HORTICULTURISTS 



HORTICULTURISTS 



1579 



1881. Peter Henderson. 



eons to enter the business. By the time of his death 

 about 150,000 copies of the book are said to have been 

 distributed. It was written in an aggregate of 100 

 hours, when the author was working 16 hours a day, 

 largely at manual labor. At the noon intervals and 

 late at night he wrote this work lying on his back, with 



a pillow under his head. 

 The secret of its success 

 and of the author's, 

 was the invention of 

 new methods adapted 

 to operations on a large 

 scale. The second edi- 

 tion in 1874, and the 

 third in 1887, are both 

 thorough revisions. 



"Henderson's Practi- 

 cal Floriculture," 1868, 

 was an epoch-making 

 book in commercial 

 floriculture. Up to this 

 time most works on 

 flower -gardening had 

 been written for the 

 amateur. This point of 

 view is necessarily the 

 commoner one, and 

 Henderson's contribu- 

 tion to it was "Garden- 

 ing for Pleasure," 1875. 

 In the compilation of "The Handbook of Plants," in 

 1881, he was largely aided by C. L. Allen, and in the 

 second edition, 1890, by W. J. Davidson. "Garden and 

 Farm Topics" was issued in 1884, and in the same 

 year appeared "How the Farm Pays," a stenographic 

 report of conversations between Wm. Crozier and Peter 

 Henderson. It is said that nearly a quarter of a million 

 copies of his various works have been sold. His seed 

 business was founded at New York in 1865. 



Few men, if any, have done so much to simplify and 

 improve methods of handling plants for commercial 

 purposes. His greenhouses were an object lesson to 

 many visitors, his methods were widely copied, and his 

 business successes were the goal of ambitious market- 

 gardeners and florists, among whom he was for many 

 years the most commanding figure. He was a frequent 

 contributor to the horticultural and agricultural maga- 

 zines, and during his forty-two years of business life is 

 supposed to have written or dictated at least 175,000 

 letters. Two-thirds of these letters were written with 

 his own hands, and he always replied promptly to 

 inquiries about methods of cultivation. An account 

 of his life is published in a memoir of forty-eight pages 

 by his son, Alfred Henderson. WILHELM MILLER. 



Hepburn, David, was joint author with John Gar- 

 diner of a very early American book on horticulture. 

 This was published at Washington, D. C., in 1804. The 

 name of Gardiner appears first on the title page, but it 

 may be inferred that the practical experience in the 

 book is almost wholly Hepburn's. He had had forty 

 years of experience in gardening, half of the time in 

 England and half in America. He was employed by 

 General J. Mason for six years on Mason's Island, 

 Georgetown. He had also been employed by Governor 

 Mercer. The book was well made for the time. It is 

 a 16mo, and contains 204 pages of practical directions. 

 The calendar style is used. The first part (100 pages) 

 is devoted to the kitchen garden. The second part 

 consists chiefly of fruits, flowers, and shrubs (82 

 pages). This is followed by a few pages on hops, hot- 

 houses and greenhouses. The second edition (George- 

 town, 1818) contains 348 pages. It includes "A Treatise 

 on Gardening, by a citizen of Virginia." This occupies 

 80 pages. The copy owned by the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society possesses this manuscript note: 



"This treatise is by John Randolph, of Williamsburg, 

 father of Edmund Randolph, Secretary of State during 

 the administration of General Washington." Robert 

 Manning said that this note may have been made by 

 General Dearborn. A third edition was published at 

 Washington in 1826, and contained 308 pages. For a 

 further account of the book by Gardiner and Hepburn, 

 see page 1521. WILHELM MILLER. 



Hexamer, Frederick M. (Fig. 1882), physician, nur- 

 seryman and editor, was born at Heidelberg, Germany, 

 on June 21, 1833. He died at Stamford, Connecticut, 

 May 29, 1909. When only sixteen years of age, he joined 

 Siegel's army which was disbanded in 1848, and he, the 

 youngest in the ranks, being exiled, went to Switzerland, 

 where he became acquainted with the elder Froebel with 

 whom he studied medicine and botany in the Zurich 

 botanical gardens. Having secured his M.D. degree, he 

 explored the Swiss Alps and the Tyrol and made a 

 very large collection of Alpine plants. The remains of 

 this collection are now in the herbarium of the botani- 

 cal gardens at Bronx Park, New York City. About the 

 middle of the last century, he came to New York and 

 began the practice of medicine, which, however, he 

 soon dropped to enter the nursery business at Chap- 

 paqua, New York, in partnership with his father-in- 

 law, a leading physician of New York City, under the 

 name of Reisig & Hexamer. The firm's principal busi- 

 ness was the growing of new varieties of plants to be dis- 

 tributed as premiums with the "New York Tribune," 

 to which paper Dr. Hexamer became a contributor 

 through his friendship with Horace Greeley. His wri- 

 tings were upon horticultural and agricultural topics. 

 Thanks to his friendship with B. K. Bliss, he became 

 editor of the "American Garden" in 1880. In 1885 he 

 succeeded Dr. George Thurber as editor of "American 

 Agriculturist," to which paper he had contributed 

 frequently during many years. He continued as editor 

 of the "Agriculturist" until the early years of this cen- 

 tury, when he was made editor emeritus. His activity 

 during his connection with the "Agriculturist" had also 

 to do with the editing of a large number of books on 

 rural affairs published by the Orange Judd Company. 

 His only book, "Asparagus," the sole work on this 

 subject published in America, was printed in 1901. 



In addition to the influence which he exercised on 

 American farm affairs 

 as editor, Dr. Hexamer 

 was a leading spirit 

 in horticultural and 

 agricultural associa- 

 tions. He was for years 

 on the New Fruits 

 Committee of the 

 American Pomological 

 Society and was presi- 

 dent of the Farmers' 

 Club of the American 

 Institute of New York 

 City, his immediate 

 predecessor being 

 Horace Greeley. In 

 this institution, he 

 mapped the policy of 

 the club which practi- 

 cally took its life and 

 usefulness from him. 

 However, owing to his 

 excessive modesty, his 

 hand was not often 

 seen and only too frequently others seized the credit 

 which was really due to him. 



Some of his achievements in the commercial line 

 had to do with the growing of strawberries and potatoes. 

 He was the first man to grow the former on a business 

 basis for the New York market. He also grew the 



1882. F. M. Hexamer. 



