BEAUTIFUL GARDENS IN AMERICA 
rential rainfall of one section, and elsewhere the long 
months of drought. 
Generally speaking, our country is, in most parts, a 
land of sunshine, with usually sufficient rain and mois- 
ture to benefit plant life, and while we grumble at our 
sudden changes in temperature, how few of us realize 
the blessing of an abundant sunshine pervading the “great 
outdoors” and incidentally the gardens! 
Nowhere do flowers grow more luxuriantly, in greater 
variety, or through a season more prolonged than on the 
coasts of Oregon, Washington, and California, — soil, mois- 
ture, and temperature combining to make gardening a 
simpler task than it is elsewhere. The shore country of 
Southern California is a perpetual garden, with a climate 
almost unrivalled for plants and for humans. North of 
San Francisco the near approach of the Japan Current 
produces a climate quite similar to that of England, and 
with the exception of possibly two months (and even then 
an occasional Rose may bloom) flowers are found all the 
year round. This favored section of the Northwest never- 
theless is not visited with as much sunshine as is found 
elsewhere, but its gardens blossom with little assistance 
save from the frequent rainfall, more welcome to plants 
than to men. 
In Kansas and the other flat and fertile States of the 
Middle West the garden period, on account of the long, 
dry summers, is usually limited to the weeks from late 
March to late June. In the more northern temperature 
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