EDITORIAL 



WT seems almost a redundancy of words to talk of flower-gardens in 

 ^m California, which Is itself hardly less than an expansive and perennial 

 ^1 garden. The population that has gathered here from every quarter 



of the globe does not fail to appreciate the floral possibilities of climate 

 and soil, and throughout the State there is to be seen an indulgence in 

 gardening more universal than elsewhere in America, or perhaps in the 

 world. There is no little cot or bungalow too humble to have its rose- 

 shadowed porch, and its riotous flower-jungles that grow up as Topsy 

 grew. And the pretentious suburban estates pay not the less, but more, 

 attention to this easy road to outdoor beauty. In California the landscape 

 gardener finds his promised land. The hospitable climate excludes scarce 

 a plant of any of the earth's zones, and so what happens in the human 

 world has also transpired in the realm of plants. California is notably 

 cosmopolitan in both. 



Without need of borrowing from other lands, however, California ex- 

 hibits within her own confines a range of vegetable life well-nigh as 

 various as that of the world as a whole. In the warm sun-bathed valleys 

 rise many varieties of palms and other tropic and subtropic growths, and 

 over their fronds the snow-fields and glaciers of alpine California lie against 

 the sky. The hardy climber who scales those heights finds nestled under 

 dripping snow-crusts many forms of flora allied closely to those of the 

 polar zones. While midway between these two extremes occur in lusty 

 growth all of the grains, berries, orchard fruits, and other forms of inter- 

 mediate climes. 



In the basins of delicious cool, clear sea-water that remain at ebb-tide 

 along the coast thrive the anemones and a thousand other marine forms 

 that bespeak the cosmopolitanism of the California seas. And in the 

 arid districts of the State there live those forms which are first cousin 

 to the flora of the earth's great deserts. 



One characteristic of California as a gardenplace is the ideal situation 

 afforded for the seed-farms. Not all the agricultural districts of the country, 

 as Mr. Brooks points out, may aspire to this use. The rigors of the Eastern 

 winters, and the various uncertainties of storms and seasons, all make 

 against the craft of the seed-farmer, and all are conspicuously absent in 

 the California realm. 



Another noteworthy thing is the variety and landscape value of the 

 State's native shrubbery, the various forms needing but a transplanting 

 to make a most charming type of garden ready grown. No choicer units 

 for copse effects can be conceived than the various madrono and man- 

 zanita growths that clothe the foothill slopes. 



The California communities are too young in their traditions as yet 

 to have seriously considered the question of formal gardens which has for 

 centuries engrossed the genius of the European gardeners. Here and 

 there throughout the State, however, are already to be found effects of 

 this sort, the sunken gardens of Pasadena, described by Mr. Coolidge, 

 being noteworthy. As the generations come and pass there will be an 

 increased attention given to this beautiful and mature art, for the natural 

 landscape as well as climatic conditions provide our gardeners with every 

 incentive to emulate and surpass the creations of their Italian exemplars 



in this direction. 



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