History

Founded in 1900 with J. P. Morgan, Louis C. Tiffany, and J.J. Phelps among its earliest members, the goal of the Society was to further the love and knowledge of horticulture through informative monthly meetings, formal lectures and seasonal flower shows. Noted landscape architects Marian Coffin, Ruth Dean, Beatrix Farrand, Grace Tabor and Ellen B. Shipman joined the society, and by 1939 membership totaled 3,465.

ABOVE: Botanist and horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey, plant hunter Ernest Wilson, and photographer Edward Steichen presented compelling lectures at various sites in the city as the Society had no hall of its own in its early years.

BELOW: The International Flower Show, co-sponsored with the New York Florist’s Club, was the grandest of the shows produced by The Horticultural Society. It was held at Grand Central Palace from 1913 to 1953 and later at The New York Coliseum through 1970.

ABOVE: From a royal collection in Florence has come the motif of the Book Plate that identifies the volumes of the Horticultural Society of New York, a motif that owes its being to an old leather bound volume that once graced the court of Lorenzo, and now is in the Medici Library of the Uffizi Palace in Florence—a heritage of the Renaissance. -from the November, 1927 HSNY Yearbook

Coming soon to this page: an extensive illustrated history of The Horticultural Society of New York, from its beginnings to the present day.