Totty the Englishman
Among them was Charles Totty, an Englishman who in 1896 moved to Madison to work on the Twombly estate (now home to Fairleigh Dickinson University). Totty, then 23, eventually opened his own greenhouses, operated a retail store in New York City and sold throughout the region through a mail-order catalog, according to his New York Times obituary. To promote it all, he organized the first of the city’s long-dormant International Flower Shows in 1913.
Totty grafted his own specialty Australian chrysanthemums and tea rose hybrids and sold them to Rose City s growers. Among them was Joseph Ruzicka, Coultas’ grandfather. Ruzicka ran a 65,000-plant greenhouse through Madison s most productive years.