BURBANK'S GARDENS 



BY VERNON L. KELLOGG 



Professor of Entomology, Stanford University 



THE most interesting specimen in Burbank's 

 gardens is Luther Burbank himself. He is a 

 specimen — to look at him impersonally, ana- 

 lytically, scientifically — of that inexplicable but for- 

 tunately real and though rare, at least occasional, 

 human type called genius. For Burbank truly has that 

 vision, and that impulse to work out his vision into 

 concrete terms, that characterizes genius. He is pos- 

 sessed of the creative spirit. "Burbank's New Crea- 

 tions in Flowers and Fruits," as the title-page of his 

 old-time fascinating, thin annual catalogue runs, 

 are the poems, paintings and songs of a naturalist- 

 genius. 



But one does not usually look at Burbank im- 

 personally; he is not a specimen to those who know 

 him, but a most lovable, sensitive, sweet-voiced, shy, 

 twinkling-eyed human soul and body, whose sim- 

 plicity both reveals and conceals the dreaming and 

 capacity of the man. 



Sixty-six years old on March seventh of this Ex- 

 position year (1915) he is still (and may he be 

 long!) an active worKer in his gardens, keen-eyed, 

 deft-handed, and clear-witted as ever. Just forty 

 years he has worked in these same California 

 gardens. Before that he had a few years in a 

 Massachusetts garden. So for nearly half a century 

 he has been a gardener and, in all that time, a cre- 

 ative one. For he had developed the Burbank 

 potato from a few seeds found in a seed boll of the 

 Early Rose before he came to California. This was 

 in 1873, only twenty-four years after his birth in 

 Lancaster, "Worcester County, Massachusetts. He 

 came to California in 1875, settling at Santa Rosa, 

 Sonoma County. Here he has since resided and 

 carried on his work. To his Santa Rosa garden 

 he added, in later years, another one at Sebastopol, 

 a few miles west. In these two he has done all his 

 wonder work. It is a work familiar, in general 

 terms, at least, to all the world. He is certainly the 

 best known plant-breeder living. 



The gardens themselves are not show gardens. 

 Indeed they are, as they ought to be, and even must 

 be, if the master gardener is to continue to do work 

 in them, difficult places to see at all. Would-be 

 visitors should inform themselves of the strict rules 



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