Cataloguing the Catalogues, Part I

One of the catalogues in Oregon State University's collection, Nursery and Seed Trade Catalogues: 1832-1966

I've been reading and thoroughly enjoying Katharine White's Onward and Upward in the Garden (1979, Farrar Straus),  a collection of her gardening essays first published in The New Yorker between the years of 1958 and 1979.  Her husband, E.B. White (yes, that E.B. White), edited the essays after her death and compiled them into a book, a task that she had always hoped to accomplish, but was prevented from achieving due to poor health.  I find her essays still relevant for today's gardeners and wonderfully well-written (she was an editor at The New Yorker, after all); they have a warmth and personality that make you wish you had known Mrs. White personally.

One of the things Mrs. White writes about with such enthusiasm are seed catalogs.  In her first two essays, "A Romp in the Catalogues" and "Floricordially Yours," she explores the genre.  At one point she says, "As I write, snow is falling outside my Maine window, and indoors all around me half a hundred catalogues are in bloom.  I am an addict of this form of literature and a student of the strange personalities of the authors who lead me on....Reading this literature is unlike any other reading experience.  Too much goes on at once.  I read for news, for driblets of knowledge, for aesthetic pleasure, and at the same time I am planning the future, and so I read in dream."  I know immediately just what she means; studying the gardening catalogs is an annual thrill for me that I suppose I inherited, so to speak, from my mother and grandmother.  I can remember many frosty January afternoons in my father's den, or maybe at the kitchen table, with a stack of catalogs being passed back and forth between my mother and grandmother, the planning taking on a certain urgency as they tried to solidify their seed and plant order for spring.  I know the thrill of receiving catalogs nearly every day in the mail for several weeks, and the excitement of the ever-growing and occasionally-winnowed list.  Orders must be sent early, before the nurseries run out of the choicest varieties.  And then after the frenzy of ordering is over, the interminable wait until your plants arrive ensues.  This wait could last for months, depending on your order and your zone's frost-free dates.  Mrs. White would have been welcome at our planning sessions; I'm sure she would have had very valuable opinions about each possible flower or vegetable choice.  That opinionated voice is one of the things that makes her essays so enjoyable to read.

As I read the essays, I couldn't help but wonder what has happened to all of the nurseries that Mrs. White mentions.  Some of the names I recognized, but I wasn't certain about others.  I decided to do a little research to see if they still exist, if one could still order from the same seedsmen that so delighted Mrs. White.  It's doubtful that any of the same growers themselves are still alive and working after 50 years, but many of the nurseries seem to have survived under new leadership.

 White Flower Farm was founded when writers William Harris and his wife, Jane Grant, moved to Litchfield, Connecticut, in the 1930s, converting an old barn into a house.  Gardening proved too powerful to resist and Harris and Grant became expert growers, offering top quality plants to the public, writing their catalogs under the colorful pseudonymn of "Amos Pettingill."  Grant died in 1973 and Harris sold the nursery to its current owner, Eliot Wadsworth, in 1976.  Harris died in 1981.  Wadsworth still carries on the tradition of issuing catalogs using the Pettingill moniker.

One casualty of time is the Oregon Bulb Farms which filed bankruptcy in 1987 after their accountant apparently embezzled from the company.  However, it seems as though their passion for bulbs may have survived via one of their geneticists, Judith Freeman, who runs Columbia-Platte Gardens which offers many bulbs including a fabulous selection of lilies.  I'm in love with 'Angel Gabriel,' a pink tetra trumpet lily described as having a lovely fragrance.

P. de Jager & Sons has been in business since 1868 and looks as though they're still going strong (or growing strong?), offering rare and wonderful bulbs from their site in England.

The begonia experts, Vetterle & Reinelt, sold their business in 1973 to Shasta Nursery who's presumably carrying on their tradition of begonia breeding.

Geo. W. Parks has modernized their name, becoming simply Park Seed; today they offer one of the best-known modern catalogs for gardeners.

Tinari Greenhouses is currently celebrating 59 years in business; they specialize in African violets and orchids.

Merry Gardens, a specialist in ivies and scented geraniums, was gifted by its founder, Mary Ellen Ross, to The Garden Institute of Camden, Maine, in 2002.

Lamb Nurseries, a rare plant grower, closed its doors in 2009.

I was unable to find information about Buell's Nursery or James I. George & Sons, who specialized in vines.

One thing I discovered during this research is that a great collection of nursery and seed trade catalogues is archived at Oregon State University; many of these (the covers, at least) have been scanned and can be viewed online.  It's wonderful to be able to see these old treasures, especially the ones with Victorian-inspired covers such as the one in the photo above.

I'm currently wallowing in recently-arrived catalogs; I hope to write a survey of the notable ones as Part II of this post.  That is, if I ever finish my seed and plant wish list for this year.  Why is deciding which plants to add to your garden such a difficult task?!

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.