At the time of the foundation of the National Horticultural Society which this collection concerns, Hamilton Paul Traub (1890–1983) did not yet have a professional career in botany. Although he had an interest in horticulture, he would not pursue a degree in the field until 1924, when he got a Masters with a thesis on "The History of American Horticulture, 1800 to 1850", followed by a PhD in Plant Physiology in 1927. Following this, he would go on to work at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station from 1928 to 1930, then get hired by the USDA Plant Bureau in 1933, where he would work until retirement in 1952 after which he would pursue further horticultural research.

The National Horticultural Society was a project first proposed by Traub in 1921, as he saw that America had many disparate societies focused on specific plants but no unifying society to support the field as a whole. He intitally published his plan for such an organization in the February 1922 edition of The Flower Grower, under the name "The International Garden-Lore Federation." Through correspondence with the publisher of the magazine, Madison Cooper, the idea was further developed until he incorporated it as the National Horticultural Society in July of 1922. Around the same time the American Horticultural Society was forming, and in 1926 the two would merge after a few years of conflict, keeping the name of the latter.