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Van Fleet was born on June 18, 1857, of Dutch ancestry at Piermont, Rockland County, New York. He was the son of Solomon Van Reusselean and Elvira (Du Bois) Van Fleet.
His childhood was spent on a small farm in the vicinity of Watsontown, Pennsylvania, where his father was principal of Watsontown Academy.
Van Fleet entered Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, from which he was graduated with the degree of M. D. in 1880, later taking post-graduate work in Jefferson Medical College (1886 - 87).
Van Fleet developed in boyhood a keen interest in the growing of plants and at twelve began work in hybridization. Becoming interested in birds, he published a number of articles on birds in technical and popular periodicals (1876 - 88), as well as a popular bird book for children. In 1878, under contract as wood chopper with the Collins Railroad Construction Company, he visited the upper tributaries of the Amazon, where an attack of tropical fever nearly cost him his life.
From 1880 to 1891 he was actively engaged in the practice of medicine at Watsontown, Duboistown, and Renovo, Pennsylvania, though he made a bird-collecting trip of five months to Nicaragua and the Isthmus of Panama. While practicing medicine, he began the systematic breeding of the gladiolus and the canna, and in 1891, definitely took up plant-breeding as a vocation. In 1894, he settled at Little Silver, New Jersey, where for a short time he was managing editor of Orchard and Garden.
Aside from two years (1897 - 99), during which he acted as colony physician in the Ruskin Colony at Dickson, Tennessee, he devoted the rest of his life to the production of improved varieties of plants. For a number of years, he was associate editor of the Rural New Yorker. In 1909, he became an expert plant-breeder in the federal bureau of plant industry at Chico, California, and Washington, D. C. His work in the Department of Agriculture covered a wide range and included extensive experimentation on the production of chestnuts resistant to the Asiatic bark blight. Noteworthy new varieties of plants as diverse as azalea, canna, freesia, geranium, gladiolus, Lonicera, rose, pepper, sweet corn, tomato, chestnut, gooseberry, pear, and strawberry resulted from his work; of these some fifty have been named and commercially disseminated.
Van Fleet died on January 26, 1922, in Miami, Florida.
Van Fleet's outstanding achievements were with the rose. He early recognized the need in America for roses of vigorous growth, disease-resistant foliage, and large flowers, sufficiently hardy for garden culture through a wide climatic range. He was keenly perceptive of plant characters, indefatigably industrious, and exactingly critical of his productions. A large number of his roses have succeeded under varying climatic conditions; this is notably true of the climbing and pillar varieties, American Pillar, Dr. W. Van Fleet, Philadelphia, Silver Moon, Alida Lovett, Bess Lovett, Mary Lovett, Mary Wallace, Heart of Gold, Breeze Hill, and Glenn Dale. The American Pillar and Dr. W. Van Fleet were recognized as among the most generally successful and widely planted climbers in America. Their general good behavior has been an important factor in the recent widespread development of popular interest in rose growing. In 1918, he was awarded the George Robert White medal for eminent services in horticulture by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society; in 1921, he received gold medals from the American Rose Society and the city of Portland, Oregon, and a silver medal from the Portland Rose Society, all in recognition of the merit of the Mary Wallace rose.
Modest and retiring to the point of diffidence, Van Fleet was a most kindly and considerate worker with his associates. At the same time, he was outspokenly and incisively critical of the overpraise and misrepresentation of plant novelties indulged in at times by commercial plantsmen. In his editorial work this sometimes led to intense controversy and even to litigation.
On August 7, 1883, Van Fleet married Sarah C. Heilman of Watsontown, Pennsylvania, who survived him.
13 September 1824 - 24 April 1900
28 November 1829 - 1 September 1899
26 August 1859 - 23 November 1939
24 December 1868 - 6 January 1947
18 February 1863 - 3 September 1943
6 May 1861 - 23 October 1943
