The burgeoning horticultural trades capitalized on the calendric nature of gardening practices. Seed catalogues not only contained information arranged in yearly cycles, but they themselves constituted an annual event. (Like the plants that formed the core of their merchandise, these catalogues were often even referred to as ‘annuals’, such as the Burpee Company’s Farm Annual.) Though some larger firms that sold bulbs, roots, plants and trees in addition to seeds might issue two to four seasonal catalogues per year, January was the main event. To this day, the arrival of seed catalogues each January effectively brackets the winter holiday period and marks the start of truly looking ahead and planning for the year, at least for gardeners, or those who aspire to be gardeners. The January mailing of seed catalogues also encourages the gardener to think of the start of the calendar year as a useful start to the year’s gardening, even if in many parts of the American market the ground is frozen solid. E.B. White’s ‘planning and dreaming’ could also be considered New Year’s resolutions.
This annual opportunity to enter consumers’ homes and attract their eye with increasing numbers and quality of illustrations, designs for both ornamental and productive gardens, and of course recommendations of plant material provided a structure for the exchange of seeds. Consumers were encouraged to use the winter months as a time for planning, using the seed catalogue as a reference work; the occasional marginalia one finds today in extant nineteenth-century catalogues, as well as garden journals that detail what seeds were ordered from what catalogues, suggests that this advice was followed. I have seen seed catalogues that were used as colouring books, with the black and white illustrations providing outlines for hand painting, suggesting that the commercial object promoted very different rituals for different ages or members of the family perceived as a collective consumer.
Most of the catalogues started with some form of ‘letter’ from the seedsman to his ‘friends’, with headings such as ‘Gossip with Customers’ or ‘A New Year’s Gift’. James Vick and W. Atlee Burpee were the masters of this genre, which served to personalize a trade relationship conducted without face-to-face contact. These narratives couched commerce in the language of friendship, advice and gift giving. Seed companies recognized the important bond between seller and buyer in a trade where the commodity sold was difficult to judge or value before its use. As the Burpee Company wrote in their 1892 catalogue:
The relations of the Planter to his trusted Seedsman are more intimate than those of the buyer and seller in any other line of business; with other goods the buyer can largely judge of the quality and value by the sample, while with seeds the purchase is altogether a matter of confidence. To merit and maintain this confidence is the constant aim of the conscientious Seedsman. (Burpee’s Farm Annual 1892: 17)
Calendars and Clocks
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