Wild growth of Rhododendron maximum bordering old road on grounds of Highlands Nursery, North Carolina. 
HIGHLANDS NURSERY 
Kawana, Mitchell County, North Carolina 
H IGHLANDS NURSERY is located at the summit of the Blue Ridge range 
of the Appalachian Mountain system, at an elevation of nearly 4,000 feet, 
and at the Toot of the famous Grandfather Mountain, 5,978 feet high, in a 
region of grand natural beauties and almost Alpine climate. 
Established in 18S6, we were the first to systematically introduce to 
American and foreign gardens, and especially the former, the unrivaled 
wealth of beautiful native Rhododendrons, Azaleas and other ornamental 
plants for which America, and particularly the Carolina Mountain region, 
From Grandfather Moun- is justly worjd-famed. We arc now in our seventeenth year, and from a 
r-;“ n ' aHCy sma M beginning the first season, with a price-list of four pages in which 
were offered seventeen species of plants occupying ground space of barely 
half an acre, we have gradually enlarged until now our nursery occupies some sixty acres 
of land on which arc grown over five hundred species of hardy native American trees, 
shrubs, bulbs, vines, ferns and herbaceous flowering plants. 
Single species are grown by tens of thousands ; for instance, this season we offer 
40,000 Rhododendron maximum , 24,000 Kalmia latifolia , 20,000 Hemlock, and other 
things in proportion, our shipments extending over the civilized world. We now take 
especial pleasure in presenting to our customers and prospective customers this original 
catalogue, with our own illustrations, offering these rare and beautiful things. 
We feel justly proud of the work we have accomplished in making our Native Plants 
known and used, for while a few years ago they were almost entirely excluded from our 
American parks, lawns and gardens, they are now planted by hundreds of thousands, 
and appreciated and enjoyed as never before. Each year sees them better known, more 
widely used, and more loved by the refined class, to whom natural rather than exotic 
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