The fun of being Special Projects Director here at Park Seed Company is that I never know what interesting tidbit is going to be routed to my mailbox. Just the other day, one of our customer service folks forwarded me this message that came in via the general email address for Wayside Gardens:
"Since both organizations started during the 1920s, I'm emailing to ask if you have any photos, posters, advertisements, and/or catalogues of flowers and gardening from the 1920s that we can use for our 85th anniversity gala of our gardening club."
Heck, if there is anything I enjoy, it's an excuse to go digging around in our archives looking for historical artifacts from the early days of Wayside Gardens or Park Seed! I found out that this garden club in Saratoga, New York, was founded in 1923, and to my surprise and delight, I found several 1923 publications. Ihave sent my new friends in New York some images (like the Hardy Perennial Plants catalog cover above left) to use in their celebratory materials. And they have promised to send me some tidbits about their club and its history to share here after their big 85th anniversary luncheon in November, so stay tuned!
In the meantime, I enjoyed perusing the vintage catalogs. According to the official history of Wayside Gardens, although the company was founded in 1916, the first catalog was not printed until 1922--so these 1923 specimens are very clost to the earliest available!
Even in black & white, the flower and garden images are lovely. And you see pictures of familiar favorites. For example, the flower shown at right is a Helianthemum, also known as the Rock or Sun Rose. The 1923 catalog describes Helianthemum as "low growing evergreen plants, forming broah clumps and which during their flowering 
season, July to September, are hidden by a mass of bloom; for the front of the border, the rockery, or a dry sunny bank." Today's catalog makes basically the same boasts about this sturdy plant!
Of course, bulbs never go out of style! The Dutch Bulbs cover (left) features Lilium Candidum and promises "Special Import Prices" for the fall of 1923. For many years, one of the competitive differentiators for Wayside Gardens was the close ties that the owner had to the Dutch family bulb business in Holland. This gave the company an inside track on new introductions.
I'm looking forward to learning more about this 85-year-old garden club! If your garden club has a long, proud history, I hope you'll email me with the particulars, along with pictures of your members and their gardens. I love hearing from you!
