THE WHOLE YEAR ROUND 
IN THE CALIFORNIA GARDEN 
SIDNEY B. MITCHELL 
University of California 
Concise Practical Manual of the Year’s Work and Descriptive Guide to Plant Material 
[Editor s note: The author of this article has had unusual opportunity to visualise the Californian garden, and in the present 
article accomplishes, we fully believe, the most useful practical guide yet presented for the garden lover whose lot is cast in California; and 
equally, he interprets the problems for the newcomer and the visitor who aspires to a critical appreciation of the Californian garden. A 
trained and practical horticulturist and an enthusiastic student of plants from the gardener’s point of view he has had the advantage of 
much experience both in Europe and in the Eastern United States before settling in California. He has in recent years contributed to these 
pages occasional articles on Californian gardening. 
YY^; H EN the eastern gardener goes to California he has more 
w/SuGP) to learn and unlearn than if he went to western Europe; 
as muc h as he went to Spain, or Italy, or South Africa. 
Even the native Californian has something to unlearn, 
for much of the garden literature written for American readers 
does not apply to his conditions. He must discriminate between 
general principles of arrangement and culture applicable every- 
where, and particular advice in regard to materials and the 
attention they need in a climate where they will meet summer 
rains and winter cold. 
California has certain limitations which must be recognized. 
It is difficult and expensive to maintain grassy terraces or 
slopes through a rainless summer, but banks can have other 
coverings — Lippia, Ivy-geraniums, or shrubs. The wonderful 
bursting forth of spring, the Lilacs and many flowering decidu- 
ous shrubs which make that season so gay along the Atlantic 
coast, can only follow the atrocious winter which holds every- 
thing in check for months. The beautiful colored foliage of the 
Indian summer needs the shock of cold for its development 
and reliance can not be placed on the same plants to produce 
the same effects in both the East and the West. 
The need of gardens in California is great, for, at the present 
time, without cultivation, wide regions are bare and hard, the 
more evident as the nakedness is not covered with snow. Yet 
when planting is done and artificial watering provided until 
trees and shrubs are well established the reward is often ex- 
ceedingly rapid growth and a quickly attained luxuriance. The 
problem is to select such trees, shrubs, and climbers as will give 
satisfactory general effects without continual care, and, in the 
case of flowers, to obtain a succession through the whole calendar 
year, which is synonymous with the California garden year. 
d 
Trees, Shurbs, and Climbers 
N O ATTEMPT will be made to list all the trees, shrubs, and 
vines from Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and 
South America, Europe and western Asia which are thoroughly 
adapted to California and yet not hardy for the rest of the 
United States; but rather to mention, 
briefly, in order of flowering, a few 
which apart from their foliage, are 
valued for the flowers they give by 
their succession through the year. 
At Christmas and the beginning of 
the year the most notable color comes 
from the Poinsettias. Less brilliant 
than their scarlet bracts are the lovely 
golden cups of that desirable little 
shrub, Linum trigynum, usually called 
by nurserymen L. flavum. The most 
brilliant shrub of semi-climbing habit 
at this season is the glorious orange 
Bignonia venusta, while the finest real 
climber is Bougainvillea lateritia, 
brick-red in color. Aloe arborea is 
also in full flower, and on large places 
should be grown for its brilliant red 
spikes. None of these are really 
practicable excepting in warm, almost 
frost-free parts of southern California. 
A winter bloomer better adapted to 
the northern than to the southern 
part of the state is Erica melanthera, 
much more effective than E. medi- 
terranea because the latter is never 
IN A SHELTERED SPOT 
Here under the protecting shade of an 
Oak, itself draped in Ivy, are Foxgloves 
Cinerarias, and Geraniums, the strange fel- 
lowship of which (to the Easterner) is accen- 
tuated by the association of Fan Palms 
(Mr. Charles Alma Byers, Los Angeles) 
