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We gardeners love our seed catalog . They are the botanical equivalent of a aspiration book — a grower ’s wish list . This abbreviated overview read us through the history of seeded player and nursery catalogs and how they have evolved over the years .
If you are looking for a modern - day catalogue , I have itemisation of on-line sources forUS seeds and plantsas well asCanadian seed and plant internet site .
Florilegium Amplissimum et Selectissimum, by Dutch grower Emmanual Sweerts (1612)
The Origins of Seed and Plant Catalogs
The First Known Catalog for Gardeners
If you are a fan of vintage source packets and plant catalogs like I am , you are probably mindful of the wonderful , quirky , art - fill cum and nursery trade catalogue from the former 1900s .
The hand - take out and painted , romanticized illustrations and glorious plant descriptions made them equal parts info and amusement while precipitate new case of plant lust .
Plus , with new printing innovations , delivery methods , and consumer interest , this was a peak geological era for the competitive reality of garden seed businesses .
But that was not the commencement .
1612 Frankfurt Fair
The first known garden catalogue come out over 400 years ago at the 1612 Frankfurt Fair with the statistical distribution of the bulb catalog , Florilegium Amplissimum et Selectissimum , by Dutch grower Emmanual Sweerts .
The catalog contained 560 helping hand - tinge images of flowering bulbs , give gardeners a glimpse of possibility for their own garden .
Many of the illustration originated in botanical publications , utile for identifying plants and noting their medicinal use of goods and services , but this young publication circulate to fair - departer was a first to stage bulb for sales event .
Sweerts died in 1612 — the same year the catalog first appeared in print — but it was reprinted for many years to follow , right into the Tulipmania period in Dutch history .
More nursery business deal catalogs appeared soon after , and , over time , the mind easy propagate to other function of the world .
Related : How to Write Botanical Plant Names ( Tips For Gardeners )
18th & 19th Century Seed and Plant Catalogs
The next examples — where we have make it copies of the catalogue today — appear in the former 18th and former 19th centuries .
So many aspects of modernistic life were alter with new printing method , amend travel , advances in Agriculture Department , botany , and flora fosterage , as well as shifting consumer preferences and ethnic trends , and all of this is reflected in the catalogs .
you may just think how possibilities for mail service - order businesses open up with the introduction of cross - country rail travel , better impression presses , and the introduction of work home gardens .
associate : Victory Gardens : Encouraging Vegetable Growing in Turbulent Times
Distribution Routes
While researching this article , we found one catalog from our area ( Waterloo , Ontario , Canada ) , write in 1827 , where the agriculturalist brag a bounty of 20,000graftedapple Tree in his nursery .
Catalogue of Fruit & Ornamental Trees , Flowering Shrubs , Garden Seeds and Green - House Plants , Bulbous Roots & Flower Seedsby William W. Custead , was printed out of Toronto and pass out throughout Southwestern Ontario .
The local broker / order - taker for the clientele in Waterloo was none other than the father of the small town of Waterloo , Abraham Erb .
This kind of association was practical in those days , with restriction on both travel and communications . But , of path , the idea of orders channeling through your local elected functionary would be present a rather odd conflict of interest today .
you may view a PDF of the catalog here .
This selection from the catalog has Mr. Custead lament and fight his conflict :
“ The baby’s room commercial enterprise is attended with difficulties and disappointments which ought cautiously to be guarded against ; mistakes are often made in the proper names of trees , plants , etc . by the unknowing and regardless , to the great necrosis of the emptor .
I have been disappointed in this path myself , but the public may rest ensure that the greatest maintenance will be taken to prevent such unsympathetic occurrences in this establishment , all the business is done by my own hands and I will be accountable for all fault of my own making , but there is one cause of disappointment with which the nursery - ma has nothing to do , and for which he is often unjustly blame .
A person pose a hunky-dory orchard apple tree and enquires its name — a wrong one is given , he send to the greenhouse and get trees by this wrong name — after measured culture the fruit come along , and is not what he expected : to prevent disappointments of this kind a person should be very sure that he has stimulate the right name of his favourite yield , before he orders trees from the glasshouse . ”
In this next section we see how minuscule advice for planting trees has changed in the past 150 age :
Directions for Planting Fruit Trees
In planting out trees , let the muddle be prod sufficiently large to accommodate the roots in their natural side ; particular attention should be paid , that all the bruise parts of the roots are snub off ; if a hard marly land , it would be advisable to have a hole much larger than is required to pick up the root .
Then , make full in dear earth from the airfoil up the proper height . … Care must be detect not to found the tree diagram too deeply ; the upper roots when planted , should have about three inch inscrutable than it stood in the nursery .
Fill the muddle with rich mould , and if required , some well - rotted manure . After covering the root , didder the tree diagram , that the terra firma may be admitted among all the modest roots ; then fill up , tread around the tree , give a washstand round to it to conduct the piddle to the antecedent .
Related : How to Grow An Apple Tree From Seed ( Easy Tutorial )
19th Century Business Revolution
The gardening human beings was forever transfer with the work of James Carter , born in England in 1797 .
With an incredible combining of line of work savvy , entrepreneurship , and plant life smarts , his influence on the gardening earth stretched right into the twenty-first Century . This article on the story of Carter ’s Tested Seeds(The Gardens Trust Blog ) tells more .
Art Over Accuracy
While many older botanic illustrations create for works collectors are true - to - life , it appears artists hired for garden catalogs — particularly during the amatory and colourful era of the early 1900s — hold prowess a tad higher than accuracy .
It ’s sport to look through digital archives and find incorrect leaf shapes or formations , flowers with the unseasonable figure of petals or component part , and so on . They definitely took liberties for the saki of a well - looking picture . And it could well be that the creative person did not have actually specimens to work from .
While it must have been frustrative for those trying to learn to place plants , there ’s no disputing it was the glamor shot era for industrial plant catalogs .
Hat-tip to Burpee’s
One of the comfortably - known catalogs today is Burpee ’s , which has been in print for over 120 years .
The history of Burpee get down with founder W. Atlee Burpee ( acquit 1858 ) . Burpee was a prolific biddy breeder , but he gradually realized that hens were a one - time leverage whereas agriculturalist would need to continually corrupt seeds , so he shift his focus and began what became the Burpee imperium .
Upon his destruction in 1915 , Word David took over the business . At the time , Burpee was ‘ the great seminal fluid company in the world , mailing over a million catalogs a twelvemonth , and receiving 10,000 orders a day at its Philadelphia headquarters’ . you could read the whole chronicle here .
Many of the erstwhile Burpee catalog and several others include Childs are hoard and preserved as works of art and can be see online . If you ever discover one in rubble sale , nab it !
There ’s a lot of history , knowledge , and whimsy in those pages . And plant luxuria .
Resources
Listen
Seed Catalog Greeting
FromFlowers for Springtime(1910 )
heartfelt Friends-
I send off you salutation for the time to come and my honorable thanks for the past tense , and trust I may merit your good will in the future , as I have had evidences of it for many years in the past times . I realize to the full that my pocket-sized little catalog arrive in competition with the largest firms in the res publica .
Small as my catalogue is , you will remark it contains as complete a list of Flower Seeds as the big . I give my exclusive care to my business . I have no other interest to distract my attention , and I do not delegate it to managers or super as so many larger houses do . If mistakes are made by anyone in my employment , I do not hesitate to decline them at once , and consider you do me a favour to report anything of this sort .
Gardening , an occupation that so many remember of so little consequence , is to me inspired ; the mystery and wonder work on of nature and the Creator is shown more full in the development of the piffling seed than in any other way . We institute a seed and reap a terrific plant . No occupation is so sanitary , so elevating , so hearty .
Sincerely yours .
~Mary E. MartinFloral Park , N. Y. , Jan. 1 , 1910 . [ author ]
~Melissathe Empress of Dirt ♛
