Helen HendryThe following article was written by Helen Johnson Hendry, who started working for Jim Hendry (James E. Hendry Jr.) at Everglades Nursery when she was 12 years old. Her father, uncle and older brothers also worked at the nursery. Helen continued on to become an integral part of the nursery operation. She married Jim Hendry's son, (Jim Hendry III). Jim Hendry (James E Hendry, Jr.) was Arthur Kelley's uncle.
History of Bougainvillea
By: Helen Johnson Hendry
(Notes from 1920's to 2007)
In 1875 the first bougainvillea to flower in Fort Myers, and possibly in Florida, was brought from Cuba by a ship's captain and given to Jim Hendry's grandmother, Julia Frierson. This plant was planted at the Frierson home on First Street across from what is now the Federal Building, which until recent years was the outdoor post office and was the site of the J.E. Hendry homestead.
This variety was GLABRA SANDERIANA. This plant flourished and survived until about 1988 when the building was razed. Mrs. Frierson was reputed to be the first florist in Fort Myers and southwest Florida.
1955 at Everglades Nursery
Left: Dick Pope-Cypress Gardens
Center: Helen (Johnson) Hendry
Right: James E. Hendry Jr. In 1916 the red vine variety Crimson Lake was introduced to Florida by Reasoner's of Oneco. By 1919 Jim Hendry had propagated 300 plants of this red bougainvillea. He gave 200 of these plants to the citizens of Fort Myers. He had made a promise to give the plants away so he kept his promise. In 1920 two variegated foliaged bougainvillea had been produced and introduced in the Miami Area. These plants were widely grown. They were mutations from the CRIMISON LAKE variety. This CRIMSON LAKE variety was later used by Jim Hendry in the cross-pollination of bougainvillea varieties to produced new and more prolific flowering varieties.
In 1922 Jim Hendry, at the suggestion of Mr. Edison, gave away another 100 plants to the citizens of Fort Myers.
In 1923 Jim Hendry of Everglades Nursery was producing and selling nine varieties of bougainvillea. A.W. Kelley, Sr., and Jim Hendry, Sr., were partners in the nursery that Jim Hendry had started in back yard at 1920 Fowler Street in the City of Fort Myers. I have the 1923 catalog, which was in color, which listed ten bougainvillea varieties for sale then.
The origin of most of the bougainvillea in the Deep South, Texas, and California, can be traced to Jim Hendry's experiments with cross-pollination. He developed at least fifteen commercial varieties by 1940 and introduced others. One main variety Hendry introduced was FASCELL'S LAVENDER, which I renamed EASTER PARADE with Mike Fascell's permission. Many varieties were grafted on GLABRA SANDERIANA at that time.
In 1927 Jim Hendry had discovered how to cross-pollinate bougainvillea. By that time he had growing in his back yard on Fowler Street CRIMSON LAKE, BRICK RED LATERITIA (Reasoner's introduced this variety), and ROSA CATALINA.
He used these varieties for his cross-pollination experiments. In some of his records Hendry also mentioned a variety y he called LINDLYANA, which was similar in color to the ROSA CATALINA. This pollination program led to the development of varieties that bloom all along the stems, not just on the tips as the CRIMSON LAKE variety did and, also, plants that grow in shrub form and dwarf varieties, one which was the HELEN JOHNSON. When Hendry named this bougainvillea "HELEN JOHNSON", he told me he did this because I had “no thorns”. This was in the mid t late 1940's.
When doing cross-pollination, Hendry used a surgical knife making an incision in the slender sheath that contained the reproductive organs, and he placed pollen from other varieties by using a tiny brush to place the pollen on the pistil of the plant he had used the knife on. When the wound healed and seeds developed, he planted the seeds and a new variety was the result.
When he first got results that he thought worthy of being a new variety, he gave these seedlings a number. Later, if this cross proved successful. He named it in honor of a family member or friend. He did name one of the seedlings CYPRESS GARDENS. This variety was sold for a time in early 1950's. The color of this seedling was very bright, but as the plant developed and was produced for sale, the cold wind caused the bracts to tip burn, so the plant did not become a consistent and popular plant. Mr. Dick Pope did plant many of the CYPRESS GARDENS variety at the gardens, but I do not know if any are still growing there.
The variety HUGH EVANS is still grown. It makes a very vigorous plant and a large plant. I saw this plant for sale in a garden center in Fort Myers and also at the Home Depot very recently.
Two other varieties produced by Hendry were SUSAN HENDRY, named for Hendry's first granddaughter, and SCARLETTO O'HARA. I think SCARLETT O'HARA was the only seedling produced by Hendry that was not named for a family or friend. The two above varieties have very large bracts and were very large vines. These were widely grown in Boca Grande in the 1950's and later. I am sure that there are still plants on Boca Grande.
Jim Hendry's first seedling of merit was BARBARA KARST and is still considered one of the finest and best selling bougainvillea today. The HELEN JOHNSON DWARF is also considered one of the best selling bougainvillea.
In the early 1940's, probably in 1942, an airline pilot brought a white bougainvillea (a vine type) to Mr. Hendry. This plant was later named ELIZABETH DOXSEY. Everglades Nursery paid a royalty to Captain Doxsey's widow for plants produced and sold from this variety in the 1940's and early 1950's. This plant was insured for $10,000.00 by Fort Myers Insurance Agency, Inc.
In the early to mid 1950's Everglades Nursery sold and sent truck loads of potted bougainvillea to Orlando, Tampa, and Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven. Everglades Nursery had ten acres of potted bougainvillea and stock plants at that time. In the early 1940's Hendry gave the MARGARET BACON bougainvillea plant to Dick Pope at Cypress Gardens. This was one of Hendry's early seedlings. This MARGARET BACON bougainvillea through the years of the 1950's and 1960's was widely advertised as the most photographed plant in the world. It was planted on a large jacaranda tree. It flourished and in 1951 Dick Pope valued the plant at a half million dollars. In the 1950's a large part of the bougainvillea that was sold in Florida was grown by Everglades Nursery.
In 1952 at the request of the Fort Myers Men's Garden Club, the bougainvillea was made the official flower of the City of Fort Myers by the city council.
In the early 1950's Everglades Nursery shipped thousands of plants not only to Texas but to South America, especially Venezuela. These plants were mostly small potted liners.
In the 1950's and 1960's, the early part of the 1960's, actually, there were three other growers of bougainvillea. These were Trail Nursery, A. W. Kelley's Gardens, and Arnold Eley, a grower in south Fort Myers on Gladiolus Drive.
After 1965 bougainvillea growing in the Fort Myers area slowed down and it was the 1970's before it started to go again. In the 1980's Jerry Schuetz and his father and Mother (Jerry and Marge) had the Briarcliff Nursery and were responsible for the surge again in the interest and growth of bougainvillea. Jerry really reintroduced the HELEN JOHNSON dwarf and was responsible for the rebirth of bougainvillea in Florida at that time, I believe.
In 1999, on a garden tour in Southern California, I found wide use of bougainvillea. The variety HELEN JOHNSON was being planted in roadway beautification in miles and miles of the roadways in the San Diego area. I hope to return to see how this developed.
Bougainvillea is sold as an annual plant in areas of the south and west in our country, especially along the gulf coast in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. In some areas of Arizona it is popular and also in New Mexico, especially Santa Fe.
Jim Hendry is credited with introducing fifteen commercial varieties as a result of his cross-pollination that he discovered early in his work with bougainvillea.
Jim Hendry, on his way to a trip in Mexico in the late 1940's, probably 1949, stopped in Los Angeles to call on Mr. Hugh Evans of the famous Evans and Reeves Nursery of Los Angeles. Mr. Evans was very excited about a new bougainvillea he had acquired. When Mr. Evans showed Hendry the "new" bougainvillea, Hendry recognized it as his BARBARA KARST, a seedling that he had named for his daughter, Barbara. Hendry explained this to Mr. Evans and during their discussion it proved to be a plant Mr. Evans had purchased from a florist in Illinois who had obtained it from Everglades Nursery in Fort Myers; and, thus, it had found its way to California to Evans and Reeves Nursery.
Mr. Evans' son, Bill, was the landscape architect for Disney World in Florida. I visited the site of Disney World and saw Mr. Bill Evans several times while the park was under construction. It was a great pleasure to watch this park from the beginning with all the improvements over the Disney Land in California. One major change in the two parks was that all services in the park were underground. In the California Park all services were above ground.
In 1955, Jim Hendry was awarded the "Johnny Appleseed" Award by The Men's Garden Club of America. He was the second Floridian to receive this award and the first grower and nurseryman to receive it. This was a result of his work with bougainvillea, hibiscus, and gardenias. This was March 4, 1955. On November 6, 1955, he was killed early Sunday morning, hit by a police car that was on an emergency call that as it turned out, was no emergency. |
