THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
85 
UNIFORM TERMS 
By A. E. Wohlert, Overbrook-Nurseries, Overbrook, Pa. 
Read before the Pennsylvania, Nurserymen’s Association. 
The subject which has been assigned to me is Uniform 
Trade Terms. 
As I understand this, it is principally to cover the rela¬ 
tion of the trade with its retail customers. 
I have always felt that it would add dignity to our pro¬ 
fession if we could have approximately uniform terms 
and have an organization, the members of which would 
act as one,—something in line with the Plumbers’ Supply 
House that will sell only to plumbers at a special trade 
rate and under no circumstances at trade rates to anyone 
outside the plumbing trade. The Plumbers’ Supply House 
I believe, will sell a boiler and pipe as well as fittings to a 
nurseryman or florist at trade rates but in all probability 
they will not sell us bath-tubs and such fixtures at trade 
prices. 
To be able to buy millinery at wholesale prices, you 
would have to be a milliner. 
The dealers in automobile tires and motor car supplies 
have a similar system. 
Each nurseryman has his own way of doing business, 
—his own terms as to price, grades, guaranty, replace¬ 
ments and everything. I hope to have this meeting adopt 
some terms that may be called the Uniform Terms of the 
Pennsylvania Nurserymen’s Association and published as 
such in all our catalogs. This would be a great advan¬ 
tage to us all in dealing with our trade as we can then 
confidently say that our published terms are the best any 
reputable nurseryman in Pennsylvania can afford to give 
his customers. 
The fact that one or two nurserymen outside the Asso¬ 
ciation would have different terms would he quite imma¬ 
terial, more particularly as the membership in the State 
Organization would have some advertising value and it is 
not very likely that many would care to stay out and be 
considered black sheep in the flock. 
I have, since I started in the nursery business, made it 
a rule to replace free of charge any article I sold to my 
customers which failed to grow. Some of my customers 
would probably say that I charged them enough in the 
first place to cover such insurance. Perhaps I have, but 
this system gave them satisfaction. While this, of course 
in a sense is an injustice to some of my customers and my 
competitors, as well as myself; if the prices are high 
enough, the cost of these replacements are easily absorbed 
in the business. 
It is well known among the nurserymen present that 
under ordinary conditions, particularly dealing with flow¬ 
ering shrubs and similar items, that one can confidently 
count on a hundred percent stand, unless someone has 
been very careless, and we must admit that if the shrub 
or tree has been properly dug. kept from needless expos¬ 
ure to the elements until delivered to the planter, properly 
protected at the destination until planted, there is no reas¬ 
on to expect anything short of a hundred percent stand. 
When it comes to larger trees, and to take some of the 
more difficult subjects, let us say Oaks and Pines, it may 
be a little more difficult, but I have had, under favorable 
conditions a hundred percent stand with such subjects 
too, when they have been properly taken care of from 
start to finish. 
There is hardly any doubt but that the vitality of a tree 
slowly ebbs away in ordinary dry weather as soon as it 
has been dug out of the ground, but if the air is sufficient¬ 
ly moist and the time of exposure is short, say a day or so, 
this damage may not be serious and on a percentage basis 
may be classified as from two to ten percent of the vital¬ 
ity has escaped. 
My personal experience in this line has of course been 
as with the rest of you. We have bought several bun¬ 
dled thousand dolars worth of nursery stock and have 
had no real difficulty with any of it, but a few times when 
someone had been careless, Generally, it has been fairly 
easy to trace the difficulty. 
I found at one time that, a nursery had insufficient 
packing facilities and equipment to pack promptly and 
conseequently was compelled to have the nursery stock 
lay exposed to the elements for many hours if not days, 
before it was packed, and the results in my case proved 
ninety five percent loss. 
I have heard of a case where a nurseryman in Mont¬ 
gomery County bought a carload lot of Oak trees from a 
nurseryman in Ohio. These trees were planted, accord¬ 
ing to my informant, quite promptly on arrival but only 
two percent of them grew A complaint was made but 
the seller disowned the responsibility and the buyer had 
to buy a second carload from the same source, because 
at that time, it was the only place he knew of where Pin 
Oaks of such a size could be bought. The results with 
this second car were the same as the first. This would 
indicate, to me, that very poor care had been given these 
Ooks by the Ohio Nurseryman who sold them. 
We had about two or three years ago. started out a 
truckload of trees for delivery at a destination of about 
fifteen or twenty miles. The weather was quite fair 
when they left in the morning but before they arrived at 
their destination, a blinding snowstorm was raging. This 
was in March or April. The temperature did not fall 
very low. The rain, slush and snow continued through 
the week and the trees were lying exposed during all this 
time, night and day. I took the matter under considera¬ 
tion. concluded that in all probability they were not in¬ 
jured. at any rate my policy had been to replace losses 
and we planted them. Every tree grew, no doubt be¬ 
cause they had not actually been frozen and they had 
never been dried out because the air was very moist even 
when we planted them. 
It has often been pointed out to me by several old-time 
nurserymen, more particularly by Hoopes Bro. and 
Thomas Co. of West Chester, that it is very undignified 
and unbecoming for a nurseryman to guarantee the life 
of trees and this practise cheapened the value of our mer¬ 
chandise in the estimation of the public, but we have al¬ 
ways followed the opposite course for the simple reason 
that I felt that with proper care there should he no losses, 
and I felt that this care was largely in the hands of the 
nurseryman and not nearly as much in the hands of the 
planter, afterwards. True enough, trees may be planted 
in utterly unsuitable places' for instance: ornamental 
evergreens may be planted too close to a building so that 
they must of necessity dry up and die for want of water 
if not watered during the season. Hemlock Spruce may 
