2 collections related to Nurseries (Horticulture) -- Catalogs

The Dennis Werner Collection of Seed Catalogs contains approximately 90 annual publications from W. Atlee Burpee & Co. and contains 17 annual publications of other nursery and seed companies, including Gurney's, Schell's, and Iowa Seed. The date span is 1883 to 2013, but there are some gaps. In addition to the annual catalogs, the collection contains such ephemeral materials as envelopes, order forms, inserts about products, price lists, money order forms, catalog request forms, and other materials. Dennis Werner, a professor in the Horticultural Science at North Carolina State Univeristy, has collected historical seed catalogs (primarily Burpee Seed) throughout his career. W. Atlee Burpee (1858-1915) began a mail-order company in the 1870s, and he experimented with selective breeding and hybridization for the improvement of animals and plants. By the 1890s Burpee had became the largest seed company in the world. The business's annual catalog (begun by 1881) was an important marketing tool, and it played a significant role in the company's success. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century other nurseries and seed companies also became famous, in part, because of their catalogs. These included Ferry (later Ferry-Morse), Gurney, Iowa Seed, Earl May, Schell, and others. Less