A Botanic Garden for Southern California 



C. F. BAKER, POMONA COLLEGE, CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA 



Southern California has very justly been called the Garden Spot of Earth! No 

 other similar region is so rich horticulturally, and none other possesses more strik- 

 ing undeveloped possibilities. With such a debt to Horticulture one would expect 

 to find here marked evidences of more than ordinary interest in plants, in botany, 

 and work pointing to wider development and better knowledge of all of the possi- 

 bilities involved. Comparing the extent and character of our horticultural interests 

 with those of other countries, even some of those far beneath us in civilization, we 

 find here a remarkable paucity of live interest and real activity along these lines. 

 Southern California has taken only a first step as yet in the building of great pub- 

 lic parks, and many of our good sized towns have none at all. 



In numerous other regions scarcely larger, or even smaller, than this, and with 

 smaller horticultural resources, like Java, Trinidad, Ceylon, Jamaica, or Eng- 

 land, and in many of the still smaller countries and colonies, we find great, scien- 

 tifically managed, and beautifully arranged Botanic Gardens, with extensive 

 botanical and horticultural libraries attached thereto. In such places are gathered 

 all of the thousands of plants of interest and importance to the region, where they 

 may be definitely known by name, where people generally and all growers, fanciers, 

 nurserymen, and others specially interested may visit them at any time, learn to 

 exactly know them, and to examine all of the literature relating to them. In ad- 

 dition to its other possibilities, in such a garden thousands of new things can be 

 introduced and acclimatized, and then thousands of cuttings and packets of seed 

 of desirable things distributed among our people. 



The mind leaps at once, in looking over the work of these great projects in 

 other countries, to the tremendous possibilities such an enterprise might have here, 

 in these most favorable surroundings, in both material and educational ways. We 

 have but very few such institutions in the whole United States, like the Arnold 

 Arboretum in Massachusetts, the New York Botanic Garden supported by men of 

 wealth in New York City, and the Shaw Gardens in St. Louis. 



Prof. Cook and I have persistently agitated this highly important project and 

 have even tried to interest people at Pomona College in the matter. Pomona Col- 

 lege possesses one of the finest parks in the South, of sixty acres and all unde- 

 veloped as yet. It might easily be made a most powerful educational tool, and 

 still be a thing of beauty, though it seems more likely to develop into merely a 

 pretty picture for passing pleasure, like so many others of our public parks. We 

 have got to make something more than that out of our parks if we wish them to 

 mean the most to our people, and yield to them the greatest possibiilties. 



Even here at the College, without any support, and by personal enterprise 

 alone, we have begun the development of a Garden and have already a collection 

 from all parts of the world of some 25,000 plants in pots, all carefully named, 

 but with no space to plant them out where they will be cared for, and we have in the 

 meantime given away above 10,000 plants and many hundreds of packets of seed, 



