Landscape Fruit Planting. 51 
But though these dwarf-tree gardens were formally declared 
“to be the fashion,” and though the list of stock of one Sacra- 
mento nurseryman, in 1858, included ninety-five standard and 
eight thousand and sixty-cight dwarf pear trees for sale, the 
foundations of the greater orchards were early laid upon the 
basis of standard trees. Thus the Briggs’ orchard, of one thou- 
sand acres, on the moist land of the Yuba, was planted with 
trees sixteen feet apart each way, and Mr. Lewelling, and other 
early planters on the rich lands of central Alameda County, 
adopted about the same distance. 
Quite in contrast, too, with the prevalence of dwari trees, 
and contemporaneous with it, was the grand plan upon which 
the pioneer of pioneers, General Sutter, laid out his orchard 
on Hock Farm, on the west bank of the Feather River, eight 
miles from its junction with the Yuba, of which the following 
description was written about the time the trees were coming 
into bearing :— 
Several acres were set apart for an ornamental fruit orchard, the trees 
and shrubs being so arranged as to present a unique landscape garden, 
nearly every article in which is productive of fruit. The arrangement of 
the fruit trees is peculiar, a large portion of them being set on either side of 
the broad avenues opening through the extensive grounds in various direc- 
tions, imparting to the whole an air of picturesque beauty seldom seen. 
But neither the narrow dwarf-tree garden plan nor the broad 
landscape-garden plan has survived. Neither of them harmo- 
nized with the commercial idea of orcharding—large produc- 
tion and economy of cultivation, and both are now but curiosi- 
ties of the early horticulture of California. 
Irrigation Abandoned.—The early abandonment of dwarf 
trees suggests also the early abandonment of irrigation in the 
valleys of Northern Caliiornia—as early as 1856. Facilities 
which had been secured for irrigation of orchards were allowed 
to go unused, because it was seen that it was better not to use 
them. One case is reported in Napa County where means to 
furnish the orchard with thirty thousand gallons of water per 
day were allowed to lie idle. The substitution of cultivation for 
water, of course, attended this reform. The announcement of a 
practise, in 1856, “to plow deep, dig wide and deep holes for 
planting, and work the ground from February to July, allowing 
no grass or weeds to grow among the trees,” shows that the 
thorough and clean culture, for which California is famous, is 
not a recent idea in our practise. Even the abandonment of the 
plow, and almost weekly use of the cultivator, was the practise 
of some growers in the San Jose district as early as thirty years 
ago. In fact, the descriptions of orchard management in that 
day include nearly the whole variety of methods which now pre- 
