THE HIGHLANDS NURSERY takes great pleasure in presenting, for the 
season of 1890-91, its Sixth Annual Catalogue of Plants and Flowers indig- 
enous to the southern Alleghany mountain region. We are now well and 
favorably situated in our new nursery grounds, very much better prepared than 
ever before to serve our customers promptly and with good healthy stock. We 
thank our patrons for the kind words and liberal orders we have received in the 
past, and trust to continue to please them, as well asobtain favor with new friends. 
In the collection and propagation of the native plants of this southern mountain 
region, we are engaging in a field that has heretofore been sorely overlooked and 
neglected. While the whole earth outside the Unitc-d States has been searched and 
explored to obtain the choicest trees and plants for beautifying our American parks 
lawns, cemeteries and gardens, yet the more beautiful American plants are rare- 
ly seen in cultivation, and, as a rule, are unknown to Americans. 
Mr. E. S. Rand has said : "We do not appreciate our American flora, and have 
shut our eyes to the richness that lies all around us. In England a crowning glory 
of horticultural exhibitions is the show of 'American plants,' and we in America 
don't know what they are." Prof. Wm. A. Stiles, in the New York Tribune, 
writes of our " Highland " section as follows: 
" It Is a fact that no part of the world has furnished the gardens of Europe and Am- 
erica with so many ornamental plants of this kind (shrubs and lawn trees) as this same 
Alleghany region. Along the course of every rocky stream are masses of the great 
rhododendron and kalmla, while on the borders are smaller broad-leaved under-shrubs 
of rarest beauty. But, beyond question, the most beautiful flowering shrubs are the aza- 
leas, and four of the five species which belong to the flora of the continent are here mass- 
ed together in the greatest profusion and luxuriance. The great flame-colored .'izalea(.^. 
calendulacea) is the most showy, and it is the blood of this species which has added viv- 
idness and vigor to the hybrids which are the most striking ornaments of the parks and 
gardens of the old and new worlds. 
" There are a dozen other genera that could be named, each with a special charm of 
its own. To these add the species that are small lawn trees in the north, but attain the 
stature of timber trees here, and we have a group that, for neatness of habit and beauty 
of foliage, flowers and fruit, and brilliance of autumn coloring, has no rival." 
But there is a decided change being wrought in the tastes of flower lovers and 
gardeners generally. Our best magazines and horticultural journals, such as The 
American Garden, Garden and Forest, and many others, are strongly favoring the 
more general use and planting of our fine hardy "American plants." 
An American Wild Flower Club has been organized the past season, and now 
boasts a Ur.£;e membership in nearly every state in the Union, while some of the 
ablest h )rticultural writers of the day are popularizing the interest in this direction 
by forcible and well-written articles, as for instance, the following : 
" In popular imported flowers we have reached the limit. Year by year florists find 
nothing new to offer us. Their 'novelties' are only variations of the old themes. But 
manv of our best wild flowers are distinctly novel ; as unlike anything which Europe 
furnishes as our native red man is unlike the Caucasian. Their domestication would 
marvelously enlarge our garden calendar — at once relieving the time-worn monotony 
which has come to characterize it. and giving us flowers always equaling, and in many 
instances surpassing in beauty and effectiveness, the finest trans-Atlantic varieties. Am- 
erican wild flowers are characterized by singular fineness and delicacy of leaf growth. It 
would be dllTicult to name a really superior variety, the foliage of which is coarse or rank, 
•s » \Ye want every private pleasure ground in which our wild blooms once grew 
to become familiar with their lovely presence again ; we want to see them in our parks 
and squares, native flowers overshaded by the swaying arch of native oaks and elms " 
The location of Highlands Nursery, at the summit of the Blue Ridge, in north- 
western North Carolina, at an altitude of nearly 4,000 feet, insures long cool sum- 
mers and mild winters, which is very favorable to the growth of these beautiful 
native tree.s, shrubs and herbaceous plants, and produces a hardy stock — an im- 
portant point to be taken into careful consideration by northern planters. While 
we confine ourselves principally to the plants indigenous to the southern Alleghany 
region, still we collect all over the southern states, and we shall be glad to give in- 
formation as to any southern plants not found in this catalogue. AH correspond- 
ence to us will be carefully and promptly answered. Address 
HARLAN P. KELSEY, Linvilfe, North Carolina. 
