A Personal Message On Our 
60 th Anniversary 
Sixty years is a long time. It is a long time for one firm to do business, especially 
when this business has been done largely by mail with customers who have never 
been able to come to our place of business. 
It is obvious that the foundations for this business must have been well laid by 
its founder, Mr. R. L. Templin. It is also obvious that the founder had high ideals 
not only in his transactions with his customers, but in his transactions with his pro¬ 
ducers of seeds and plants in the eleven foreign countries and the twenty-two states 
in this country, who have furnished a steadily improved quality as their experience 
and familiarity with the habits of plant life increased from year to year. 
From 1911 to 1929, a period of eighteen years, I was fortunate in being in close, 
daily association with our founder, who passed away in Amsterdam, Holland, in 
1929, at the age of 76 years, after having spent 53 years serving the interests of 
gardeners in every state in the Union and in several foreign countries. 
Mr. Templin made his start in the seed branch of our business the year he was 
married. He had been trained in his father’s nursery and greenhouse and it was 
under Mr. Templin’s personal direction that I had all of my training in producing 
plants on our own property. I never heard him mention how many dollars of sales he 
hoped we could make. But how many times I heard him say what our customers 
could do with the different kinds of seeds and plants we offered/ the money the 
customers could make from crops of vegetables and flowers they could sell/ the 
decorative effects in the garden and in the home with the flowers they would grow/ 
the delicious food they would enjoy from the fresh vegetables. 
All of the above had a marked influence on me as I grew in understanding of the 
business in which I am engaged. I know nearly every seedsman and nurseryman in 
America and I do not compare Mr. Templin with any of them, but I do feel that 
could I have known all of them when I started as well as I know them now, I would 
have selected Mr. Templin as my mentor in this, my life work. As it is, I was fortunate 
in having been brought in contact with him. 
Every year, I get thousands of letters from our customers and a remarkably large 
number of them have been buying their seeds and plants from us for forty and even 
fifty years. Of this I am proud, for it means that they have been well pleased with the 
results of their plantings. I look on each satisfied customer as one more assurance that 
we have been properly thinking of the most important thing in our business relation¬ 
ship with our customers and that is, the interest of the customers. That has guided us 
in our care to see that stocks are the best available in the whole world, in giving full 
measure and in keeping prices within the reach of the pocketbooks of all of our 
customers. 
What I am telling you here, is something we do not attempt to put in the seed 
catalog every year. But on our 60th Anniversary, I feel that you will understand 
why I feel moved to pay a deserved tribute to Mr. Templin’s long life and high 
standards. 
We do not offer you a NEW DEAL in seeds and plants, but just the 60 year old 
SQUARE DEAL for which Templin-Bradley has come to be known in the United 
States. 
(See page 80 for INDEX) 
