The Biltmore Nursery: A Botanical Legacy

At its peak, the Biltmore Nursery ranked among the largest and most prolific nurseries in the world. It was part of an unprecedented horticultural, botanical and forestry enterprise on George W. Vanderbilt’s magnificent Biltmore Estate, envisioned and designed by brilliant landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. The nursery was created to provide the millions of plants needed to adorn Biltmore Estate’s renowned gardens and grounds, and it quickly grew into a monumental commercial venture that supplied plants to customers around the globe.

This landmark book tells the story of the Biltmore Nursery in two fascinating ways: a revealing overview history and a complete reproduction of the 1912 Biltmore Nursery Catalog. The history tells the story of the nursery from its establishment in 1889 to its destruction in a catastrophic flood in 1916, and the profusely illustrated catalog offers a guide to the cultivated trees, shrubs and plants of North America during the early twentieth century, with more than 1,700 distinct varieties described.

Presented here as never before, Biltmore Estate’s rich botanical legacy will resonate with Biltmore lovers, horticulturists and gardeners, botanists and dendrologists, landscape architects, students, and historians.