January | 2021 | Planting Diaries

New for 1942 – Burpee’s yellow cosmos front cover of the W. Atlee Burpee Co. Seed Growers Catalogue (via archive.org)

In mid-January, with its cold, short days and spring still some distance over the horizon, many of us delight in browsing through the new season’s seed catalogues. Whether we consult a paper catalogue, or visit a website, both immerse us in a colourful world of new growing possibilities and provide a welcome reminder of summer days to come.

But as we place our orders, who are the people who will receive and process them, fill the seed packets, package them up and post them to us? In this remarkable photographic project from 1943, Arthur S. Siegel takes us into the heart of operations at seed dealers W. Atlee Burpee in Philadelphia to meet the staff keeping the supply of vegetable and flower seeds flowing to its customers during World War II.

The project was commissioned by the Office of War Information as part of a country-wide record of the role played by US companies in the war effort. At once we notice the large number of women employed at W. Atlee Burpee, working across the roles, in administration, testing seed samples for viability, and operating the machines that sorted seeds into their packets. The men are generally above conscription age – although there is one young man working in the vast storage and packing department. The caption of a photograph showing a young woman sweeping the floor explains that she is doing the man’s job of a janitor due to the war.

The W. Atlee Burpee Company was established in 1876 and by the time David Burpee took over the business from his father in 1915, it was estimated to be the largest seed company in the world, employing 300 people and distributing over a million of its catalogues each year. Whereas Atlee was focused primarily on vegetables, David liked flowers and produced dozens of new varieties of marigolds, nasturtiums and petunias. David Burpee also ran the Victory Gardens campaign aimed at city dwellers and teaching them how to grow their own food during the produce shortages caused by World War II.

As a large company W. Atlee Burpee supplied farms and market gardens in the United States, as well as individuals. Siegel’s photographs show rows of seed sacks ready for dispatch to agricultural businesses across the United States, while others are labelled for shipping around the world, to England, Ireland and South Africa. The photograph of the company’s enormous Philadelphia building underlines of the scale of the enterprise.

The atmosphere at the warehouse seems busy and focused; the piles of order forms on workers’ desks and heaps of packages waiting for posting indicating the important role of growing food during wartime. But the wartime catalogues continue to feature plenty of flowers alongside the vegetables, and these are given pride of place on the occasional colour pages of these mostly black and white publications.

Planning the garden and choosing some favourite flowers is the gardener’s annual response to this dormant season and the new year – but perhaps now, as in the 1940s, it’s also a response to uncertain times – sowing some seeds as an act of hope and optimism.

Exterior of the W. Atlee Burpee seed plant, Philadelphia 1943 photographed by Arthur S. Siegel (Library of Congress)

Sealing envelopes containing seed

Order assembler standing next to racks containing seed packages

Finding seed package in seed rack

Feeding envelopes to seed counting machines

The cashier totaling individual orders

Operator of a seed counting machine

Interior of the bulk seed warehouse

Bags of seed to be sent to England

Wrapper with packages of seed ready for the mail

Orders in trays before they are packed for shipment

Measuring bulk seed order

Seed packages arranged in seed rack

Mailing department – the envelopes are to be sealed and stamped

Typing address labels on a flat bed typewriter

Punching code information on mailing stencils

Testing seeds for germinating qualities

Storage of bulk seeds

Mailing department – the envelopes are to be sealed and stamped

Checking seed order against catalog

Weighing the outgoing mail

Germinating seeds after they have been removed from the oven

Accountant assembling the day’s returns

Checking an order against the catalog

Bulb storage racks

Women with a typical display rack of Burpee seeds

Seed filling machine

Due to the War the janitor is a girl

Outdoor sign over doorway entrance

Burpee’s Wildfire New Single Marigolds 1941

W. Atlee Burpee Co. Seed Growers, Philadelphia
Order form from the 1941 Catalogue

W. Atlee Burpee Co. Seed Growers, Philadelphia
1941 Catalogue

Burpee’s New and Better Vegetables 1942

Burpee’s new Calendulas – the X-Ray Twins ‘Glowing Gold’ and ‘Orange Fluffy’ 1942

Back cover of the catalogue 1942

Further reading:

Library of Congress: Arthur S. Siegel’s photographs of the W. Atlee Burpee Company

W. Atlee Burpee Company Seed Catalogue 1941

W. Atlee Burpee Company Seed Catalogue 1942

The Smithsonian Libraries: Biographies of American Seedsmen and Nurserymen

A collection of pruning knives from ‘Figures pour l’almanach du bon jardinier’ (1813) Bibliothèque nationale de France

As I start to think about pruning the roses later this month, even in our small garden it’s a job requiring secateurs, bypass and anvil loppers, and a long handled pruner with a pole-mounted blade, operated by pulling a cord. These indispensable tools have their origins in early 19th century France, and over time, they began to replace the traditional pruning knives and bill-hooks used in previous centuries.

Figures pour l’almanach du bon jardinier: Répresentant les Utensiles le plus généralement employés dans la culture des Jardins (1813) contains a wonderful visual record of the range of tools available to French gardeners at this time, showing older items alongside new introductions. Tools for pruning include shears used for trimming hedges and borders, a basic pole pruner operated by a cord, pruning knives, croissants or semi-circular pruning hooks which could be attached to poles of different lengths, and saws of various sizes.

1. Serpe ordinaire. 2. Cisailles ou Ciseaux à tondre les haies ou les bordures. (shears for clipping hedges or borders) 3. Scie à main, ou Egoine (handsaw) 4. Petit Croissant qui se visse au bout d’une canne. 5. Hachette de Forsith. 6. Couteau à scie. 7. Cordeau avec ses piquets.

1. Croissant. (pruning hook) 2. Échenilloir. (tree pruner) 3. Rateau double à dents de bois, ou Fauchet. 4. Rateau simple à dents de fer. 5. Pioche de deux dents. 6. Couteau pour cueillir les asperges (asparagus knife).

There’s also an illustration of the sécateur – a brand new pruning tool invented by M. le marquis Bertrand de Moleville. (A royalist, Moleville lived as an exile in England during the years of the French Revolution, returning to France when it was safe for him to do so.) Developed for for use in viticulture, the text explains how the summer pruning of vines was made more efficient using the new tool, claiming that the gardener was able to achieve in just one hour with the sécateur what would have taken four using the traditional serpette, or pruning knife.

The illustration of the sécateur is given a whole page to itself in the 1813 edition, indicating its importance. In just a decade, by the time the third edition of this book was published in 1823, the extraordinary influence of the sécateur can be seen in a whole range of new or improved pruning tools, using its bypass blade technology.

Sécateur – invented by M. le marquis Bertrand de Moleville for use in viticulture

The sécateur appears to have attracted the interest of a Paris based firm of engineers, Arnheiter and Petit. As well as manufacturing new tools to the specification of independent designers, the company developed tools themselves. In the 1820s they produced the ébranchoir, or ‘tres-grands secateur’ – we would call it a lopper – and produced three échenilloirs, or tree pruners, a vast improvement of an existing tool said to have come originally from Germany (see illustration XX).

Their loppers use the same design principle as the sécateur, but on a larger scale, allowing branches of greater diameter to be cut effectively. The first has handles around one and half feet in length and can cut branches the diameter of a thumb. Made entirely of steel, it must have been quite heavy to use. The second lopper cuts branches of the same diameter, and can be used on taller trees. Both arms of this ébranchoir end in sockets which were attached to wooden poles, giving the tool greater reach, but without making it too heavy. The échenilloirs, or tree pruners, benefitted from refined mechanisms and a reach of ten feet.

Ébranchoirs or loppers – from the third edition of Figures pour l’almanach du bon jardinier (1823) Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla

Tree pruners with a pulley mechanism – still used today.

Tree pruners operated with a cord

Échenilloir à Croissant – designed by M. Reginer

Two tools illustrated on the page below were specifically for cutting roses. Object 3 in the diagram is a version of the sécateur called the sécateur-cueille-rose. The other tool, which resembles a pair of ornate scissors, (objects 1 & 2) is a cueille-rose or donne-rose and was marketed for use by women. The text includes the address of a shop in the rue Saint-Jacques in Paris which sold it.

Looking at my own pruning tools today, it’s surprising how little the designs have changed. My secateurs are sprung, and have plastic handles, but are broadly similar to Moleville’s original. Our tree pruner (inherited from my father and probably made in the 1970s) is essentially the same as the pulley version made by Arnheiter and Petit, apart from its modern aluminium handle and plastic cord. Our bypass loppers have telescopic handles and an anvil blade (introduced later in the 19^th century) – but these tools from France developed two hundred years ago, over a remarkably short ten year period, are still vital for the 21st century gardener.

Links to both editions of Figures pour l’almanach du bon jardinier below – and some coloured plates from the 1813 edition of the book showing spades, cloches and wheelbarrows and watering cans – nothing to do with pruning, but because they evoke the period so well.