Business: Burpee for Burbank

Before Luther Burbank died (April 11, 1926) he publicly expressed doubt about his personal immortality. He was more hopeful about the future of his experiments. Very carefully he labeled his seeds, left record of his problems. Two old U. S. concerns—W. Atlee Burpee Co. (seeds) of Philadelphia and Stark Brothers (fruit trees and shrubs) of Louisiana, Mo. will work in their separate fields to give Burbank’s work the immortality self-denied to Burbank.

When Burbank died, by his direction his entire business was taken over by Stark Brothers. Last fortnight it was announced that they had sold the seed portion of the estate to the Burpee firm, keeping for themselves the nursery activities. The work will continue at Burbank’s Santa Rosa gardens. Living there and watching will be Luther Burbank’s widow. The notes he kept scrupulously, unlike many scientists, she has guarded scrupulously, unlike many widows. The notes, the seeds, the bulbs she is turning over to David Burpee.

Not only horticulturalist but also businessman and clubman, it has long been the ambition of David Burpee to take over the unfinished work of Luther Burbank. And that work he will carry on, he says, as Burbank did: in a scientific spirit, not a commercial one, in the interest of mankind. Also he hopes to bring greater resources to the experiments than Burbank was ever able to command. Some of the work will be done at Burpee farms in the East but most of it will be done in the tight two acres of Burbank’s own garden.

W. Atlee Burpee who founded the Burpee firm was a cousin of the California plant wizard. In Burbank’s lifetime the Burpees bought seed from the little firm Burbank maintained to help finance his experiments. W. Atlee Burpee began his business in 1878. It gained prestige by introducing the sweet pea from England and more prestige by developing new varieties which were shipped back to England. The present Burpee, David, a man of medium height and thinning hair, became president of the company in 1915 after the death of his father. Born in Philadelphia in 1893, he attended Cornell’s agricultural college, from which he was called home by his father’s illness. During the War he set up sample gardens, encouraged people to grow their own food. The War stopped shipments of bulbs, so he grew fine Dutch bulbs in the U. S. Carefully and in person he oversees the operation of the Burpee farms, Fordhook Farms (named for the ancestral Burpee estate in England) at Doylestown, Pa., and Floradale Farm in Santa Barbara County, Calif. In person, too, he follows many of the 20,000 experiments made yearly by the Burpee organization. He advocates Federal patents for the protection of flower experimenters. He lives at Fordhook Farms while his younger brother, Washington Atlee Burpee Jr.. treasurer of the company, lives on fashionable Delancey Street in Philadelphia.

More famed even than the Burpees are the Starks who came less recently into the Burbank activities. Judge James Stark, home from the War of 1812, founded the company in the territory explored (1806-07) by General Zebulon Pike which then stretched from the Mississippi to the Santa Fe. Today the Stark organization maintains the oldest nurseries in the U. S., the largest in the world. On 3,992 acres, in plantations located in seven States they propagate fruit trees, roses, shrubs. In France, too, they maintain nurseries. They employ nearly a thousand men and women. About 15.000 commission salesmen represent them. Every year they ship some five million fruit trees and plants to all parts of the world. Thirty-five years ago in Iowa they discovered the original Stark Delicious Apple. Each year they discover new and better fruit. It was their Golden Delicious Apple which gave first impetus to the Buy-An-Apple Campaign to help the unemployed.

In 1927 the Starks took over the Sebastopol Burbank Test Orchards which they now maintain for development and test of Burbank fruits which Burbank never had time to introduce. Most important result of their work is Burbank’s Elephant Heart plum, a red-fleshed plum almost as big as a, baseball, the first freestone, blood-fleshed plum ever developed. Trees to bear this luscious giant planted two years ago (from Wisconsin to Alabama, California to New York) have lived and borne this year despite dry summer and hard winter.

Burpees hope to do for Burbank flowers, particularly annuals, what Starks have done for Burbank fruits. The late Wizard Burbank, according to his own disbelief in spiritualism, is unaware.