GREETINGS 
1 want to extend my 
hearty greetings and best 
wishes to you as you read 
this page. If you are al¬ 
ready a customer of ours, 
I want to thank you for 
your co-operation during 
the years that have gone 
and 1 hope that the Trees 
and Plants you have re¬ 
ceived from us, have be- NAXH clark Gardner 
h rived themselves and Who started our Nurseries away 
, 1 i 1 back in 1857.' 
brought you much pleas¬ 
ure and enjoyment as they have developed on 
your grounds. 
Should you not be acquainted with the Gardner 
Nurseries at Osage, Iowa, I want to explain that 
our business was started way back in 1857, when 
the writers grandfather, Nathaniel Clark Gardner 
and family, with all their worldly goods, left Otsego 
county, New York, in an Ox-drawn covered wagon, 
and after months of slow traveling, they crossed the great 
x ississippi River and found here in Northern Iowa the lo¬ 
cation of their dreams. 
jS* 
A grouping of Hardy Perennials in our Nurseries. Specimen 
Evergreen and Ornamental Trees in background. 
In the covered wagon, and counted as the familys most 
prized possessions, were hardy perennial flowering plants, 
seeds, etc. for the planting of the new western home. Such 
was the beginning of the Gardner Nurseries, now being oper 
ated by the third generation of decendents of this truly 
pioneer horticulturist. 
At the close of the Civil War, Charles F. Gardner became 
associated with his father and started the work of fruit and 
flower breeding and propagation, in which he was very suc¬ 
cessful. He was the first person to grow Evergreens from 
seed, west of the Mississippi River. Thousands of Evergreen 
groves, Orchards, and Landscape Plantings, scattered over 
the middle west, stand today as a memorial to the energy 
and zeal of his horticultural efforts. 
About 1890 he began to specialize in Plum and Strawberry 
breeding and was very successfml in originating new varieties 
of great value in the colder parts of the U. S. 
Our Nurseries have always made a specialty of growing 
hardy Perennial Flowering Plants and during the past few 
