Winter Gardens in California 
By HENRY KIRK 
A T this time of the year when the green leaves 
and lawns of our Eastern country are going 
into winter quarters, and gardens and parks 
will soon be damp and dreary, there is a world of 
color and a perfect mass of bloom in the winter gar¬ 
dens in far away California. To be literal there is no 
such thing as a winter garden in California, for the 
roses there are in a state more or less of continual blos¬ 
soming and the leaves are always green, but the same 
signs of the zodiac are in California calendars, and 
there is a period of the year that is termed winter no 
matter what nature of weather it may be. Whatever 
days may come in California, of wind or of rain, and 
no matter what changes may happen, the day of the 
garden is always at hand, and the variety and nature 
thereof is almost astonishing. The palm is the dis¬ 
tinctive feature of the California garden. It is every¬ 
where, the graceful date, the wide spreading fan. In 
San Diego, in Coronado, are some splendid speci¬ 
mens, and in Coronado gardening is at its best at 
this time of the year. There are great stretches of 
lawn, with olive and camphor trees while heliotrope 
and roses run riot. In the center of the big hotel is 
an open patio filled with palms and green grass. 
There is a fountain with lily pads upon the water, and 
pots of fuschia along the rim. A tropical bird hangs 
in one of the trees, and it is all very quiet and 
charming. 
San Diego was the first stand of the Spanish in 
California and so San Diego may claim the oldest 
gardens. The Franciscans brought with them in 
addition to their bells and candles, a lot of seeds, of 
fruits and of flowers. They brought with them their 
remembrances of old Spain, oranges and olives, 
pomegranates, and the little pink roses of Castile. 
These they planted everywhere, from San Diego, 
to Santa Rosa, five hundred miles away and from 
these devoted seeds have come the gardens of Cali¬ 
fornia, the fruit and the bloom that have made the 
land another Canaan. 
In the San Gabriel valley near Los Angeles are 
some adorable gardens with all the riot of the native 
California flowers, the rose, the heliotrope, geranium, 
magnolia, not the tiny Eastern variety, but a huge 
waxen, overpoweringly fragrant thing, in its glossy 
leaves like a monster pearl in a mass of mammoth 
emeralds. The geraniums climb to the tops of walls 
—they run along in hedges—they run wild. Their 
leaves are fragrant, and their blossom varies with 
their variety. The violet is the flower of the coun¬ 
try and now is in all its beauty and perfection. 
You can smell it for miles, and in the San Gabriel 
valley, the odor scarcely ever leaves you. The roads 
in the valley are lined with pepper trees, an exquisite 
tree with hanging fern-like branches, hung with little 
red berries giving out a pungent, woody smell. In 
shape it is like the weeping willow, and grows in about 
the same fashion. The garden hedges are sometimes 
of roses, sometimes of geranium or of box. Beyond 
the hedge are the palms and magnolias, more roses, 
more geraniums, and beds of camellias. Upon the 
porch-posts are climbing roses or honeysuckle. The 
violet is there in long luxuriant lines, bordering the 
beds, or in beds of their own with forget-me-nots 
beside them, and rows of Cecile Brunner roses. 
Over all is the clear blue sky, and beyond are the 
Sierra Madres with dabs of snow upon the summits. 
The air is soft and still and sweet with the smell of 
the violet and the rose, and above it all is the sun, 
the god-sun of the country. 
In Pasadena things are upon a very elaborate 
plan. Pasadena is the place of big houses and of big 
hotels, of tally-hos and motor cars. It aims at a 
certain grandeur very different from the dear little 
air of San Gabriel. The houses are very pretentious 
and most of them, really beautiful. Many of them 
copy the old mission style with arched corridors 
and tiled roofs. Some of them have patios, little 
courts in the center with a fountain and long slender 
palms, an orange tree or two, and a scarlet pome¬ 
granate. There are plenty of roses in Pasadena, and 
they are used extensively in the garden schemes. 
But the people in Pasadena are there first for climate 
and health and amusement and not for the idea of 
developing the soil even if that development means 
a mass of bloom upon their window-sills. 
Los Angeles is less interesting. There is not 
much there in the garden way aside from lawns and 
the inevitable palm. Sometimes there are a few 
orange trees about, but the orange may not be in¬ 
cluded in a purely garden discussion, and treating 
of flowers. Santa Barbara is one of the most beauti¬ 
ful spots in California, and Montecito, in the hills 
beyond, the most beautiful spot in Santa Barbara. 
Upon the hills of Montecito are villas and cotta¬ 
ges built for the enjoyment of the sun and the 
soil, and not for frivolity alone. In Montecito are 
many mansions. There are bungalows and there 
are gorgeous houses with porches and towers and 
gables and huge windows, so huge that almost a 
hundred people might stand in some of them. 
There are terraces with Italian balustrades and 
Italian vases hung with trailing vines. There are 
formal gardens with Italian walls and water stream¬ 
ing into basins. Inside these formal gardens are 
clover lawns and papyrus plants, and there are 
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