Correspondence, speeches and writings, notes, sketches, nursery plans and notes, business records, scrapbooks, family papers and genealogies, and printed material concerning Burbank's career as a botanist and his family and personal life. The collection relates chiefly to Burbank's nursery in Santa Rosa, Calif., and to his pioneering work in the development, selection, and propagation of new plant species as well as to the publicity for and the business and financial aspects of that work. Includes transcript of an interview (1913) with Burbank conducted by Burt C. Bean and material relating to the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

Correspondents include L.H. Bailey, W. Atlee Burpee, Thomas A. Edison, David Fairchild, Harvey Samuel Firestone, Henry Ford, Herbert G. Gleason, José D. Husbands, David Starr Jordan, Helen Keller, Vernon L. Kellogg, Alfred C. Kinsey, J.G. Lemmon, Charmian London, Jack London, Joaquin Miller, William W. Morrow, John Muir, Spiegel Samu, George H. Schull, F. Harvey Vachell. Henry Elias Van Deman, Hugo de Vries, F. A. Waugh, Edward J. Wickson, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Woodrow Wilson, and Robert Simpson Woodward.