In 2013 the RHS Chelsea Flower Show will be celebrating its centenary and it promises to be a very special show indeed…

Thompson & Morgan's 1912 Seed Catalogue

Thompson & Morgan’s 1912 Seed Catalogue

Peter Seabrook, writer, broadcaster and the Sun newspaper’s gardening editor is going to create 4 gardens at Chelsea next year. Each garden will celebrate a different era of the centenary and show the evolution and developments made in gardening over the last 100 years. Peter contacted Thompson & Morgan to request copies of its seed catalogues from 1913, 1938 and 1963 so that he could choose seed varieties that had been available at each quarter century milestone. It was at this point that Miles Turner, Thompson & Morgan’s Reader Offer Manager was dispatched to the company archives to find the appropriately dated catalogues. He successfully found 1938 and 1963, but shockingly, the archive copies for 1913 and 1914 were missing.

Thompson & Morgan has therefore launched a search for the lost catalogues and is offering a reward of £1000 of Thompson & Morgan vouchers for anyone who can fill the gap in their horticultural annals. The company is asking its staff and customers to search attics and garden sheds; to ask green-fingered older relatives and friends if they remember their parents or grandparents ordering seeds from Thompson & Morgan. Anyone finding a copy of one of the elusive catalogues should contact the Thompson & Morgan Press Office after reading the terms and conditions below.

Thompson & Morgan's Catalogue of Choice Seeds 1915

Thompson & Morgan’s Catalogue of Choice Seeds 1915

Message from Peter Seabrook

“The four Sun/ Miracle Growers displays at the Centenary Chelsea Flower Show 2013 will take appropriate eras as the theme. We are looking for catalogues, seed packets, gardening magazines and other items from 1913, the Second World War, the 1970s and current day. It will be a great help if Thompson & Morgan customers can get up in their attics and dig out things they don’t want from those first two eras. Old photos of school children from 1913 and 1940-45 would also be helpful to remind us what youngsters were wearing in those days”. Peter Seabrook, Gardening Editor, The Sun.

Terms & Conditions

Thompson & Morgan will give £1000 of Thompson & Morgan vouchers to the first person who finds an intact copy of their seed catalogue from either 1913 or 1914 and who is happy give this catalogue to Thompson & Morgan’s catalogue archive. The vouchers cannot be exchanged for cash.

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