Seed business Archives - American Gardening

Book Contract in the Mail

November 25, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Book contract in the mail –

I received some wonderful news this week.

Ohio University Press offered me a contract to publish my new book All about Flowers: James Vick’s Nineteenth Century Seed Company.

I want to thank the people who read earlier versions of this book and gave me advice on how to make it clearer and more enjoyable.

Many people do not know James Vick (1818-1882) from Rochester, New York who owned one of the largest seed companies in the country.

The main idea behind the book is that Vick sold Victorian flowers for the garden that we still love today, a century and a half later. He promoted the kind of Victorian garden that we all love.

What was so fascinating about him was the way he conducted his business.

His goal was to spread the love of floriculture.

Letters from customers he included in his catlaog and magazine testify to his great passion for flowers and his love for his customers.

I think that’s what amazed me most, his relationship with his customers, spread around the country.

Publication Date

At this point I have no idea when the book will actually come out but certainly not before the fall of 2020.

An academic press like OUP enlists reviewers to read the manuscript. The author does not know who they are.

One such reviewer said, “Historians have previously overlooked plantsman James Vick and his significance to 19th c. ornamental horticulture. Thomas Mickey’s book makes an indispensable contribution to the field of U.S. ornamental horticultural history. “

Here is an image of the kind of flower chromolithograph that Vick made available to his customers. They would hang it up in the living room as decoractive art.

Vick’s chromo [*couretsy of* Millicent W. Coggon, a Vick descendant]

I am happy to report that the book includes several colorful illustrations from both Vick’s catalog and his magazine, Vick’s Illustrated Monthly.

Filed Under: Annuals, Flowers, Garden history, Seed business, Victorian

Nineteenth Century Petunia Continues Its Popularity

November 11, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Nineteenth century petunia continues its popularity –

The petunia, first brought from Argentina to England in 1831, provides a powerful example of the importance of hybridizing in the garden industry.

We continue to grow petunias, and, in fact, they are among the top sellers for such prominent growers as Proven Winners.

It is the same petunia from the nineteenth century, but hybridizers have had a field day with this flower.

In 1894 Boston seed company owner W. W. Rawson wrote about the petunia in his catalog.

Rawson wrote, “The brilliancy and variety of their colors, combined with the duration of their blooming period, render them invaluable.”

Today the petunia comes in many colors, and the flowers are either single and funnel shaped, ruffled, or doubled.

Since the Wave petunia first appeared on the market in 1995, the petunia world has not been the same since.

According to Wave’s blog, a Japanese brewery bred the first Wave petunia.

“Beer and wine companies often employ horticulturists who grow plants for the many flavors and components that go into making their products. Back in the 1990s, this particular company was exploring opportunities for wine-grape breeding when it uncovered a vigorous spreading petunia growing wild like a weed. “

And so the Wave petunia was born.

The little white flower from South America took the English garden world of the nineteenth century by storm

It continues to do so to this day.

Rawson once said, “It was only a few years ago that they were comparatively unknown, and now no garden is considered complete without them.”

Here is a petunia called Supertunia ‘Pretty Much Picasso’ from Proven Winners in my backyard. [below]

Supertunia ‘Pretty Much Picasso’ on the table in my back yard

How many petunias did you grow this summer?

Filed Under: Annuals, Flowers, Garden history, Seed business, Victorian

In Search of a Blue Dahlia

October 14, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

In search of a blue dahlia –

I have often heard that there is no blue dahlia.

Last year I planted a blue dahlia I bought at the market Stop and Shop. The bright photo on the front of the box depicted a very blue colored dahlia. The name of the variety was ‘Blue Bell.’ I had to buy it.

On the website Gardenia.net I read a bit about this dahlia.

The site said, “Produces truly beautiful purple-blue flowers adorned with broad petals that fade to lavender-blue.

“The fully double flowers, up to 4-6 inches…are normally large and the plants easily top 40 inches tall, although there are even taller varieties.”

I thought what a find this was to come across a blue dahlia in a local supermarket.

It did not bloom last year, but I still packed it up to store for the winter.

It bloomed this year. As you can see, it is not really a pure blue look.

It looks more like a purple. [below]

Dahlia expert and writer Bill McClaren wrote the book Encyclopedia of Dahlias.

He says, “If a bloom in the red class has the least hint of blue in it, it is classified as purple.”

Other dahlias in my garden

I planted several dahlias this summer.

When I was walking around the garden last week, I realized that the front door was framed with dahlias.

There I saw on the right the tall red ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ and on the left in the back the yellow ‘Sunburst Nelson.’

This photo of the front steps highlights the colors of both yellow and red in these two dahlias. [below].

Dahlias frame this view on my front steps.

It was fun to experiment with a blue dahlia, but these two faithful varieties work just fine for me.

James Vick (1818-1882), seed company owner from Rochester, New York, loved dahlias. No surprise that he wrote in 1878, “The dahlia is ouir best autumn flower. We can depend upon it until frost, no matter how long delayed.”

Filed Under: Annuals, Garden history, Garden style, gardening, Nursery business, Seed business, Victorian

Garden Urn at Portland’s Victoria Mansion

September 9, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Garden urn at Portland’s Victoria Mansion –

The Victorians loved to set an urn with plants on the front lawn.

Therese O’Malley writes in Keywords in American Landscape Design “In the context of the designed landscape, treatise writers often strongly recommended that the vase be placed on top of a pedestal or plinth so that it would be easily visible.”

Right now you can see this urn on the front lawn outside of the Victoria Mansion in Portland, Maine. [below]

Though it has no pedestal, it still represents Victorian garden design.

Andrew Jackson Downing, America’s mid nineteenth century’s most important landscape designer, recommended that a single urn be placed on the lawn.

A bit later Rochester, New York seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) proposed in his garden magazine that the urn include three kinds of plants.

You needed a tall center plant like a canna or a yucca.

Then you included a plant that filled the middle section like a geranium.

Finally you introduced a plant trailing down, but not touching the ground.

Vick included this image in his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly. [below]

Notice the choice in each plant to give that special look that a garden urn on the lawn needed.

In his business Vick promoted flowers for the garden, and the urn was one of the places to introduce such flowers.

Collector Barbara Israel wrote the book about landscape ornaments called Antique Garden Ornament: Two Centuries of American Taste.”

She says.”In the minds of even the most fervent proponent of naturalistic design (in which the [garden] ornament was severely limited), the urn was admired as an object of taste and refinement.”

However, O’Malley, reflecting Downing’s writing in 1849, cautioned that “ornamental vases were often regarded as works of art…and should not be reduced to the level of ‘a mere garden flower-pot.’ “

Filed Under: Annuals, Garden fashion, Garden history, Lawn, Seed business, Victorian

Coleus Varieties Still Abound

September 2, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

The battle between perennial advocates and those who loved to plant annuals stretched into the twentieth century both in England and America.

In 1905 Helena Rutherford Ely wrote in her book Another Hardy Garden Book, “Would that the Coleus might vanish from the land.”

Annuals, like the coleus, had been a major part of the garden since the 1850s.

So annuals were not going to go away without a fight. Even today that is the case. There are more beautiful coleus on the market than ever.

In its catalog of 1895 the seed company W. R. Shelmire from Avondale, Chester Co., Pa. boasted that the company offered seventy-five or more varieties of coleus.

In a speech to an international horticultural group In 1892 in Ontario the Cornell botanist and writer L. H. Bailey cautioned about the drive to increase newer varieties of plants. He questioned their relevance.

Bailey said, “There are more varieties of all plants in cultivation now than at any previous time.”

Then he said, “The question which you all desire to ask me is whether all this increase represents progress. Many poor varieties have been introduced.”

In other words, how many coleus do we need?

Rosy Dawn Gardens, a coleus growing specialist, says today there are hundreds of varieties of coleus, many of them on the market.

I personally like the coleus and always include it in my garden.

Here is a container of coleus on my deck this summer. [below] Loved the lime, yellow, and green combination from the first moment I saw this plant at a local Home Depot. It’s name is ‘Main Street River Walk’.

Coleus ‘Main Street River Walk’ on my deck right now.

So what can we make of the situation?

Proven Winners, a major grower of annuals, shrubs and perennials, offers twenty-eight varieties of coleus on its website.

Breeders continue to offer newer varieties and we choose the ones that work for us.

Filed Under: Advertising, Annuals, Garden history, Nursery business, Seed business, Victorian

Victorian Seed Company Believed in Advertising

August 19, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Victorian seed company believed in advertising –

Recently from the New York Botanical Garden’s Mertz Digital Nursery and Seed Catalog site I learned a bit about the relationship between seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) and J. Walter Thompson, the great American advertiser at the turn of the twentieth century.

Here is what the article said about Vick and Thompson,

“James Vick of Rochester, NY spent about $100,000 a year, an enormous sum of money in those times, in advertising, all with the J. Walter Thompson agency. When Vick died (1882) the management of the business was taken over by his son James Vick, Jr.

” Vick promptly told Thompson that he had all the business he could expect to get and decided to quit advertising and add $100,000 a year to his profit. Thompson cautioned Vick by saying ‘Vick you are crazy; it will only be a question of time until you are bankrupt.’

“Soon thereafter the Vick family’s diminished finances forced Vick’s daughter to become a governess for one of his Pittsburgh clients.”

J. Walter Thompson, important advertising executive in late ninetheenth century America. [Courtesy of NY Botanical Garden, Mertz Catalog Collection]

I thought what a sad story this is turning out to be.

Here is an early Vick catalog from the same site [below]:

Vick seed catalog from 1876.[*Courtesy of NY Botanical Garden, Mertz Catalog Collectio*n]

The Mertz commentary concludes with these words, “Thompson’s story may have been more a case of resentment about losing the Vick account than an unbiased evaluation of the Vick’s business prospects. The James Vick and Sons nursery business continued operations until the 1930’s when it was sold to Burpee. “

That Vick spent a great deal of money on advertising probably contributed to his popularity in the late ninteenth century. His reputation as an honest peddler of seeds spread across the country.

It was, I believe, his sincere interest in his customer that sealed the deal and made the company a success.

He wrote “I have labored to teach the people to love and cultivate flowers, for it is one of the few pleasures thst improves alike the mind and the heart, and makes every true lover of these beautiful creations of Infinite Love wiser and purer and nobler.”

There is no dubt that advertising for the James Vick Company could have first introduced a potential customer to Vick and his seeds.

It was, however, his warm relationship with his customers, mainly in his writing, that kept them coming back for more seeds.

Filed Under: Advertising, Garden history, Seed business, Victorian

Commercial Grower Prefers Cuttings for New Plants

August 12, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Commercial grower prefers cuttings for new plants –

Recently I visited Pleasant View Gardens in Loudon, New Hampshire, a major grower for the plant brand known as Proven Winners.

What amazed me is each year from December to March the amount of small plants, called liners, that Pleasant View grows from vegetative cuttings.

The liners or small plants are then shipped out to garden centers that repot them and grow them til the spring for sale at the nursery.

Rochester, New York seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) advised the use of cuttings for new plants in his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly.

Vick proposed the use of a bell glass for small pots, each holding a number of cuttings. [below]

The glass jar of course controlled light, moisture and temperature for the young plants as they grew.

Pleasant View devotes 700,000 square feet to the many trays of plants in special greenhouses which afford ample control of heat, light, and moisure.

In this way Pleasant View grows millions of young plants to ship out in the spring to garden centers and nurseries, mostly on the east coast.

Here is a photo I took of trays of cells, each of which contains a small plant. Notice how many plants there are in just this small space in one greenhouse. [below]

Small plants in cells, inside a tray, await shipment to a garden center near you.

Vick understood the science of this process of growing plants through vegetative cuttings.

In 1879 he wrote, “The florist and the nurseryman construct propagating houses, with beds heated by pipes with hot water flowing through them, to keep up a steady heat to encourage the production of roots in advance of the growth of the stem.”

Vick knew the importance of vegetative cuttings to reproduce certain plants like many annuals.

Today, Pleasant View does ninety percent of its propagation for Proven Winners with vegetative cuttings which, in this case, are flown in from Central America.

Filed Under: Advertising, Annuals, Garden history, gardening, Nursery business, Seed business, Victorian

We Still Grow Victorian Annuals

July 29, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

We still grow Victorian annuals –

In 1890 the garden writer, poet, and song writer from Wisconsin Eben E. Rexford [below] wrote a book called Home Floriculture.

The James Vick Seed Company in Rochester, New York published the book.

Rexford was a rather well-known writer in that Victorian period. It is not suprising that Vick agreed to publish the book.

Ads for the book appeared in the Vick seed catalog. Thus the company promoted the book as well.

Here is a chromolithograph of flowers that appeared in Vick’s seed catalog. [below] Many familiar annuals made up the mix.

Vick’s chromo of 1871 [courtesy of Millicent W. Coggon]

Rexford included a chapter in his book called “The Best Annuals.”

He recommended five annuals “for massing and making a brilliant show.” The Petunia, Phlox, Nasturtium, Calliopsis, and Aster made up the list.

The Vick Seed Company had been selling these flowers for many years. They are also quite familiar to gardeners today. They are among our favorite annuals.

The Victorian period gave us the annuals we still grow in the garden. We treasure them today, much like the Victorians at the end of the nineteenth century.

Through his book Home Floriculture Rexford became a source for what annuals to grow in the garden both yesterday and today.

Filed Under: Advertising, Annuals, Flowers, Garden history, Seed business, Victorian

Old Medical Journal Encouraged Retired Nurses to Garden

April 22, 2019 by admin 1 Comment

Old medical journal encouraged retired nurses to garden. –

Recently I came across an article in an old professional journal for nurses from 1911 called The Trained Nurse and Hospital Review.

The article “Floriculture as an Occupation for Retired Nurses” encouraged retired nurses to take up gardening.

The journal noted the author simply as “A Retired Nurse.”

The author wrote the article for “the retired nurse or nurses about to retire who are in quest of some employment that will be productive of an income.”

Such garden work would “at the same time be conducive to the recuperation of tired bodies and wornout nerves.”

The purpose for the gardening, she admitted, ultimately was to sell the flowers to make some money.

Annuals

Annuals like pansies, asters, and verbenas might be a good start.

The author herself grew five thousand pansies in frames and hot-beds.

She also planted hundreds of verbenas and petunias along with a good selection of vegetable plants.

Advertising helped spread the word that created a great demand for her plants.

After July 1 the author recommended growing cut flowers like dahlias to meet the buyer’s needs.

She mentioned how English nurses have taken up growing flowers and vegetables quite successfully.

She wrote, “The growing of flowers as an occupation is said to have become exceeding popular with our English sisters.”

Asters

On this trade card also from the early 1900s the James Vick’s Sons Seed Company in Rochester, New York featured a field of asters. [below]

As this retired nurse wrote, the aster was a very popular annual at that time.

Filed Under: Garden history, Nursery business, Seed business

Early American Gardening Centered on Vegetables

April 15, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Early American gardening centered on vegetables –

In the first half of the nineteenth century gardeners focused on growing vegetables rather than cultivating a flower garden.

Perhaps the emphasis on vegetable growing may have been related to the simple need to survive.

Vegetable growing and farming consumed the early decades of the country. Once we had food on the table, we could worry about a flower garden.

In his book The Victorian Garden Tom Carter writes, “Until the middle of the century gardening writers dismissed flowers in favour of useful vegetable products.”

By the 1860s and 1870s seed company owners like Rochester, New York’s James Vick (1818-1882) still featured the importance of growing vegetables.

Here is an illustration from Vick’s catalog. Vegetables surround almost the entire house. [below]

In the catalog Vick wrote, “There is almost as much pleasure in growing a choice vegetable well, in bringing it to the highest possible state of perfection, as there is in producing a beautiful flower.”

Then Vick mentioned the lowly cauliflower, pictured in the left of the illustration. [above]

He wrote, “Indeed, some think with Dr. Johnson, that a Cauliflower is the handsomest flower that grows.”

Vick’s advice became important to his customers, so I am sure they followed his guidance in growing vegetables.

By that time gardeners were also enjoying their many flowers as well.

Filed Under: Advertising, Garden history, gardening, Seed business