To Customers and Friends: 



77 ■ E send you most cordial greeting and will be pleased to receive your 

 W usual orders for plants etc. We issue a supplement only this season 

 with our 1903 Catalogue, containing a few handsome novelties and some 

 plants accidentally omitted last year. We feel sure you will be pleased with 

 our new plants and seeds. AYe have enjoyed their daily companionship long 

 enough to know their merits. 



77 1 HEX ordering please observe carefully directions for ordering seeds and 

 W plants in Catalogue for 1903. Always send a 2nd 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 conserva- 

 tories or the house in climates where winter prevails, but in Southern 

 California, especiallv 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 sug- 

 gest 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 insur- 

 ring 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 loosing them, but 

 trying again, till we learned their requirements in this climate, 



77 1 E supply small plants of many of the common varieties of begonias at $1 

 ^M 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 

 inclose quarters. If they are hardened and fibrous their powers of insist- 

 ence to heat and cold are very great, which makes it possible to ship them 

 as far as Europe or Asia with 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. 



