WHEN AN EASTERNER 

 GARDENS IN THE GOLDEN WEST 



HELEN S. THORNE 



Editor's Note: — But seldom do we hear from a gardener so qualified by actual personal experience to present the differences and the 

 similarities of garden-making East and West; a very special interest is, in consequence, attached to this article by Mrs. Oakleigh Thorne, 

 an Easterner who has been discovering for herself new beauties and the myriad possibilities of gardening on the Pacific Coast. In 

 Mrs. Thome's garden at Millbrook, N. Y., Iris is featured in conjunction with water effects, but the dominant note is as of a cloistered 

 allee made in trees. It is largely through Mrs. Thome's active leadership that the Millbrook Garden Club has continuously maintained 

 its position of prominence. 



• HERE is a very big difference between an Eastern garden 

 in California and an Eastern gardener's garden in 



* California, as I soon realized. However, the first is 

 quite possible and with not as many omissions in plant 



life as one would think; depending largely on what one wishes, 

 or can afford to spend. 



I find that the average person making a garden in California 

 splits the difference, so to speak — the backbone of the garden 

 being planted in more or less drought-resisting shrubs; the grass 

 reduced to a negligible and ornamental quantity; and the evanes- 

 cent, decorative planting consisting of practically the same 

 material which supplies summer color in our Eastern gardens. 



Amateur gardeners usually speak from the point of view of the 

 successes and failures of their own gardens — so, being both 

 amateur and gardener, 1 am sure to follow the usual course; 

 though 1 wish to state at once that I cannot see why one need 

 fail with anything at Santa Barbara. It seems to me that every- 

 thing known to horticulture has been tried there, and so many 

 things remain to please the eye that 1 feel sure elimination takes 

 place only through sheer lack of memory of name, or the acci- 



dental loss of material. So often I hear it said, "this won't 

 grow here or that won't grow here" — only to find both growing 

 in a wonderful state of perfection most likely in a neighbor's 

 garden on the other side of the hedge. 



Failures in California are generally due to the same 

 causes which produce failures in Eastern gardens — lack of 

 intelligence or care. Climate, soil, and cultivation must always 

 rule, and these conditions can be much more perfectly controlled 

 in California than in the East. Exact soil conditions in fine 

 gardens East or West must always be more or less artificially 

 made; the climate in California leaves little to wish for and 

 cultivation is an exact science due to the necessity of irrigation 

 during practically eight months of the year. 



THE longing for a California garden entered my heart, I think, 

 while I was crossing the great plains and desert for the first 

 time — a psychic reaction perhaps — when that first descent into 

 the luxury and beauty of the San Bernardino Valley fired my 

 imagination with visions of gardens fit to place in Paradise. 

 It was several years before our own garden began to take 



NECESSITY AGAIN PROVES A BLESSING IN DISGUISE 

 Ingenuity, meeting the fundamental need of irrigation, issues triumphant from the 

 conflict; this solution has unique character and charm combined with economy of 

 supply. (See accompanying text.) Mrs. Thome's garden at Santa Barbara, Cal. 



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