$25.00 CAD
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Nice print of vividly colored image of asparagus, cucumbers and lettuce.
‘Vegetable Novelties for 1886 offered by Peter Henderson & Co. 35 & 37 Cortland St. New York’
'The Palmeto Asparagus’, 'Nichol's Medium Green Cucumber', 'Henderson's New York Lettuce'.
'Beattie & Co. Lith. 44 West Broadway NY'.
Printed on thicker paper.
Cut down at left where removed from catalogue.
17.5 x 25 cm 6⅞” x 9⅞”
One of Jersey City's most unusual and colorful industries in the mid-nineteenth century was market gardening. Carriages, and later trucks, carting off shipments of fresh, locally grown produce and cut flowers to nearby markets were once a commonplace sight on the streets of the city. Greenhouses and small gardens made use of undeveloped tracts of land across the otherwise industrial community and enterprising horticulturists employed intensive cultivation techniques to produce a wide variety of flowers, ornamental plants, and vegetables.
Peter and James Henderson, brothers and immigrants from Scotland, founded what ultimately became two prosperous gardening businesses in Jersey City. Their companies flourished by specializing in different niches in the market gardening trade and by adopting cooperative business relationships with each other. James Henderson, the older of the two, established a separate truck farm for vegetables in the Greenville section of Jersey City. James' own potential was cut short by his early death, but his brother Peter came to be known to his peers as "the father of horticulture and ornamental gardening" in the United States.
On January 17, 1890, Peter Henderson died after a brief illness at his home on Arlington Avenue in Jersey City.. At the time of his death, name of Peter Henderson was synonymous with gardening: "His was thought to be the largest, and was certainly the best appointed establishment of the kind in the world" (Jersey Journal 17 January 1890).
www.njcu.edu
