How This Booklet Happened 
I was born loving trees. The fact that a 
distant cousin who lived in Washington, 
D. C., sold to a neighboring grocer a barrel 
of English Walnuts almost every year 
from a tree in his yard, and got 25-30 
cents a pound for them, quite heated up 
my youthful imagination. In 1895 I 
started farming on a dairy farm in 
northern Virginia, but I thought it would 
be a lot easier to make a living picking up 
English Walnuts from off the grass than 
it would be to serve as nursemaid to a lot 
of cows, morning and evening, Sundays 
and holidays; and so, the very first spring 
I planted out two acres of English Walnut 
trees, which I secured from a New Jersey 
nursery. I also planted some seed from the 
good tree in Washington, D. C. 
The Washington seedlings grew nicely 
for the first summer, but for some mys- 
terious reason they froze back the first 
winter. My two acres of New Jersey 
seedlings were 3 feet high when planted, 
2 feet high the next year, 1 foot high the 
year after. They were seedlings, probably 
from imported nuts grown in sunny Italy 
and they winterkilled in the usual way. 
Ten years later 25 acres of grafted 
paragon Chestnuts were killed by the 
blight. 
After more than 50 years of study and 
experimenting with nut trees, I now have 
commercial plantings of Black Walnuts, 
and am starting commercial plantings of 
Chestnuts, Pecans, and Shagbarks. 
T have learned quite a bit about nuts in 
that 50 years, and consequently am in a 
position to save you many years of ex- 
perimenting by letting you benefit by 
what I have learned. 
During the period of my experimenting 
a new era has come into nut growing in 
the northern United States—the era dur- 
ing which we have learned how to graft 
Walnuts and Hickories. We can now find 
the one rare tree of Shagbark, Shellbark, 
Walnut, Chestnut, Pecan, or Hiccan, and 
by budding or grafting make an orchard 
of them, just as they do of Baldwin apples 
or Navel oranges. 
This matter of grafting nut trees is a 
recent acquisition. For years I experi- 
mented and got 2 or 3 per cent. One year 
I had such good success that I had a 
surplus of trees beyond my experimental 
needs and started selling them. 
Now, as a result of my 50-years’ experi- 
ments, I can make one general recommen- 
dation: Nut trees are grand for your 
yard almost anywhere in the United 
States. By all means plant them. Some 
varieties are good for commercial plant- 
ing. 
Shade Trees That Bear Nuts 
Nut trees are more interesting than 
maples, as majestic as elms, as beautiful 
as any tree—and they also bear nuts, 
nuts that are good to eat or to sell. You 
cannot say that of maples or elms or any 
of the common shade trees that grow in 
our yards. Also nut trees are fun. 
The time has now come to plant nut 
trees for shade in dooryard, lawn, lane, 
pasture, and poultry yard. I can fill out 
your grounds completely and beautifully, 
to say nothing of the interest, fun, and 
profit you will have from the nuts. 
Nut Trees for the North 
I now have grafted nut trees ready for 
any tree lover from Maine to Michigan 
and Minnesota, from Boston to Omaha. 
from Washington to Memphis, and on 
down into the Cotton Belt. True, my 
nursery is in Virginia, but wait—it is in 
northern Virginia, only 95 miles south of 
the latitude of Philadelphia. It is on the 
Blue Ridge Mountains, at an altitude of 
800 to 1400 feet. I have measured 26 
inches of snow on the level. We have re- 
cently had temperatures of 10° F. or more 
below zero. Our absolute minimum of rec- 
ord according to the U. S. Weather Bureau 
is —20° F., which is lower than that of 
Philadelphia, New York or Boston. But, 
much more important than these, is 
the fact that I grow northern strains of 
trees. My Chestnut seeds and varieties 
came from North China. My Shagbark 
seed comes from Vermont and Quebec, the 
varieties from New York, Connecticut, 
Michigan, and Iowa. My Pecans are 
grafted on seedlings that grew from In- 
diana, Missouri, and Iowa seed. The 
varieties are northern Pecans from near 
the corner of Indiana, Illinois and Ken- 
tucky. Some of my Black Walnuts grow 
on stocks from Minnesota seed. My Paw- 
paw seed is from Ohio, Michigan,- and 
Ontario. My Honey Locust seed comes 
from Nebraska. My Persimmon seed comes 
from northern Missouri, with one variety 
that has stood the rigors of Iowa. 
Blight Resistant Oriental Chestnuts 
If you are 45 or 50 years old and hap- 
pen to have been brought up in the coun- 
try almost anywhere between southern 
