Reliable Beginnings

I have in my possession a seed catalogue from the Montreal seedsmen and nurserymen, W. H. Perron. The cover is sun-bright yellow and features three roses: a yellow Souvenir, a scarlet Mary Hart and a blushing apricot Countess Vandal. They are all new to me, which is a bit of a surprise. The catalogue is dated 1935. You'd think the plants listed there would be well-known by now.

The W.H. Perron store—"The Reliable House"— was located in the heart of Montreal, just south of the corner of St. Laurent and Dorchester, though it grew its plants across the Riviere des Prairies in Laval. Perron was a mail order seed house, too. By 1930 it had catalogued its holdings and was offering them by post to those who couldn't come to the store. Packets of seed cost 15 cents; hydrangea roots were $4 a dozen; amaryllis bulbs, $1.50 each. The back pages offered the usual plant food, window boxes, "Dogzoff" and tree tanglefoot, as well as the more arcane grave flower-holders and asparagus bunchers.

Inside were 140 pages of fruit, vegetables, and flowers, the listings thoroughly if not lavishly illustrated: a pyramid of perfect Snowball cauliflowers, a truss of leeks, a vine dangling with fat peas, all shot in richly toned black and white. The edges of the pea-vine are blurred into the page so that the pods seem to dangle right at the fingertips. Most of the vegetables are shown as ink sketches or lithographs: Mammoth Mangels, and Irish Cobblers, turnips and Golden Summer Crookneck squash, all finely lined and cross-hatched. The flowers, for the most part, are shot against black backgrounds, giving them a formal, painterly look. In fact, I'm pretty sure some of them are painted, or maybe the photographs were hand-coloured.

Only the covers f the catalogue are coloured and two sheets of heavy paper that divide the catalogue into thirds. These inserts feature giant dahlias, oversize Swiss pansies, large fluffy ruffled St. Joseph petunias, and a field of multicoloured gladioli. Four enormous "Dorsett" strawberries dominate the back, and a tumble of Latham raspberries of such an intense red that it's all I can do not to nibble at the page.

It's a gallery of art forms, this catalogue. The rest of the catalogues I thumb through at this time of year seem oddly bland by comparison, even though they are generously illustrated with full-colour photographs on every page. Shouldn't photographs be an improvement over drawings? What you see is not an artist's representation of a carrot or zinnia, but the thing itself. The squashes are clearly squashes. The morning glories are blue and climbing. The peas are hanging on the vine, and sometimes splayed on the ground too, away from the masking play of shadows on the leaves.

Pictures taken in someone's garden.

After thumbing through Perron's catalogue, I feel disgruntled with the ones that have been arriving on my doorstep, their pages glossy with photographs. These pictures are like television: they don't leave much to the imagination. The old lithographs are more like radio: they lack colour and context, gaps the reader is required to fill in. Unhinged from reality, these images might come from anywhere; they fit anywhere, too. And so I set the plump pole of St. Fiacre beans in the corner by the asparagus, the bouquet of White Paris Cos in the kitchen garden by the sprouting onions. My beans and my cos will never looks like this, full-leaved and slug-free.

"It's like what Janet Malcolm said about writing," my Beloved suggests. "People believe fiction more than they do nonfiction, because with nonfiction, they can always say to themselves, well, that's one side of the story."

Precisely. I look at those glossy photos and I know that lettuce will never be my lettuce. But with a sketch: well, maybe, if I dig in enough manure, and hand-pick the slugs . . .

Sometimes, I admit, I bypass the catalogues altogether and buy my seeds at Canadian Tire, at their end-of-season, four-for-the-price-of-three sale. I like touching the packets, feeling their lumpy cargo, carrying them in my arms to the checkout. No lists. No alphabet to pour through. No images of any sort to compare my efforts to. A complete surprise, like navigating without a GPS.

The first catalogues arrive in December. I got another today. My Beloved collects them from the mailbox, and I stack them by my chair beside the fire. When all the usuals are here, come home like family for a midwinter gathering, I lift my old Perron catalogue from the shelf, and settle on a Sunday to order seeds for the coming garden year. I can't order the White Swan peony or the Glorious Gleam nasturtiums, of course, but Perron always puts me in the mood.

This morning, cruising the internet, looking for new nurseries, more catalogues to request before beginning my annual seed selection, I discovered that W. H. Perron still exists, in a way. Wilfrid-Henri started his horticultural enterprise in 1928, and began printing a catalogue of his offerings in 1930. (My catalogue was his fifth.) In 1992, W. H. Perron bought out Dominion Seeds and two years later, Perron itself was bought out by White Rose Crafts and Nursery, which is to seeds what Indigo and Chapters are to books: gardeners have to push through all the decorative household items to get to the plants. That same year, Perron's company changed its name to Norseco—North Seeds Company—which is a plant and seed wholesaler. The venerable old name was preserved in its francophone consumer branch, Horticlub W. H. Perron; anglophones have to shop at the Dominion Seed House.

At the Dominion Seed House website, I see nothing at all about Wilfrid-Henri. Dominion was also started in 1928, a good year for seeds. The Harding family got the nursery going in Georgetown, Ontario, where its main office is still open from 8:00 am until 5:30 pm at this time of year. Norseco isn't mentioned. I scroll through the offerings. No Souvenir rose. No Snowball cauliflower. No Tall Telephone Improved Dark Podded Peas. No Dorsett Strawberry or Latham Raspberry, though it does advertise a raspberry called the Perron Red.

I click "Add to my Shopping Basket," the red-red berries on the back of the Perron catalogue gleaming in my mind's eye. The season has begun.