M’Mahon’s text was one of many in the calendric form, with the text divided into twelve units, detailing the progression of garden tasks in each month of the year. The monthly schedule of horticultural advice was pragmatic: bounded enough to let novices know what they should be thinking about when, but loose enough to allow for local variations in soil conditions, temperature, rainfall and other factors that might affect planting and harvest. M’Mahon certainly drew on English precedents in gardening books, most notably the works of Philip Miller and Thomas Mawe (Hatch 1993). Though his horticultural advice may not have been unique, or even original, he did try to adapt it for the American climate, or, more accurately, climates – he drew distinctions between the three major sectors of the eastern seaboard, which he designated the southern, middle and eastern states. His prose was in the form of a direct address to the reader, setting out tasks and offering explanations for them. In the breadth of its assumed audience and its practical organization based on the calendar, M’Mahon’s book echoed the traditional form of the almanac. However, he made sure to distinguish his own advice from folk wisdom regarding plants. He explained, ‘I am not an advocate for sowing seeds on a particular day of the week, or month, nor in the full or wane of the moon, nor when the wind blows from the east, west, or any particular point of the compass; these ridiculous and superstitious notions, have been long since, deservedly, banished out of the well informed world’ (M’Mahon 1806: 469). Instead, M’Mahon offered practical suggestions resting on botanical knowledge.
While it could be argued that all businesses benefited from developments in print technology over the course of the nineteenth century, there does seem to have been a special relationship between, or even overlap of, seed sellers and the printing trade. Like M’Mahon, several early American seed sellers were also trained as printers and published their own catalogues, while the larger seed companies that flourished in the late nineteenth century often included on-site printing works to produce their marketing materials. M’Mahon’s distinction between a seed list to promote his business and a gardening manual to educate consumers was increasingly conflated as the nineteenth century progressed and the seed catalogue emerged as a genre combining commerce, instruction, entertainment and artistic merit. Even the ways in which information was presented in catalogues was usually routinized, with front matter about the company, horticultural instruction, different ‘departments’ or categories of seeds for sale, testimonial letters and illustrations, all in more or less the same order. These printed pieces had two main components, again themes we can trace from M’Mahon: instruction and inventory, which were themselves intertwined. Instruction ranged from botany to horticulture, even to design ideals. Catalogues and packages included Linnean nomenclature and some very rudimentary lessons in plant physiology. But the bulk of the instruction was in cultivation practices, and was often organized in calendric form similar to contemporary gardening manuals; some catalogues incorporated almanac pages into their seed lists and advice. It was of course in the company’s best interest to offer these lessons, both to encourage gardeners to experiment with new plants they may not have been familiar with growing, and to ensure that they associated the company with successful seeds.
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• Marina Moskowitz