Salesman's Presentation Book showing planting Plans for Residential Landscapes in California

ROEDING, George C.  Salesman's Presentation Book showing planting Plans for Residential Landscapes in California.               

N.P: Geo. C. Roeding, 1926. Oblong 4to. Old leather loose-ring binder with metal closing snaps.  30 numbered color plates, mounted on stiff boards.

Frederick Roeding emigrated to California from Hamburg during the Gold Rush in 1849 and settled in Fresno valley, where he acquired orchards and vineyards and started Fancher Creek Nurseries.  His son George was to become the real nurseryman of his generation and assumed ownership of his father's nurseries.  He greatly expanded the operation in 1917 by purchasing the 463-acre California Nursery Company.  George also formed the Fresno Nursery Company and the Niles Nursery Company, combining them with Fancher Creek Nursery and California Nursery Company in a holding company called the George C. Roeding Company.  George Roeding was president of the Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen (1910) organizer of the California Association of Nurserymen (1911), and author of books on fruit culture, in particular his book on the growing of the Smyrna fig for which he was famous.  This oblong quarto ring binder with it thirty sheets of illustration (each with illustrations after a hand-colored photograph of a California house and a hand-drawn and colored planting plan for street-side garden of that house, with legend) must be a rare survival -- and possibly the only copy existing of what was most probably a salesman's presentation book showing planting plans for residential landscapes and photographs of the realized plans (although it might also be a company record of thirty landscape gardens designed and executed by the company).  The plans are very detailed and include up to twenty-eight varieties of plant material -- wonderful examples of the increased importance of the American front lawn and landscape.  To protect his copyright, each plate has a tiny strip pasted down at the bottom edge of the sheet and also on the verso; "Copyright, 1926, by Geo. C. Roeding."  Old leather ring binder scuffed and slightly chipped along extremities, leather partially separating from ring metal backing in the interior; the color plates are in very good condition.

 

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