B Y Way of Jutroduction 
Some of you who will receive this catalog know me personally. To hundreds of 
others I am a familar “newspaper name” for I served as garden editor to one of Chi- 
cago’s largest newspapers during the years 1937-1944. The by-line ‘‘Deanette M. 
Small” also has appeared in horticultural magazines, trade papers and on floral pub- 
licity for the 1942 National Flower Show when it returned to Chicago for the first 
time since 1906, the year of its birth. 
Since leaving the Chicago paper 
my time has been largely occupied 
with expanding Topnotch Gardens 
from about one-third acre to -its 
present two acres. Which threatens to 
expand even more this year, if help 
in the form of a very fine war vet- 
eran and iris enthusiast, Mr. Amos 
Feete, continues. Not on the payroll 
but happily giving assistance when- 
ever needed are my husband, Waldo 
P. Houchin and my younger war vet- 
eran son, James H. Small. 
In addition to iris growing my 
present duties and pleasures consist 
of a daily garden column in the Gary 
(Indiana) Post-Tribune and a weckly 
in The Chesterton (Indiana) Tribune. 
The former, entitled “Your Family 
Garden” is largely a post-war emer- 
gency food growing column but with 
many notes about flowers included. 
The weekly column, titled “Your 
Home and Garden”... I like to think 
of as a “better citizenship” column, 
for that is the purpose for which it 
is intended ... the stimulating of 
better homes and gardens through in- 
dividual and civic planning. 
While most generally you will 
find me here at home working or 
thinking about Iris, in March of this 
year I was fortunately able to attend 
New York’s first post-war Interna- 
tional Flower Show—very lovely in- 
deed. From there I traveled to Washington, D. C. for the emergency food growing con- 
ference sponsored by the U. S. Department of Agriculture headed by Secretary Clinton 
C. Anderson. While in Washington I was made one of the members of the committee 
planning the long-range gardening program for America, which committee, under the 
sponsorship of the U. S. Department of Agriculturer, will meet annually to further 
the program outlined and approved in March. 
Other than this, I am a practical, dyed-in-the-wool farmer of considerable years 
of experience in fruit and vegetable growing. While I insist I would like to spend the 
balance of my life “just growing Iris” ...I have a book underway, an article (on 
Shasta Daisies) for Flower Grower and perhaps the Indiana Nurserymen’s Association 
to which I belong might put me on their 1947 program ... if they liked the ‘‘Planned 
Highway Selling” talk I gave them this year. (Purdue University, January 1946). 
If you are nearby, come visit me during Iris time. Let me take you on a per- 
sonal tour to see “my lovelies.” Bring your Woman’s Club or your Garden Club if 
you like: a number of clubs have already made arrangements for a full day picnic on 
the shady lawn of ‘‘Waldean’’, our farm home. 

Deanette Smali 
Sincerely, 
May 15, 1946. Deanette Small. 
