How Does Your Garden Grow: African Violets
Identifier
F.2022-09-0229
Date Of Production
1953
Abstract
An episode of John Nash Ott's weekly television program How Does Your Garden Grow?, focusing on the African violet. How Does Your Garden Grow? first aired in 1951 on the Chicago television station WNBQ (channel 5), and became part of NBC network programming where it continued to air until 1956.
Description
Host John Ott greets the audience from his home studio and introduces the day's topic, the African violet. He briefly praises the African Violet Society of America, displays examples of the single-crown and double types to the camera, and then proceeds to demonstrate various methods for helping African violets bloom as well as how to start new plants from the pruned leaf cuttings. As an aside, Ott exhibits several examples of miniature silver African violet castings that an acquaintance, Dr. W.W. Wainwright of the department of dental radiology at the University of Illinois, makes into pins and earrings as a hobby. Then, Ott demonstrates how to hybridize new varieties by cutting the antlers from one African violet and transferring its pollen to the stigma of the other plant. He also shows how to spread seedlings into a new pot, which is followed by time-lapse footage of African violets blooming as "Nocturne" by Stanford Robinson plays in the background. The film concludes with a scene that shows Donnelly Hanson, a member of the African Violet Society of America, as she tends to African Violets that she grows under artificial light in her basement in Evanston, Illinois.
Run Time
27 min 12 sec
Format
16mm
Extent
980 feet
Color
Color
Sound
Optical
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Language Of Materials
English
Genre
Form
Subject
Related Collections
Related Places
Main Credits
Ott, John Nash Jr. (is filmmaker)
John Ott Pictures, Inc. (is production company)
Participants And Performers
Ott, John Nash Jr. (is host)
Hanson, Donnelly (is participant)
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