To Customers and Friends 
We send you most cordial greeting and will be pleased to receive your usual orders 
for plants, ete. We feel sure you will be pleased with our new plants and seeds. We 
have enjoyed their daily companionship long enough to know their merits. 
When ordering please observe carefully directions for ordering seeds and plants. 
Always send a second choice list, as we may be short of some varieties. Ask questions 
on a separate sheet of paper leaving space for answers. Enclose stamps when 
wishing a reply to letters. 
Many of the plants offered in our catalogue are grown only in conservatories or 
the house in climates where winter prevails; but in Southern California, especially on 
the coast and a few miles back, most of the plants, bulbs and seeds we offer, can be 
grown in the open ground all the year. Many plants that attain great proportions in 
Southern California, never grow more than the height of a few feet in pots in the east. 
We would suggest to our Eastern customers that they give tender plants, especially 
begonias, the benefit of open ground culture, partial shade in summer, and before frost 
to cut them back a little and remove them into pots, thus insuring stronger growth for 
winter. Much can be learned by experimenting. When we first began to grow tender 
plants in California we were told they would not grow outside, but we experimented, 
sometimes losing them, but trying again, till we learned their requirements in this 
climate. 
Our cuttings are taken from plants grown in the open the year round and therefore 
our plants are more vigorous than green house grown plants. 
We supply small plants of many of the common varieties of begonias at $1 per 
dozen, but we advise all customers sending from a distance to order larger plants and 
have them sent by express. The stems of young begonias are succulent and watery, and 
are easily injured and fall apart when packed in close quarters. If they are hardened 
and fibrous their powers of resistance to heat and cold are very great, which makes it 
possible to ship them as far as Europe or Asia wth safety. A well established begonia 
will soon recuperate after a long journey even if it loses all its foliage, while a young 
plant would perish. 
We will make special prices on large collections of begonias, cactus, etc. We are 
prepared to furnish fine specimen begonias of various sizes. Prices on application. We 
make a specialty of hanging baskets. 
Theodosia B. Shepherd Co. 
How Ventura is Situated 
Ventura is the county seat of Ventura county with a population of 3000 inhabit- 
ants. It lies in a semicircle at the base of the foothills with the ocean directly in front. 
East of the town, it widens into a broad fertile valley. Its proximity to the ocean and 
the protection of the hills north and west, give it a warm sheltered situation, that pro- 
tects it from frosts or heavy winds, and make it the most favorable place on the coast 
for tender plants. \ 
It is on the main line of the coast road, between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, 
the former seventy miles south, the latter, thirty miles north. Visitors at either place 
can visit our gardens and return the same day. Intending purchasers will be greatly 
assisted in making selections of plants by a visit to the gardens, where many fine speci- 
mens and varieties of all classes of plants are to be seen growing in the open air. 
