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Ad Rates / Articles / Classified Ads / Editorial / Home / Links / Showtime   Inside Antiques, by Robert Reed   Inside Antiques: A guide to vintage garden seed packets   By Robert Reed From simple but colourful designs to those honouring a child movie star, vintage garden seed packets bloomed across North America for generations.   Bearing brightly lithographed illustrations and helped by accompanying annuals and catalogs, paper containers of seeds were a consumer sensation.   Today such old-time packets and related materials are appreciated by collectors. Some are sought on the basis of their vivid artwork. Others are gathered to reflect the once great variety of seed distributors.   Grand old seed packets and seed catalogs, when neatly framed, can be a seasonal display for a kitchen. Others can provide a gardening or outdoor theme to any area of the home or office.   From asparagus to zinnias the small packages offered North Americans an opportunity to create their own abundant and growing garden space, be it in the backyard or an empty lot.   For decades the bountiful images changed very little except to perhaps reflect a different price for the times. Most were rectangular and plain; some came with a punched hole for store displays.   During the glory days of seed selling many seed packets were printed on speculation by large commercial lithographers or printers and then sold to individual seed companies, notes Irwin Richman, author of Seed Art, The Package Made Me Buy It. It was not unusual, therefore, for several seed houses to have used the same packet illustrations.   In some cases, regional dealers had packets localized with the name and address of the store printed on the front of the package. For example, Dodson Seed Store in Danville, Illinois.   From the 1840s through the 1860s and beyond, Shakers in various parts of the country marketed seeds in medium-sized paper bags. Typically, about four ounces of Shaker seeds were packages in every eight to ten inch brown bag. Each package also bore about six to eight lines of planting instructions within a framed border.   Shaker-raised and packaged seeds were so highly regarded that they were guaranteed not to be adulterated with even a single non-Shaker seed, explains author June Sprigg in the very comprehensive book, By Shaker Hands.   Sprigg and other Shaker scholars have pointed out that various Shaker groups even used signed agreements to stipulate that their seeds would never by mixed with those from outside sources.   The mail-order seed business in the United States and Canada began to bloom in the 1870s when pioneers like Washington Atlee Burpee began to see its potential. Burpee first started a mail-order chicken business in Pennsylvania before shifting to corn seed, and ultimately vegetable seeds as well.   By 1878, the Burpee Company began selling garden seeds on a wide scale by distributing vast numbers of mail-order catalogs. Part of the widespread Burpee success included the establishment seed icons such as the Fordhook lima bean, Golden Bantam sweet corn, and Iceberg lettuce.   Burpee was joined by many others during the 1880s and 1890s. Among them were L.W. Goodell in Massachusetts, The Wilson Seed Company and the Sunset Seed and Plant Company in California. Despite all the competition the Burpee operation remained a major leader in the seed packaging field. When Burpee himself died in 1915, he left behind what was considered the largest seed company in the world. It employed 300 persons who laboured to fill 10,000 orders a day during spring planting season.   Lots of prospering seed companies were offering citizens seed annuals or seed catalogs early in the 20th century. They included the Fairview Seed Farms in New York, the Burbank Seed Book in California, Mills Seeds and Plants in New York, the J. Bauscher, Jr. Sunflower Poultry and Seed Farm in Illinois, and the D.M. Ferry and Company with locations in Michigan and Canada.   In 1918, Ferry Seeds advertised in a national magazine urging readers to "plant a garden and set a better table. An average sized garden, p r o p e r l y farmed, will produce more vegetables of the finest quality than an average family can eat. But to have this kind of garden you must plant seeds that will produce quality products.”   The ad closed by noting The Ferry Seed Catalog would be sent without cost to those that requested it. Likewise Burpee and others offered their richly illustrated annuals or catalogs free for the asking.   During the 1920s, some of the most eye-catching packets of seeds were being produced in great numbers by the Card Seed Company of Fredonia, New York. Using the printing talents of the Genesee Valley Litho Company, Card Seed dazzled the marketplace with issues of beets, cauliflower, carrot, radish, and other seeds. Often they were given a subtitle such as Danvers Half, Detroit Dark Red, French Breakfast, or Snowball.   By the 1930s, mailorder mammoths like Sears, Roebuck and Company had plowed into the garden of seed marketing in a big way. In 1937, their spring and summer catalog offered three full pages of seeds.   Most of the offerings from Sears that year ranged from five to eight cents per packet. However, the Shirley Temple Sweet Peas were priced at 13 cents a packet. Advertised as sweet and lovely as Shirley herself, they promised "dainty fluted blooms of soft, rich pink.”   Aside from the movie starlet named peas, there were the usual cabbage, celery, cauliflower, kale, sweet corn, lettuce, spinach, squash, tomatoes, and even watermelon seeds in attractive packets.   Wartime of the 1940s turned the attention of patriotic citizens to Victory Gardens and the earnest efforts of raising food. In 1944 the Sears catalog boasted two full pages of vegetable seeds alone to promote their Garden Master brand.   "Plant a Victory Garden this year,” urged the catalog message. "Beat high food prices, enjoy the finer flavour of garden-fresh vegetables - loads and loads of them; all that you and your family can eat.”   Except for Burpee’s stringless green beans, most all of the choices were Garden Master. The two-ounce packets were priced at 10 cents each from broccoli to winter squash. "Each packet has simple, easy-to-follow, planting directions,” noted the Sears catalog; how deep to plant, how wide to space rows, etc.   Moderately successful seed companies and their pleasantly packaged products dotted the continent during the middle of the 20th century. They extended from the Asgrow Seed Company in South Carolina to Abel’s Seed House in Pennsylvania, to De Giorgi Brothers in Iowa to Gurney Seed and Nursery Company in South Dakota.   Today, a great majority of once thriving seed companies exist only through their remarkable packets, annuals, and vintage catalogs.   Recommended reading: Seed Art, The Package Made Me Buy It by Irwin Richman (Schiffer Publishing).   Robert Reed has written on antiques and collectibles for more than two decades. He has also authored 15 books, including his recently released Antiques and Collectible Dictionary, available from www.collectorbooks.com     Return to top of page   This Is Livin' Publishing © 2009 581 8th Line West, RR1 Hastings, ON, K0L 1Y0 Phone/Fax: 705-696-1833   webmaster