The Beginning of The Townsend Nursery Business 
Prior to 1900, the founder of this business, 
who is now President of E. W. Townsend & 
Sons Nurseries, was engaged in strawberry 
growing on a commercial scale. He was the 
manager of the E. W. Townsend Co., which 
Company at that time was probably the largest 
strawberry growing concern in the country. 
Some years more than 400 acres of berries were 
grown by this concern. 
It was by giving his personal attention to 
this business that later led the Founder to be- 
come highly interested in the propagating of 
plants for breeding purposes. His first work 
was in breeding better plants for the Com- 
pany’s own use. The extra vigorous strain 
of plants produced by this Plant Breeder soon 
attracted the attention of the local growers, 
and his surplus plants was quickly sold to them. 
The work was carried on for several years 
in this way. All the sales of plants being made 
in a local way. The year 1905 was a disastrous 
year for the E. W. Townsend Strawberry Co. 
There was one of the greatest over production 
of strawberries that year. As a result prices 
were low, in fact the bottom went out. There 
was no market during the rush season. The 
Strawberry Co. was dissolved. In fact it had 
grown to be too large a concern for this com- 
munity, and it was hard to make an acreage of 
300 to 400 acres of strawberries pay big divi- 
dends every year, as the picking and packing 
of such a large acreage could not be given prop- 
er attention, and not enough of skilled labor 
could be found to do the work. Our only way 
to get the berries picked was to hire men thru 
the employment agencies from the city and 
have them shipped down in boat loads. Plenty 
of these laborers had never seen a strawberry 
growing, and the mess that they made of a 
berry field in a few days was something fierce. 
This experience led me more than any thing 
else to always discourage the planting of too 
many acres of strawberries, as one acre well 
cultivated and well managed is worth several 
acres half done. 
At this time I had made up my mind that 
there was a living to be made by growing good 
plants for sale. I started with ten acres selling 
some to the local trade and getting out a price 
list which I mailed out to a few growers In near 
by States. My name was known to most of the 
growers who received my prices, and I re- 
ceived quite a good number of orders the first 
year. Enough to encourage me to keep on. 
The following year was the year I intro- 
duced the Townsend Missionary to the Florida 
Growers. I had picked this variety up on a trip 
to Norfolk the year before, and it struck me 
as a good one for long distance shipment such 
as the Florida Folks needed. It proved to be 
even more than I had expected at the time. For 
in less than four years I was selling more than 
five million plants in a single season to the 
Florida Growers. So it was the Missionary 
strawberry that gave me my first start as a 
plant grower. By 1910, I had increased my 
acreage to seventy-five acres, had a mailing 
list of more than 5000 customers. A few years 
later my oldest son, was able to help me out 
considerable. An office was built, also a pack- 
ing house. I had to hire a stenographer to 
write my letters and help me in booking orders. 
About this time I originated the Townsends 
Big Late, which gave me another boost and 
which has proved to be one of the best late va- 
rieties now in use. Also about this time along 
come the Progressive everbearing strawberry ; 
I bought all I could get of that variety for 
breeding purposes. I saw during the summer 
that it was a real everbearing strawberry, and 
I set practically my whole crop of plants of the 
Progressive. The following year I was ready 
to supply Progressive plants. Lots of plant 
men had gotten a few plants the same year 
that I had and the demand was so good they 
were tempted to sell them before they had a 
good stock. I had the stock and the demand 
was still there. 
Most growers were charging $59.00 to 
$75.00 per 1000 for Progressive. I figured that 
I had 2,000,000 Progressive plants and that 
$20.00 per 1000 was a good profit, and I had no 
trouble in disposing of my entire two million 
plants at $20.00 per 1000 
1912 I bought a large tract of new land and 
began to clear it up for plants as I had found 
that New Soil was the only place to grow the 
best plants. Every year for more than ten 
years has found us with a large acreage of new 
land cleared ready for plants. Expensive? Yes 
Expensive; especially during war times when 
we had to pay $3.50 to $4.00 per day for erdi- 
nary labor. But it paid us to stick to it, for by 
our efforts we have cleared hundreds of acres 
of new land that is producing the best strain 
of plants grown in the country today. 
In the spring of 1922 we set more than 500 
acres of strawberry plants. Besides the acre- 
age to strawocerry plants about fifty acres was 
