NATURE WORKS WITH THE AMATEUR. 13 



through the state, he receives an appeal like this: "Won't you come 

 and see my balsams, my neighbor told me they would not grow here." 



Find Out When Nature Will Work With You. Probably no single 

 cause of failure with plants in California is more prevalent than doing 

 things at the wrong time. In the varying conditions of heat and 

 of moisture in soil and air, which characterize our local climates, there 

 are right times and wrong times for all gardening operations. These 

 times do not coincide with 'best times for doing things in other 

 states or countries, nor are they synchronous in different parts of this 

 state. Probably every garden calender correctly made anywhere in 

 the north temperate zone will work out right at some point in Cali- 

 fornia at some degree of latitude, at some distance from the ocean or 

 at some elevation above it. This means that, so far as natural con- 

 ditions are concerned, we can do everything that can be done in the 

 temperate zone, the world around, but disappointment will follow the 

 attempt to widely use any one of these remotely-made calenders, 

 while to apply them one after the other, or to calculate the resultant 

 or mean of all of them, ends in appalling confusion. 



This is not wholly a fanciful conception: it may be counted almost 

 historical, because that is the way the pioneers from .all lands en- 

 deavored a generation ago, to determine what should be California's 

 horticultural practice. Although some of them failed in all ways 

 they knew, and all of them failed in some ways, there were a number 

 of methods and policies which demonstrated their suitabilities by 

 their results, which lor size, abundance or duration of foliage or 

 bloom yielded satisfaction beyond expectation and gave encourage- 

 ment so marked that failures were accepted only as suggestions to 

 work in other ways. Hence arose the supreme confidence in Cali- 

 fornia which was the ruling spirit among our pioneer horticulturists 

 and found expression in the common saying: "Well, California is 

 different.", which signified superior if you can master the way of it. 



And so during the first decade of her history as an American 

 state, practically every plant considered desirable in civilized countries 

 was brought for trial in California and every cultural method known 

 in such countries was practiced on our soil. Since then the same 

 natural action has ; been repeated continuously by later comers who 

 do not know that nearly all their bright ideas of desirable plants and 

 the culture of them were anticipated by the pioneers. But even this 

 is desirable; because, aside from the individual satisfaction of it, there 

 has been reached a better understanding of local conditions of soil 

 and climate and of culture requirements of plants to meet these con- 

 ditions, than could have been otherwise attained: better and broader, 

 probably, than any practicable scheme of heavily endowed systematic 

 experimentation could have secured. And the conclusion of the 

 whole matter is that there is no place in California where soil sits 



