SHORE-LINE GARDENS OF THE PACIFIC 



MARK DANIELS 



Landscape Architect Formerly in Charge of U. S. National Parks 



The Marvelous Opportunities of the Pacific Coast for Creating All- 

 year Gardens at the Ocean's Edge by Harmonizing Plant and Place 



Editor's Note: — Those of us who pleasurably recall "Green Symbols" (The Garden Magazine for August, 1921) are happy to be 

 again in touch with Mr. Daniels; his wide and yet intimate knowledge of Western plant life, combined with rather rare imaginative 

 insight, renders whatever he has to say not only authoritative but vividly arresting as well. The lovely shore-line garden pictured here 

 is convincing testimony that Mr. Daniels knows how to practise what he preaches. 



}T IS a sad commentary on human intelligence that men 

 should be so slow to discover the unique characteristics 

 of a country and to profit by them. I n Arizona may be 

 seen pitiful attempts to reproduce a New England 

 Kitchen Garden, in Montana frozen spectres mutely testify to 

 futile efforts to duplicate the vistas of the Villa D'Este. Our 

 government installs huge electric elevators in the towering 

 cliffs of our National Parks to enable the over-fed tourist to 

 scale their heights with that ease which begets votes. Who knows 

 that these same officials are not now considering the advisability 

 of forcing the Fine Arts Commission to install a candy stand in 

 the Lincoln Memorial. How long, O Lord, how long! 



It is the new countries that suffer most from this lack of 

 propriety and the eternal fitness of things, and the reason for it 

 is quite apparent. The first settlers bring with them the 

 memories of their former habitations and, in their efforts to 

 make their new abode seem homelike, they set out to reproduce 

 the old home place. This explains the heterogeneous array 

 of architecture that may be found in most Western cities where 

 an old Colonial house may be found wedged in between a Japa- 

 nese tea-house and a Mexican adobe. 



Not until the second generation do architecture and land- 

 scape gardening begin to crystalize into something like a defi- 

 nite form, and frequently not then. This is largely true of the 

 whole Pacific slope and particularly true of California, with con- 

 ditions in that state further aggravated in certain localities by a 

 soil and climate that would seem to admit of almost any type 

 of garden one may care to attempt. With vast areas of almost 

 virgin alluvial soil and great thermal belts of frostless winters, it 

 is not surprising that every conceivable type of garden, regard- 

 less of its fitness, has been built. Further than this, the kindli- 

 ness of climate and soil have laid the curse of indifference on the 

 inhabitants. By the same token that the shoemakers' children 

 have no shoes, most Californians, when it comes to a garden, are 

 willing to let nature take its course. 



IN A land that admits of such a diversity in gardens, the prob- 

 lem of settling upon a characteristic style is difficult. No 

 doubt along the Pacific coast any one of several different types 

 might be established as more or less unique to the country, but 

 the one that must appeal to every thoughtful observer is the 

 all-year garden that runs to the ocean's edge. There are not 

 many stretches of our coast line that admit of residential and gar- 

 den development, and still fewer where one may live in comfort 

 the year round without suffering the privations incident to isola- 

 tion. On the Pacific coast there are a number of localities where 

 such gardens may be built. The cities of Seattle, San Francisco, 

 Los Angeles, and San Diego naturally have their shore-line gar- 

 dens, all too few in number. 



In Santa Barbara more work of this character has been done 

 than elsewhere, without, I regret to say, a great deal of sym- 

 pathetic appreciation of the possibilities of the cliffs that over- 

 hang the sea. There, with glorious opportunities for taking the 

 garden to the water's edge, comparatively little of this character 

 of designing has been done. Most of the pretentious places 

 have been built upon the hilltops well back from the sea. It is 

 true that a more expansive view is thus secured, but at the cost 



of that unique garden which, in California, thrives with its toes 

 in the sea. 



Further up the coast, not far from San Francisco, is a stretch 

 of coast line which, until recently, has called in vain to garden 

 builders. It is the forty or fifty miles of tawny beach and 

 flower-festooned cliffs embracing and lying on either side of the 

 Del Monte Peninsula. On the northern side of the peninsula 

 overlooking the Monterey Bay is the old Spanish town of 

 Monterey, first capital of the state. On the south, skirting the 

 Carmel Bay, is Pebble Beach, with its forests of Pines and aged 

 Cypress, bedewed with the salt sprays of the Pacific. If ever a 

 coast were created for shore-line gardens, this one was. Here and 

 there ancient Cypress trees, with gnarled and twisted roots 

 clutching the granite cliffs, have defied the tempests through 

 the centuries. Beneath their outstretched branches, Beach 

 Asters and Evening Primroses nod in the breeze, and wild Honey- 

 suckle hangs over the bluffs in festoons to purple pools below. 

 Thousands of people have gasped at the sheer, exotic beauty of 

 the place, and yet it has only been within the last few years 

 that any homes have been built. Now, however, many are 

 there and more are being either planned or constructed. 



THE problems which such a place presents to the landscape 

 architect are manifold and complex. In the first place, 

 nature has set a standard which defies competition and scorns 

 cooperation. The successions of wild flowers that follow each 

 other in kaleidoscopic array mock the efforts of him who, in 

 ignorance of their variety, would belittle their beauty by at- 

 tempting to outshine it. He may plant a bed of yellow Pansies 

 and come out some morning to find it totally eclipsed by hills 

 about him ablaze with golden Poppies; his well-planned aisles 

 of Cypress, in time, may be twisted by wind and weather into 

 pitiful imitations of their century-old forbears that still stand 

 along the coast line. 



Perhaps it is this added complication, this deceptive nature 

 of climate and soil that has deterred the development of a char- 

 acteristic type of garden in this beautiful spot. In any case, 

 only of late has success attended the gardener's efforts, despite 

 the fact that nearly every type of garden has been tried. 



But like any other problem, this one has its solution. In the 

 sixteenth century a chain of missions was begun that finally 

 stretched as far north as San Francisco. Most of them were on 

 or near the coast. With no subsistence except that which the 

 land afforded and with a love for beauty that brought forth 

 gardens in deserts, these priests and monks finally learned what 

 could and what could not be done in their gardens and orchards, 

 and it is to these that the landscape architect should turn for 

 the inspiration the ruins of these mission gardens still afford. 



With the similarity between the climates and natural land- 

 scapes of parts of the California coast and the coast of south- 

 ern Italy, it is not surprising that many attempts have been 

 made to reproduce the Italian villas in California. This tendency 

 has been further enhanced by the sort of semi-Italian, Spanish- 

 Colonial architecture of the missions, but only a few efforts have 

 been successful. 



Most of them have met the same fate as that lugubrious 

 product known to the trade as "mission furniture." No doubt 



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