Agreword 
It is with pleasure that we place our 1949 catalog in your hands. 
We wish to take this opportunity to thank you for all the splendid 
business given us during the past years. And more particularly, we 
wish to thank you for the fine letters many of you have written when 
you received your bulbs or they were in bloom. Your letters have 
given us a deep satisfaction. We regret we have not answered all of 
them, but with two members of our ‘firm’ in University and one in 
High School, we do not always do all of the things we plan to 
accomplish. 
There are a number of means of advertising a business such 
as ours but we have found that the best advertising is done by satis- 
fied customers. If you are enthusiastic about our bulbs it is natural 
that you should express your opinion of them to friends; and of 
course the opposite also holds true. So we know that if we keep our 
bulbs as healthy and as vigorous as possible and give you just a 
little more than you expect when we fill your order, we will be on 
the right track toward making you a friend. 
We have added a number of new varieties to the list this year 
which we hope meet with your approval. Last summer we grew over 
150 new ones—1947 and 1948 introductions. Some we are listing this 
year. We are buying additional stock of some in order to grow and 
list them next year. Some are being discarded. We have always fol- 
lowed the policy of growing our own stock and of becoming sure of 
a variety before we offer it to you. We are also reluctant to drop an 
old variety as long as we love to grow it in our own garden and it 
is in demand as a cut flower. 
On the last page of this catalog will be found values in Gladiolus 
bulbs which will be hard to duplicate anywhere. They are priced low 
not because of quality but because of quantity—we have fairly large 
stocks of them. If you want a lot of fine gladiolus for a minimum 
expenditure, be sure to check through the Home Gardenet’s Special. 
We have gone back to the alphabetical listing of varieties and 
have added a listing by color class. We hope this will help you in 
selecting the color of glads you would like to grow. 
May we wish you a GLAD year for 1949. 
