Preface to Third Edition. 



The author returns thanks for the accelerative appreciation which the 

 public extends to this work. The second edition melted in the fire of 

 popular favor in one-fourth of the time required for the reduction of the 

 first edition. Frank acknowledgment is made of the fact that this increased 

 demand is due to the rapidly advancing recognition of California as the 

 best place in the world to live and to work with plants, and the author is 

 happy to minister to the realization of this conception in the lives of 

 thousands. 



The purpose of the work is to give the newcomer, or old-resident 

 beginner, an understanding of the peculiar conditions which he encounters 

 in California and descriptions of gardening practices which attain most sat- 

 isfactory results under those conditions. Experienced gardeners from other 

 states and countries soon find that their accustomed procedure fails of its 

 wonted results; that the old times and ways of doing things are unsuitable, 

 and that new rules of practice must be learned. Often those who have had 

 no earlier gardening experience seek a rural home in California and burn 

 with a desire to possess the delights of a home garden. They soon find 

 that following the advice to beginners given in books written for other 

 climates, yields little but disappointment. 



Conditions of soil and climate in California are varied .to the last degree, 

 and practice must vary with them. No matter how skilful and successful 

 a man may be in his particular locality, his experience can only be a safe 

 guide to those who happen to work under similar conditions. For this 

 reason, though there have been admirable local writers on garden practice 

 from the beginning, their writings, no matter how diligently collected and 

 how well printed, would not constitute a suggestive treatise unless the 

 inquirer should analyze the local conditions and practice and translate them 

 into terms of wide applicability. To do this it is necessary that the princi- 

 ples underlying the successful practice should be discerned and the signifi- 

 cance of conditions be interpreted. This task could only be discharged by 

 one who has had opportunity for wide collection of data, and for extended 

 personal observation as well, and one for whom labor would be continually 

 lightened by enthusiastic delight in the subject itself. All these advantages 

 the writer can frankly claim, but how well they have been employed in this 

 work it is for the reader to judge. 



In the preparation of this edition, the text has been carefully revised and 

 freshened with the latest information, and the type has been re-set through- 

 out. In a work of this kind, involving the experience and observation of 



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