Peter Bohlender (born February 1, 1838) was a Bavarian-born American gardener. He emigrated to Dayton, Ohio, from the Kingdom of Bavaria, with his family, at the age of 6. [1] Having no opportunity to attend school, he worked in a tobacco stripping house at a very young age. Before reaching his teens, he worked for a local nursery, where he received training in the gardening industry. In 1849, he started his own small nursery in North Dayton, Ohio, called Bohlender’s Nursery. [2]
In 1889, Bohlender moved his nursery to Tipp City, Ohio. Around the time of World War I, Bohlender renamed the nursery “Spring Hill Nurseries.” He derived the name “Spring Hill” from a small hill located near the current location of the nursery’s primary growing area. [2]
Spring Hill Nurseries was initially a wholesale garden store, providing plants and services to locals. [2] The rise in popularity of catalog mail-order prompted Bohlender to begin moving Spring Hill out of the wholesale gardening business and into mail-order. In 1930, Spring Hill became primarily a mail-order gardening company. The garden center retained a smaller retail store, which is still functioning today. [2]
Hamilton is a city in and the county seat of Butler County, Ohio, United States. Located 20 miles (32 km) north of Cincinnati, Hamilton is the second-largest city in the Greater Cincinnati area and the tenth-largest city in Ohio. The population was 63,399 at the 2020 census. Most of the city is served by the Hamilton City School District.
Tipp City is a city in southern Miami County, Ohio, United States, just outside Dayton. The population was 10,274 at the 2020 census. Originally known as Tippecanoe, and then Tippecanoe City, it was renamed to Tipp City in 1938 because another town in Ohio was likewise named Tippecanoe. The city lies in the Miami Valley and sits along Interstate 75 near the Interstate 70 interchange. Tipp City is part of the Dayton metropolitan area.
Jonathan Dayton was an American Founding Father and politician from the U.S. state of New Jersey. At age 26 he was the youngest person to sign the Constitution of the United States. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1791 and later served from 1795-1799 as its third Speaker. He left the House in 1799 after being elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served one term. Dayton was arrested in 1807 for alleged treason in connection with Aaron Burr's conspiracy to establish an independent country in the Southwestern United States and parts of Mexico. He was exonerated by a grand jury and never tried, but his national political career never recovered.
Marshall Field & Company was an upscale department store in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in the 19th century, it grew to become a large chain before Macy's, Inc acquired it in 2005. Its eponymous founder, Marshall Field, was a pioneering retail magnate.
Graham Stuart Thomas, was an English horticulturist, who is likely best known for his work with garden roses, his restoration and stewardship of over 100 National Trust gardens and for writing 19 books on gardening, many of which remain classics today. However, as he states in the Preface to his outstanding book, The Rock Garden and its Plants: From Grotto to Alpine House, "My earliest enthusiasms in gardening were for....alpines." p8
John Henry Patterson was an industrialist and founder of the National Cash Register Company. He was a businessperson and salesperson. He headed relief efforts after the 1913 Dayton flood, and successfully promoted the city manager form of government.
Cassano's Pizza King, currently operating under the brand Cassano's, is a pizzeria chain based in Dayton, Ohio which produces Dayton-style pizza. Established on June 4, 1953, by the grocer Victor "Vic" J. Cassano, Sr. and his mother-in-law Caroline "Mom" Donisi, the company currently (2005) operates 34 Cassano's Pizza King restaurants in the Dayton area, and has three other western Ohio franchises, plus a franchise in Quincy, Illinois, and another in Hannibal, Missouri. The company also operates dozens of Cassano's Pizza Express kiosks in gas stations, convenience stores and hotels, and sells frozen pizza dough under the name Cassano's Fresh Frozen Dough Company.
Heronswood is a botanical garden located in Kingston, Washington, in the Northwestern United States. It is also the name for a now defunct mail order specialty plant nursery business that originated at the gardens.
John Johnston (1775–1861) was an Indian agent in the United States Northwest Territory. He was born on 25 March 1775 near Ballyshannon in the north of Ireland. His father was Scottish and his mother was a Huguenot. He left Ireland when he was eleven years old, travelling to America with a priest and a trusted family friend who was also his tutor. When he emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1786, his father, mother, four brothers, and one sister remained in Ireland. They came to America five years after he settled here.
Peter John Seabrook MBE was a British gardening writer and television broadcaster, presenting programmes including the BBC's Gardeners' World. He wrote a gardening column in The Sun newspaper for over 40 years. He was appointed an MBE in 2005.
The Benjamin F. Kuhns Building is a historic commercial building on Main Street in downtown Dayton, Ohio, United States. Distinguished by its little-modified late nineteenth-century architecture, it has been named a historic site.
Spring Hill Nurseries is a mail-order garden center based in Tipp City, Ohio. Founded in 1849, Spring Hill Nurseries is one of the oldest gardening companies in the United States. The company specializes in garden plants, garden designs, perennials, shrubs, ground covers and gardening supplies. Spring Hill Nursery distributes catalogs nationwide and maintains a substantial presence online. One of the largest companies in the gardening industry, Spring Hill Nurseries’ headquarters features many acres of greenhouses and trial gardens.
Breck’s is a mail order gardening company and importer of Dutch flower bulbs. Based in Guilford, Indiana, and Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands, Breck’s was founded in 1818. Originally a family-owned garden supply business, Breck’s gradually expanded into a catalog company. Breck’s is now the largest U.S. importer of Dutch bulbs.
Plant Delights Nursery is a mail order plant nursery based in Raleigh, North Carolina, specializing in herbaceous perennials, and owned by Tony Avent and partner Anita Avent. Plant Delights Nursery was established in 1988 by plantsman Tony Avent and currently operates on the 28-acre campus of Juniper Level Botanic Gardens.
Tony Avent is an American horticulturist and plantsman. He and wife and business partner, Anita Avent, own Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanic Garden in Raleigh, North Carolina. In addition, he is a plant explorer, author and public speaker.
Margery Fish was an English gardener and gardening writer, who exercised a strong influence on the informal English cottage garden style of her period. The garden she created, at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, has Grade I listed status and remains open to the public.
Thomas Affleck was a Scottish-American nurseryman, almanac editor, and agrarian writer and Southern planter. He published the Southern Rural Almanac and Plantation and Garden Calendar from 1851 to 1861.
Gardens Alive!, Inc. is a privately owned multi-title catalog company founded in 1984. It sells garden and lawn supplies, specializing in organic products under its namesake catalog. The company has expanded by aggressively purchasing other catalog companies, including expansion into gift and games after acquiring the assets of defunct catalog company BlueSky Brands in 2008. As of 2010, the company has annual sales of approximately $170 million, 60 percent of which was from garden-related business.
Rosa 'Blueberry Hill',, is a floribunda rose cultivar, bred by Tom Carruth, and introduced into the United States by Weeks Rose Growers in 1997. The plant was created from hybrid tea, 'Crystalline' and floribunda, 'Playgirl'. The cultivar won a Portland Gold Medal in 2002.
T. R. Ōtsuka 大塚 太郎 was a Japanese garden builder. After emigrating from Japan to the United States in 1897 and moving to Chicago around 1905, he built dozens of Japanese-style gardens and rock gardens, mostly in the Midwest, between 1905 and the mid-1930s. His most notable projects were the Japanese-style garden of George and Nelle Fabyan in Geneva, Illinois ; the Japanese Garden at Stan Hywet in Akron, Ohio (1916); the garden of Milton Tootle, Jr. in Mackinac Island, Michigan ; and the official Japanese pavilion garden at the 1933–1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.