INTRODUCTION 
Please read carefully 
In sending out our 1940 catalog we are sending you our 
personal greetings and good wishes for the coming gardening 
season. The perusal of plant and seed catalogs is one of the 
most popular indoor sports of the gardener, and we hope that 
ours will add to your pleasure. We are sorry that we can’t include 
any pictures in our catalog, but we have worked hard over each 
description, trying to give as complete a word picture of each 
plant as possible in the small space at our disposal. 
We hope that you will not be frightened by the rather for¬ 
midable array of scientific names, but, to tell the truth, many 
of the plants in our list have no common ones, and in many cases 
where they do, they are conflicting and confusing. We have 
included them after the scientific names as often as possible. 
We have tried to give the ultimate height of each plant as it 
grows with us, but it must be understood that this is often a 
relative matter, depending upon climate, soil conditions, etc. We 
have also included some very sketchy cultural directions by the 
use of initials. S. indicates a sunny situation, S-sh means semi¬ 
shade, Sh means that shade is required. D. means that the plant 
will thrive in a dry place, and B. means that it is bulbous. In 
some cases we have added further individual directions. 
We have been building up our collection of plants for almost 
a quarter of a century, and in that time we have tried out and 
discarded a great number of plants which we have found unsuited 
to our purpose, or unworthy of space in our garden. As a result, 
we have achieved a notable collection of lovely and unusual 
plants. In almost all cases they are perfectly hardy and easy 
to grow under ordinary garden conditions, except for some of 
the rarer plants, which will appeal to the seasoned gardener, 
who will have time and facilities to care for them. If you find 
a plant listed in our catalog, you may be sure it is a good one, 
even if we have not praised it to the skies. 
We have continued our policy of listing the plants alpha¬ 
betically, which makes the catalog self-indexing. However, we 
have grouped all of the brooms, ferns, dwarf conifers and heathers 
under individual headings, as it makes it easier to find them. 
Otherwise all of the items will be found listed in alphabetical 
order, with the exception of the irises, which have a section of 
the catalog all to themselves. 
We hope that you will give the iris section your careful 
