be National nurseryman 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK 
Copyrighted 1909 by the National Nurseryman Publishing Co., Incorporated. 
Vol. XVII. 
ROCHESTER, N. Y., JUNE, 1909 
No. 6 
WHERE BULBS AND HERBACEOUS PLANTS ARE 
GROWN BY THE MILLION 
DeGraff Brothers, Leiden, Holland 
It was about noon on a warm day in the sunny month of 
August a year ago, when the writer stepped off a train at the 
railway station in the old city of Leiden. He had taken this 
train at Amsterdam 
about three hours pre¬ 
viously and had been 
carried through the 
unique Holland land¬ 
scape, so interesting to 
the visitor and so pecu¬ 
liarly characteristic of 
the region between Am¬ 
sterdam and Haarlem 
and we might say, be¬ 
tween Haarlem and 
Leiden. Many of us 
will think of Haarlem 
in connection with the 
quaint old story of the 
boy who saved the 
city by using his hand 
as a stopper for the hole 
in the dyke during the 
long hours of a dreary 
night. The traveler is 
carried through the 
noted bulb-growing region of Haarlem, with its many fa¬ 
mous dykes, its broad, flat fields which at this time were oc- 
cuoied with many bands of men, women and children digging 
and harvesting bulbs in quantities suggesting to the writer 
the onion fields of western New York more than anything 
else. 
On landing at Leiden, the traveler inquired his way to 
DeGraaf Brothers and learned that it was something like a 
mile from the station. A quaint vehicle, something between 
a brougham and a hack, transported us over the firmly 
but not very -smoothly paved streets. The cover of the 
vehicle afforded grateful shade, for it was the first real warm 
day we had experienced in Holland. The driver took us 
along canals with nicely tree-shaded banks, past the historic 
Stadthaus, the classic university, the students’ quarters, the 
botanic garden rich in specimen^plants once intimately 
connected with the importation of the East India Company, 
on alongside a shady 
canal to a side street 
beautifully lined with 
ornamental trees which 
let us into spacious pri¬ 
vate grounds. This 
was the home of the 
members of the firm 
described in the sketch. 
The attention of the 
visitor was at once 
attracted by the diver¬ 
sity of tree and shrub 
life around the home, 
and the evidence that 
a plant lover resided 
here,and that the inter¬ 
est in plants began be¬ 
fore the activities of 
the present generation. 
We learned that Mr. 
DeGraaf was deep in 
the business of super¬ 
intending the sorting of bulbs, , andj^we were bidden 
to repair to the packing house. Here we found him 
in due time, with every "evidence of as much of the “Ameri¬ 
can hustle” present as"'even a whirlwind westerner could 
desire. The grounds around the packing house, and the 
area of the spacious building "itself, were entirely occupied 
with exhibits of bulbs which had recently come in from 
the fields. Some of them were in process of drying; some 
of them were being “skinned, ” while others had reached the 
sorting stage, and still others were being packed in strong 
manilla sacks, either for storage or for consignment to orders 
awaiting being filled from customers in American or possibly 
other foreign lands. A numerous retinue of helpers, mostly 
men, were carrying out the directions of the chief. 
Hyacinths in field culture in Holland. 
