George Watt Park

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George Watt Park sold his first seeds when he was just 15 years old. Image courtesy of the Park Seed Company archive.

George Watt Park (b. 1853 – d. 1935) founded the Geo. W. Park Seed Company, Inc., more commonly known as Park Seed Company. George was born in 1853 in Libonia, Pennsylvania, one of seven children. While just a young child, he demonstrated great interest in horticulture, and his mother encouraged him to raise flowers in a corner of her garden. He successfully grew a variety of plants and learned how to harvest his own seeds from mature specimens.

When George Watt Park was 15, he bought a hand press and printed a list of seeds that he had harvested and wanted to sell. In addition to circulating his list to friends and neighbors, he also bought an advertisement in The Rural American for $3.50. The ad resulted in $6.50 in seed orders. With this success, the young entrepreneur learned one of the cardinal rules of business—"it pays to advertise." And so began the company that is now the oldest, largest family-owned mailorder gardening company in America.

The cover of the June 1899 Park's Floral Magazine. Image provided courtesy of the Park Seed Company archive.

Park’s first catalog in 1868 contained just 8 pages and used 2 illustrations—wood cuts of an aster and a pansy. In 1871, the young seedsman started a monthly magazine, The Floral Gazette, in which he offered advice on gardening and created a forum where people could share gardening experiences. The magazine gave even the poorest gardener an opportunity to grow many different varieties through its exchange column, which encouraged readers to trade seeds, bulbs and plants. Circulation of the magazine grew to 20,000 in 1877, and to over 800,000 by 1918.

Although Park changed the name of the monthly magazine to Park's Floral Magazine in 1877, and raised the subscription price to the princely sum of 50 cents a year to cover increased postal rates, thousands of loyal readers still felt they were getting a bargain. In fact, one wrote that he feared a collection would have to be taken up for the publisher because "he gives the magazine away."

But far from going broke, Park actually managed to put money aside so that he could fulfill a life-long dream and get a college education. That quest began in 1882, when he left a thriving seed business to attend Michigan State University, and four years later graduated with a degree in horticulture.

Park returned to his business, which continued to grow at Libonia, Pennsylvania. By the turn of the century, Park Seed Company had outgrown the second-class post office at Libonia, and Park relocated in 1902 at La Park (now Paradise) in the southeastern part of the state and closer to the Pennsylvania Railroad.

George W. Park began to travel, searching for new and better varieties of seeds and plants. From the Deep South, he acquired unusual semi-tropical plants, and from the West, he brought back many forms of cacti, which he propagated and offered to this customers. A wide-ranging traveler, Park entertained his readers with accounts of his adventures across the U.S., Mexico, and Europe.

A 9-acre garden surrounds the current Park Seed Company national headquarters in Greenwood, SC. Photo provided courtesy of Park Seed Company.

During one of his trips, he stopped to visit Mary Barratt, a South Carolina county home demonstration agent in Greenwood, South Carolina, who had written him for advice on teaching horticulture to homemakers. They had become pen pals, and had exchanged lengthy missives for a couple of years. What began as friendship based on their common horticultural interest blossomed into love, and they were married in 1918.

The couple and their two sons, George Barratt Park and William John Park, eventually moved to Dunedin, Florida and printed a catalog there in 1923. The Parks liked living in Florida, but in the days before air conditioning, they found that seeds would not keep long in that state’s heat and humidity. Searching for a place with more favorable climate, the Parks selected Mary’s old hometown of Greenwood.

George W. Park died in 1935. Mary, his widow, continued the successful operation of the company through the Depression and World War II, while raising their two boys. Until the time of her death in 1945, Mary Barratt Park remained true to the philosophy that George Watt Park expressed when he said, “Your success and pleasure are more to Park than your money.” Subsequent generations of the Park family and the Park Seed Company still embrace that philosophy today.