson was one of "the Irish Primrose Ladies" and was a vertiable mine of information not only on Primroses, but also many old fashioned plants. It is interesting to note that though these plants disappeared into obscurity during the last half of the 20^th Century there is once again renewed interest in them, and why the interest? Probably because they remind us of our origins.