AMONG OUR GARDEN NEIGHBORS 
EVER Y GARDEN MEAV^S -A HOME 
T HIS number of The Garden Magazine concerns 
itself with Californian gardening. Two things are 
attempted. One, an interpretation for the Eastern 
visitor and the winter resident who has perhaps a 
home on each side of the continent; and the other, 
a survey of the Californian’s garden year, with a summary of the 
available material thatmay be best utilizedin making the garden. 
Th’ California garden teaches the observer one definite lesson 
in a very decided manner — and one that it is hard to learn — 
namely that equal effects cannot be produced bv identical 
materials in quite different climates. 
The first attempts at gardening were made by the missions of 
southern California and the south European influence is marked. 
But, as the Easterner, saturated with more Northern types of 
garden, came into closer contact with the Californian region, he 
brought with him the desire of expression in terms of the East. 
The result was something of a shock, for the climatic conditions 
were not identical, and, to use a familiar solecism, the materials 
transported from the Eastern garden “ran away” from him. 
There was indeed “too much of a good thing” and the result was 
an extravagance of vegetation that overpowered the garden 
itself. When, on the contrary, the gardener turned to the 
desert-like plants and others of a more or less tropical type, yet 
handled in the same way as the other class of material, the re- 
sults were freakish, the garden became a museum of curiosities 
with no element of the repose so essential to it. In brief, the 
California garden suffered from an embarrassment of riches. 
Its abundant native material had been added to by plants 
introduced from other regions; many of these, such as the 
Eucalyptus and the Acacias from Australia, requiring little 
acclimatization, stepped into immediate favoritism. 
The Californian climate is horticulturally a thing apart from 
that of any other part of the United States. 
Neither latitude nor longitude are the deciding factors in 
plant adaptations, which depend primarily upon “equal annual 
range of temperature.” Meteorological observations show that 
this range is practically the same for Western Europe and the 
Western slope of North America, and a like similarity exists 
between the Eastern United States and Western China. Thus 
it happens that little of the native material of the Pacific Coast 
is available material for the gardens of the East, although much 
of it has been introduced, particularly through the agency of 
Douglas, the collector for the Royal Horticultural Society of 
England, into European gardens and thrives there. The 
European gardener visiting California finds himself among old 
friends but the Eastern American who has not familiarized him- 
self with the general run of plant material of European gardens 
and greenhouses finds himself surrounded by strange and un- 
familiar sights. Once this general law in the matter of tempera- 
ture range was appreciated, the Californian garden began to 
acquire its own character, and to-day it expresses the basic 
principles of garden art in exactly the same way as do the older 
gardens elsewhere. 
The articles in this issue dealing specifically with the Cali- 
fornian garden have been specially prepared for this issue by 
writers of unquestioned authority and ability, and, taken in 
their entirety, represent the up-to-the-minute information that 
is not available elsewhere in any written form, and will, we 
believe, be found valuable as reference material of an unusual 
nature. 
T HE letter from Mr. Ernest H. Wilson printed in this 
issue very plainly intimates that the centre of gardening 
activities so long settled in England may shift to this country. 
Indeed, it would seem that in the natural course of events this 
should be so because of the unparalleled range of opportunity 
offered by such diverse climates and conditions as obtain in our 
East and West, and North and South. 
It is observed that the outdoor garden is supplanting the 
under glass collections of exotics on the big estates of England, a 
phase in which American gardening has progressed instinctively 
to its present status. When in addition one considers the 
climatic advantages of the West for the cultivation of so much 
that is greenhouse material elsewhere there surely can be little 
doubt of the ultimate glory of gardening among us as a fine 
recreation for everybody. 
T HE January Garden Magazine is to be a “planning 
manual,” an aid to the gardener in laying out his scheme 
of operations for the active year ahead. In subsequent issues 
this will be supplemented with explicit instructions for the 
making of flower borders and vegetable plots, large and small; 
shrubbery planting and other matters of concern to the intelli- 
gent gardener; as well as information about the most up-to-date 
tools, appliances, and accessories of various sorts. 
THE OPE^C olum: K, 
Readers' Interchange oj Experience and Comment 
Possibility of Growing Bulbs from Seed 
To the Editor of The Garden Magazine: 
IN The Garden Magazine for August, Mrs. R. W. Walters tells of 
1 raising Scilla sibirica from seed. I have had them come up from self- 
sown seed in my own garden. It is an easy bulb to increase. It may 
interest gardeners now forced to raise plants they were once able to 
buy to learn where they can obtain seed of bulbs as such seed is not 
generally offered. 1 am giving what information I have obtained 
from a pretty general search of the catalogues at hand in hope others 
may add to my limited knowledge. Luther Burbank, Santa Rosa, 
California, has listed Scilla hybrids. I bought of him in 1919. In 
the 1920 catalogue he gives a list of nine kinds of bulb seeds he can fur- 
nish; many are of bulbs not hardy in the East. Frederick H. Horsford 
of Charlotte, Vermont, offers seed of Lilium tenuifolium and of Iris si- 
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