“Good Seeds Cheap”: How R.H. Shumway Democratized American Gardening

July 26, 1842

On this day, dear gardeners and horticultural enthusiasts, we celebrate the birth of a true champion of the soil – Roland Hallet Shumway.

This remarkable man would transform American gardening with nothing more than deaf ears and a steadfast vision.

R.H. Shumway, as he preferred to be known (one suspects a man of such industry had little time for syllables), emerged from the fertile plains of Rockford, Illinois, to create what would become the world's largest mail-order seed company.

His "Marketmore" seeds became the darlings of gardens across our fair nation – reliable performers in the theatrical production we call cultivation.

Can you imagine the distinction of counting among your clientele such luminaries as Bing Crosby and Perry Como?

The same golden voices that serenaded America also planted Shumway's seeds in their private gardens. One wonders if they hummed to their tomatoes as they grew.

At the tender age of 19, when most young men are discovering their appreciation for strong spirits and weak judgment, young Shumway enlisted to serve in the great Civil War. His patriotism cost him dearly – bronchitis claimed his hearing entirely during his service. Yet this silence seemed only to amplify his determination to speak through seeds.

When once asked how he wished posterity to remember him, Shumway replied with a brevity that would make even a telegram blush: "Good Seeds Cheap."

No flourishes, no embellishments – much like his business model.

"That good seeds were within the reach of the poorest planters"

This was his mission, delivered with the straightforward practicality of a man who understood that nature's bounty should not be rationed by one's finances.

As any gardener worth their compost knows, success sprouts from labor.

And labor, Shumway had in abundance, as he himself declared:

"From the beginning of the new year, until after spring planting, my industrious employees work 16 hours a day, and myself and my family 18 or more hours per day.

Are we not surely knights at labor?

How can we do more?

Do we not deserve the patronage of every planter in America?"

Knights of labor indeed! While aristocrats lounged in parlors discussing the weather, Shumway's kingdom was built on calloused hands and soil-embedded fingernails.

In 1905, our seed sovereign bestowed upon Rockford a gift that reveals the true measure of the man–land for the Shumway Market with one immovable condition: that the city maintain a Farmer's Market in perpetuity.

"for the benefit of all and the poor especially."

The market became a triweekly affair – Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays year-round – where the fruits of labor (both literal and figurative) were displayed and exchanged.

It became THE gathering place, a horticultural agora where farmers and townspeople alike brought their vegetables, fruits, and flowers – each a testament to Shumway's democratization of growing.

How disheartening to report that the area behind this once-vibrant market building has surrendered to that most mundane of modern necessities – the parking lot.

Progress, it seems, sometimes paves paradise.

The 1980s saw Shumway Seed sold off, only to be rescued in the 1990s by JW Jung.

One imagines Shumway himself, watching from whatever celestial garden he now tends, nodding approvingly that his legacy continues to germinate in the hands of others who understand that good seeds, indeed, should remain within everyone's reach.