I 



Canary Islands. I use it simply as an illustration of the capability of Cali- 

 fornia gardens. 

 H California gardens are yet in their infancy, as is the State. One some- 

 ^times wonders how they will look in the future, when trees that now are 

 young have reached their full development, when palms that yet are mere 

 children will have lifted their crowned heads looking far over the valleys 

 and hills. New plants and shrubs from other lands are being introduced. 

 The magnitude of plant material suited to California gardens is simply 

 tremendous. And the way things grow out here! In the cold countries 

 it takes one and two generations before a tree is worthy of that name. 

 Here within a decade the eucalypti grow to veritable sky-scrapers. Three 

 years ago I planted in the San Joaquin Valley a grove of eucalypti of a 

 number of varieties. The trees came out of four-inch pots, and their stems 

 were not as thick as a lead pencil. To-day these little seedlings, after 

 three years' growth are more than twenty feet tall, with a trunk circum- 

 ference of over twenty-five inches. And so with other trees and plants. 

 The growing season is almost continuous, and effects in garden-making 

 are reached within the limits of a year or two. 



To give a concise description of California gardens is almost impos- 

 sible. They are so full of variations, so endless in form. Imagine, then, 

 the most handsome shrubs, trees, and plants of the North, the semi-tropics, 

 and to some extent the tropics, brought within the compass of one park, 

 as is the case with Golden Gate Park of San Francisco. Imagine little 

 home-gardens in towns and on farms filled with shady broad-branched 

 trees laden with glorious fragrant flowers, fences overgrown with gerani- 

 ums and delicate climbing tea-roses, stately palms on evergreen lawns, 

 dark and silvery needlewood trees from the Himalayas and the Andes, from 

 the Sierras and the Rockies, from Norway, and from New Zealand and 

 Japan; glowing beds of cannas from the banks of the Ganges, and pale 

 straw-colored lilies from our own great woodlands; little shy violets shaded 

 by palm-leaves, bamboos, and feathery acacias; dark-leaved orange trees 

 laden with golden fruit at the time of the year when the snow is deep on 

 the Eastern prairies; tall swaying eucalypti with silvery trunks and dark 

 bronze-green foliage, others with trunks glowing red in the sun, upholding 

 dark masses of slender pending limbs and leaves; oleanders drinking sun- 

 shine, — masses of brilliant flowers the whole long summer; broad-spreading 

 fig-trees dropping sweet-burdened ripe fruit; gardens full of glowing color, 

 of spicy fragrance under a glorious southern sky, where winter storms come 

 not, where winter is spring, where summer is summer indeed. And about 

 these cultivated gardens — cosmopolitan, ridiculously hospitable sometimes 

 — are the tremendous gardens of the wild many-colored carpets stretching 

 from the blue waves dashing over the wild west coast to the dark needle- 

 woods and the purple snow-splashed peaks of the Sierra Nevada — "The 

 Mountains of Light," as John Muir has named them. Then along the coast, 

 within hearing of the restless thunder of the Pacific, are the gardens of 

 the redwoods, — ferny, cool, moist, where the rhododendron grows and the 

 wild lilies, where the yerba buena covers the forest ground, making every 

 step a source of fragrance. And above it all the limitless, magnificent gar- 

 den of our starry heaven, cloudless the whole long summer through, 

 dripping with starlight on soft summer nights after warm days, when we 

 are at rest under the tropical foliage of our California gardens. 



