[ want to extend my hearty greetings and 
best wishes to you as you read this page. 
If you are already a customer of ours, then 
I want to also thank you for your co-opera¬ 
tion during the past years and I hope that 
you will enjoy reading this catalogue. 
If you are not acquainted with the Gard¬ 
ner Nurseries at Osage, Iowa, I want to ex¬ 
plain that our business was started away back 
in 1857, when the writer’s grandfather, Na¬ 
thaniel Clark Gardner, and family, with all 
of their worldly goods, left Otsego County, 
New York, in an ox-drawn covered wagon, 
and after months of slow traveling, they 
crossed the great Mississippi River and found 
here in Northern Iowa the location of their 
dreams. 
Charles P. Gardner in block of Hardy Perennials. Fancy 
Evergreens and Ornamental Trees in background. 
In the covered wagon, and counted as the 
family’s most-prized possessions, were hardy 
perennial flowering plants, small trees, seeds, 
etc., for the planting of the new western 
home. Such was the beginning of the Gard¬ 
ner Nurseries, now being conducted by the 
third generation of descendants of this pio¬ 
neer horticulturist. 
At the close of the Civil War Charles F. Gardner became 
associated with his father and started the work of fruit and 
flowers breeding and propagation, in which he was very- 
successful. He was the first person to grow Evergreens from 
Seed , west of the Mississippi River. Thousands of Evergreen 
Groves, Apple Orchards and Landscape Plantings, scatter¬ 
ed over the middle west, stand today as a memorial to the 
energy and zeal of his horticultural efforts. 
About 1890 he started the work of Plum 
Breeding, and was very successful in or¬ 
iginating new varieties of great merit, some 
of these new sorts bearing plums that 
