RAILWAY GARDENING IN CALIFORNIA. 79 



tant blue mountains; or crowning the top of the hills in a grove about 

 an ancient temple ! We should plant them, also, on our California cam- 

 pagnas in groups in our railway gardens, looking proudly over our 

 plains to long distances, telling from afar where the garden lies, where 

 the water flows. 



A California railway garden should not have the northern trees and 

 shrubs in it; not try to imitate the charms of the northern gardens. 

 They would be a failure with us compared to those in their homeland. 

 Ours must own another charm, more passionate, more intense in form 

 and color; it must contain the superabundance, almost voluptuousness, 

 of the southlands. Do not try to mix the two together, either. It is 

 harrowing to sensitive nerves to see the northern pine or spruce next 

 neighbor to the palm on the same lawn, even in the same inclosure. Do 

 not let us cover the walls, the rockeries of a palm garden with the cold 

 English ivy. The corpse of the northern winter never leaves its rigid 

 limbs, its soulless leaves and flowers. A southland plant looks forlorn 

 in its nearness, and homesick. Let us use the climbers of graceful Japan 

 and other sunny lands like our own; let us not try to borrow character 

 from other climes for our gardens, because they would thus remind us 

 of former associations. They would always prove a disappointment, 

 anyway, for the charm of those climes would not follow the plants in 

 their far southward wandering. If we imitate, let us go to the gardens 

 of Italy for instruction, to the old gardens of the province, to the sacred 

 hills of Greece, to the dolce lands of the Mediterranean shores, to Japan, 

 and the islands of southern seas. Let us bring home the classic grace 

 of these gardens with as little as possible of their stiffness; a new gar- 

 den west of the. Sierras, a medley of the form-strong old with the lib- 

 erty of the natural of our time, to surround the great new culture spring- 

 ing up on our sun-kissed shores, as those ancient gardens once sur- 

 rounded the great culture which long ago was young on the Mediter- 

 ranean hills. Then we have created something new in America; then, 

 indeed, we have an invitation to extend to the frozen north and the 

 east to come and see our southland gardens. And when they return, 

 they will linger with them like a dream of the old and the new, of 

 sunlight and magnificent color, of life-saps that never rest. 



This, as far as the limited plots allow, should be the character of a 

 Calif ornian railway garden. When borne in swiftness by the iron horse 

 past them, something varied, complex, something intense, something 

 strikingly southlandish, should grasp the appreciation of the traveler, 

 not details of single propped-up overgrown flowers, nor single dainty 

 hybrids, but a striking totality of form and color which his eye and mind 

 can grasp in the minute the train stops at the depot ere it again 

 speeds on. 



