A good while back, I shared the story of a gracious donation to the Wayside Gardens portion of the Park Seed Company archives. In particular, it was a "paint-by-numbers" approach to gardening called Garden Blox--A Practical Guide to Some of Your Gardening Problems.
It's a great artifact, but I found one thing to be frustrating. Nowhere on the document was there a date! My guess was that it had to be published sometime between 1930 and 1950, based primarily on the general look of the illustrations.
As it turns out, my new friend and colleague, amature historian Josh Haskell, was able to solve the mystery! He investigated a number of the Wayside Gardens catalogs in his archive, and contacted me with the scoop:
Hi Claire,
Here's what I've found so far. The first reference I can see to the Garden Blox Booklet is an advertisement on the back cover of the Spring 1939 catalog. Similar ads appear in the following:
1940 Spring – back cover
1941 Spring – Page 6
1945 Spring – Page 11
1945 Autumn Planting - back cover
1946 Spring - Page 11
1946 Autumn Planting - Page 10
1948 Spring - Page 11
1957 Spring - Insert inside the front cover
I have photocopied each of these and will mail them to you shortly. It's typical of the Grullemans' approach to marketing, but I guess it didn't work out as expected and so they discontinued pushing it (only a guess at this point).
Josh
Gosh, thanks, Josh! I was surprised to see a gap between 1946 and 1948, so I checked a 1947 Wayside book in our archives and sure enough, I found Garden Blox offered there, too. The advertising copy would surely resonate with me and lots of other "wannabe" gardeners today:
"I love flowers, but have no real knowledge of them. Can't you help me to arrange my garden and make it more attractive and beautiful? I wish merely to know WHAT to plant, and WHERE and when to plant it."
In that same catalog, I found another Wayside Gardens solution to garden planning. More about that later.
