America’s Romance with the English Garden by Mickey Thomas J.;

Author:Mickey, Thomas J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Catalogs, marketing, English gardens, gardening
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2013-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

7: Major Themes in the Catalogs

When Peter Henderson, a twenty-year-old gardener from Scotland, arrived in America in 1843, he sought work with Philadelphia seedsman Robert Buist. Buist, a fellow Scotsman, took him in and gave him a job, just as Buist had done before for other immigrants from his homeland. Henderson stayed with Buist for a while but wanted his own garden business. America offered him his chance.

After years of growing and selling flowers, Henderson went into the seed business in 1865, opening up a store on Cortlandt Street, in New York City, where he would create his fame as both a seedsman and a writer. Henderson worked long hours each day, sometimes as many as sixteen. His writing he would put off till night. Before the typewriter arrived in 1880, he wrote by hand. He once said, “I am more at home handling a spade than a pen.” But the work of his pen would prove to be a major contribution to the growth of horticulture in America.

C. M. Hovey recognized Henderson’s writing talent early on. Hovey accepted Henderson’s first article, dealing with transplanting large trees, for his publication, Magazine of Gardening. Thus began a new garden writer’s career.

Henderson also wrote several articles for other popular garden magazines, including The Horticulturist and Gardener’s Monthly, as well as four books. His writing was based on his experience in the garden. That authentic experience made the difference.

Like Burpee, Henderson also wrote the material for his catalog, which he called Everything for the Gardener, a name that expressed Henderson’s conviction that he could meet any garden need within those pages. More people, however, in the farms and small towns of America knew the owners more through their free catalogs than through their books.

Owners of the major seed companies and nurseries, such as Hovey, Buist, Burpee, and Henderson, became familiar with one another partly through each other’s writing and through each company’s catalog but also through professional organizations. In 1883, the American Seed Trade Association began as a way for these seed merchants to organize and address common business concerns. The American Association of Nurserymen had already become a trade group for the nursery industry in 1877.

Thomas Meehan, the Philadelphia nurseryman and editor of Gardener’s Monthly, would often write about the regular arrival of new seed and nursery catalogs at his desk. Sometimes he mentioned company owners such as Vick by name, when he noticed something special in the catalog. In the case of Vick, it was often the illustrations in color that caught Meehan’s eye. Usually he simply wrote that a number of catalogs had arrived but that there was no space in the magazine to write about them.

Burpee made a point of saving catalogs from other companies, including Vick’s and Maule’s, and his company continued that practice after he died. Today the Smithsonian’s Division of Horticultural Services oversees the extensive Burpee collection of hundreds of catalogs, which are now stored at the National Museum of American History.

Seed company owners routinely ordered

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