Avid flower man James Vick ingrained a nationwide conviction that no home was complete without flowers and transformed the ordinary, nineteenth-century American mail-order seed business with an unprecedented marketing strategy.

A nineteenth-century entrepreneur’s bold, innovative marketing helped transform flower gardens into one of America’s favorite hobbies.
“There is much that is hard and productive of sorrow in this sin-plagued world of ours; and, had we no flowers, I believe existence would be hard to be borne.” So states a customer’s 1881 letter—one of thousands James Vick regularly received. Vick’s business, selling flower seeds through the mail, wasn’t unique, but it was wildly successful because he understood better than his rivals how to engage customers’ emotions. He sold the love of flowers along with the flower seeds.
Vick was genuinely passionate about floriculture, but he also pioneered what we now describe as integrated marketing. He spent a mind-boggling $100,000 per year on advertising (mostly to women, his target demographic); he courted newspaper editors for free publicity; his educational guides presaged today’s content marketing; he recruited social influencers to popularize neighborhood gardening clubs; and he developed a visually rich communication and branding strategy to build customer loyalty and inflect their purchasing needs with purchasing desire.

"“Discover the history of one of the largest Victorian-era mailorder seed catalogs in the United States as well as bygone trends in gardening in this well-researched book by Thomas J. Mickey. Mickey takes an insightful look at how (James) Vick transformed the seed business and beautified thousands of American gardens. Readers will also learn about 19th-century landscape design elements and plants that are still used in today’s gardens.”" - The American Gardener

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“A well-researched…. fascinating account of a long-forgotten, energetic man who single handedly changed the face of
American horticulture.”

"“Showcasing a nineteenth-century entrepreneur’s bold, innovative marketing that helped transform flower gardens into one of America’s favorite hobbies, All about Flowers … is a beautifully illustrated and impressively informative history that will have special appeal to the legions of dedicated flower gardeners and students of nineteenth-century American capitalism.”" - Midwest Book Review

"“Illuminating reading for those interested in the history of horticulture and landscape design, or nineteenth-century American culture.”" - Library Journal