by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Wrapping up our commemoration of Earth Day 2025 and a series of posts this month on greater Los Angeles nurseries, this La La Landscapes posts shares, from the Museum’s collection, an autumn 1929 catalog from Armstrong Nurseries, the Ontario-based business that is still in operation, promoting “Armstrong’s Spring Flowering Bulbs” for fall planting. Here we are in our spring season nearly a century later and, hopefully, many of us see the results of our own efforts during the last autumn planting season.
The publication noted that “the spring flowering bulbs provide a display of glorious colors at a time when flowers are most appreciated, and each year they are more and more popular among garden lovers.” Armstrong’s added that “the varieties that we offer are the very finest that can be selected and we send out only the best grades of first-quality bulbs,” so that “we insure our customers against disappointment” and combat the plague of “cheap undersized bulbs [which] will never give good results.”
The offerings included tulips, hyacinths, daffodils (narcissi), lillies, begonias, freesias, irises, gladioli and more. The catalog also informed readers that “our complete general catalog, new every year, will be ready December 1st” and the 1930 edition “contains up-to-date descriptions of all the desirable and new and old varieties” of citrus trees, sub-tropical and deciduous fruit trees, grapes, berries, ornamental plants “and the World’s Best Roses,” a specialty of the nurseries in recent years and raised with the others on 600 acres owned by Armstrong’s. It also recommended The Book of Bulbs, a 1927 book by Frederick F. Rockwell, a prominent writer on horticulture and gardening for about a half-century.
The nurseries enterprise was established by John Samuel Armstrong (who was baptized under Samuel John), born in October 1865 at Sheffield, Canada, located in, of course, the province of Ontario, to Irish immigrants. He was the eldest of seven children born to Joseph, a schoolteacher, and Elizabeth Bell, and displayed a talent for woodworking as a young man, but his exposure to buildings lacking heat during the frigid Canadian winters and he developed tuberculosis. A doctor told him that a move to a drier and warmer climate would give him several more years of life.
Whether the choice of Ontario, California was due to the common tie with his home province (the town’s founders, the Chaffey brothers hailed from there) or not, he arrived in March 1889 and apparently had all of six dollars with him. That summer, he camped in the cozy confines of San Antonio Canyon above Claremont and Upland (and where, some fifteen or so years before, F.P.F. Temple had a lumber operation in Icehouse Canyon) as his health improved.
Armstrong worked at a variety of jobs before finding employment at a nursery that specialized in growing cypress and eucalyptus trees used for windbreaks in regional farms and orchards (some of these still can be seen in areas throughout our region). He then purchased the business and, although, he and the company today tout the founding date of the business as 1889, the earliest located advertisement is from March 1894 as, under his name, Armstrong promoted his home-grown fruit trees, cypresses, gums (eucalypti), pines and ornamentals at the location on the east side of Euclid Avenue at C St.
The name “Armstrong Nurseries” appeared in ads from early 1895, with one from the Ontario Record touting “a few thousand very choice one-year oranges and lemons” along with apple, apricot, cherry, peach and prune trees, as well as cypress, grapes, eucalyptus and pines, not to mention shade trees, hedge plants and “in fact, everything in the nursery line.” It was added that “great care [is] being used in selecting grafts and buds.”
Over the next thirty-five years, Armstrong Nurseries grew into what was touted as the world’s largest such business and also employed increasing savvy and sophistication in its advertising and marketing campaigns mirroring the growth of these vital aspects of operating virtually any enterprise. The eldest of the four surviving of six children of John and his wife, Charlotte Cooper, was John Awdry and he joined the business while still in his teens. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and earned a degree in pomology (the science of fruit raising) and, as the Roaring Twenties continued, he assumed greater responsibilities with the firm.
With our focus on 1929, it is notable that, along with sponsoring a radio program, which many larger companies did, Armstrong launched, over the first several months of the year, a series of full-page advertisements in the Sunday editions, the most read of all, of the Los Angeles Times which also featured Awdry’s writings and recommendations for home gardeners.
The 6 January issue promoted the nurseries’ concept of “Proper Landscaping Made Easy Thru Our Landscaping Service,” described more fully in the 1929 catalog, and which included free delivery for orders of $20 and more within a 50-mile radius of Ontario and anywhere in Los Angeles County south of what is now Santa Clarita. Among the younger Armstrong’s recommendations for “Some Worth-While Plants for California Gardens” were the sweet olive shrub, the Royal Princess flower, the native Carpenteria Californica, and a California rhododendron.
Two weeks later, readers were invited to “Unlock the Armstrong Catalog Treasure Chest” through the 64-page publication and its “abundance of Nature’s Treasures,” while Awdry wrote about “Early Fruits for California.” He noted that most fruit was enjoyed in the spring and early parts of summer, though oranges and avocados were ripe in the winter and apples were available year-round. The loquat was the earliest ripening example, though he cautioned readers to distinguish between seedlings and varieties such as the Champagne, Premier and Thales which “are real fruits, and no one can fail to like them.” Apricots, plums, peaches and pears were also highlighted.
The 17 February issue had a dramatic overflowing cornucopia of all manner of fruit in the Armstrong ad, while Awdry’s piece was “Notes on Fruits,” with his remark that those who had a single almond, plum or other tree that did not bear and then blamed the nursery owner when it was really a lack of knowledge and understanding that “most almond trees and many plum varieties will not successfully pollinate their blossoms with pollen from the same variety.” The solution was to have two or more trees of other types to allow for cross-pollination, though careful selection was needed to assure contemporaneous blooming, while prunes and figs were also discussed in the article.
The following week’s edition advised that “Your Neighborhood and City Is Judged By Its Avenue & Shade Trees” and added that property owners didn’t have to wait for the broader community to plant them. Moreover, it recommended to “plan now to at least add a living Christmas tree,” these being actively promoted during the time “to your yard” and plugging an Armstrong Deodar tree—Walter P. Temple planted deodars near the Workman House and La Casa Nueva, with the former decorated for the holidays and both still standing today.
In his “Trees for California Gardens,” Awdry emphasized that it was time for acacias and the fluffy golden balls that were its flowers, despite the downsides of the trees with respect to roots affecting pipes, branch brittleness, their siphoning of moisture from other plants and more. An Australian variety was touted as being able to grow most anyplace, while a native Mexican tree, the Jerusalem Thorn or Palo Verde, was said to be good for our region and “fits in perfectly with Spanish or old Californian architecture,” such as the Temple family’s La Casa Nueva, though it is not known if the medium-size tree was planted at the Homestead. Lastly, the ubiquitous pepper tree, with varieties from Peru and Brazil, was highlighted.
The 3 March ad asked “Have You Some Of These In Your Garden?” and the examples cited included begonias, camellias, crape myrtle, the mock orange and the Spanish jasmine. Awdry penned a piece called “Chinese Immigrants for California Gardens,” an interesting title given the contested history of the Chinese people in the Golden State over the decades. In any case, he meant cotoneasters of several varieties as well as “a rampant evergreen twiner” to provide “a quick cover [f]or an unsightly fence or low building known usually as the Australian Pea Vine, though it hailed from Asia.
Two weeks later, as “warm spring days are here” for idea planting, the company highlighted jujubes (there are several around La Casa Nueva and the Mission Walkway), kumquat (two modern examples are just outside the entrance to the house), plums, strawberries and roses. Awdry’s “Notes on Grapes” opined that “no where in the world do grapes give better results than in California” because of the Mediterranean climate being so similar to that where vinis vinifera originated. It was added that soil was not an issue to vines, were low-care, did not take up much space and bear within a year or two; moreover, they could be a bush, trained on a fence or trellis or cover an arbor—as is the case with both houses at the Homestead.
Prohibition was then the law of the land for nearly a decade and Armstrong’s promoted 15 varieties that were considered excellent for use at home. These were all European types and Awdry remarked that “the writer was born and raised in California, and never could get used to the way those Eastern grapes pop out of their skins.” He rhapsodized
I can imagine no more pleasant spot on a warm summer afternoon than a bench under a vine-covered arbor, with the breeze blowing through and bunches of grapes hanging all around, just waiting for you to put your hand up and pluck the berries. Such a pleasant vision can be made a reality around any home with little more trouble than building the arbor and planting the vines.
Also mentioned was a Christmas variety developed by the prominent horticulturist Luther Burbank, whose Santa Rosa home and garden is a city park and well worth a visit, while the America was also touted. Lastly, Armstrong gave some tips regarding keeping mildew off vines, including using powdered sulphur, early dusting, and keeping wind from affecting the grapes.
Other advertisements included one in the Chino Champion of 12 March which advised that “A HOUSE is NOT a HOME until it is surrounded with trees, shrubs, flowers and vines, while, in October, the annual Armstrong rose show was held at the nurseries’ flower shop and an ad in the Pomona Progress-Bulletin included the exhortation: “Come Ye Admiring Throng and Linger at the Shrine of the Rose, the Queen of Flowers.”
The Ontario Record of 30 April hearkened back in history to the 1881 founding of the city by the Chaffey brothers as it was observed that the community “looked very different from what it does in 1929” with the most important element in its transformation being its trees. Armstrong’s remarked “just imagine what Ontario would look like if we had no trees. Just like Cucamonga Wash” as it asserted that “trees make all the difference between a beautiful home-like community and a monotonous bare, uninviting town” and it was added “we can make Ontario a still more pleasant place to live by planting more trees” and 20 examples were given “for planting now” as Tree Planting Day was on 1 May.
Four days prior, the Ontario Report reported, under the heading of “Armstrong Nurseries Known World Over,” that,
Determination to reach the top rung of the ladder of success put John S. Armstrong Nurseries there, and today his nurseries are known in all states of the union as the finest on the Pacific coast.
It was related how the young man worked for an unnamed man who had a small nursery and his own “love for the gardens he tended” and for flowers and trees generally “inspired him to have a small nursery of his own.” From working on his own, to hiring a laborer or two and then to building his business brought Armstrong to the point in which “today there is probably no other nursery on the Pacific coast with the vast acreage” commanded by it.
It was added that “one of John S. Armstrong’s greatest hobbies is in the development of roses” and “these he works day and night” with perhaps more varieties under his care than any other person and these widely regarded at horticultural fairs and shows, including the Los Angeles County Fair, held in September than year. The Report remarked that the nurseries “are one of the show places of Ontario, and men and women come from far points to spend hours in walking through his nurseries to study and admire the flowers that he has raised.”
The account concluded,
Every day huge shipments of nursery stock leave Armstrong Nurseries for points near and far. They go from the nurseries by automobile, by truck, by train and by steamship. And the landscape architects associated with Armstrong Nurseries are in demand constantly for beautifying estates, clubs and private homes.
Armstrong Nurseries are an organization created by one man’s hard work, and determination to succeed.
That success continues today. The enterprise moved in 1956 just a short distance away at Euclid and D streets and branch stores opened throughout the region. John S. Armstrong, who was apparently not given much time to live when he developed tuberculosis as a young man at Ontario, Canada, lived to be just shy of 100, and Awdry, who took over the enterprise, was 90 when he passed away.
Armstrong’s has 27 locations in California, including the former nursery of Edward Rust highlighted here earlier this month, and owns other nurseries outside the Golden State, while it is an employee-owned business. The Homestead’s collection has a 1928 catalog, so we’ll look to share that in a future “La La Landscapes” post.