REGISTERED 
I N 
PATENT 
OFFICE 
Vol. XXVI—No. 3 
September, 1914 
Cherokee roses in a cactus garden 
The Color of A California Garden 
HOSPITALITY OF CLIMATE TENDS TO ENCOURAGE MEDLEYED HORTICULTURE—THE 
TRADITIONS OF THE EAST IN THE WEST-HOW CALIFORNIA PLANTS ARE GIVEN A REST 
by Charles Francis Saunders 
T HERE are certain sensations that come but once in a life¬ 
time, not the least of which is, having slipped away from 
the wintry and slushy East, you open your eyes some sunny 
January morning and for the first time see, in a setting of majes¬ 
tic mountains lifting snowy summits to a turquoise sky, the palms 
and roses and glistening orange groves of Southern California. 
Around ranch-house and town-dwelling alike, garden flowers 
clamber and nestle. Calendulas, sweet peas and pansies, petunias, 
violets and marguerites, geraniums of many colors banked some¬ 
times house high, are commonplaces of the humblest home; callas, 
in places, grow literally as hedges; carnations and violets bloom 
by the fieldful for the cut flower market. If the season is of 
average mildness, fuchsias and heliotropes hide beneath their 
massed blooms and cottage walls against which they are set; poin- 
settias, in vivid scarlet, glow under south eaves, and roses of 
every hue brighten hedgerows and fences. Natmallv, then, when 
you are at last settled in California, your thoughts turn much to 
gardens. 
For the making of a garden the Californian has practically the 
world to draw upon. Indeed, so inclusive is the hospitality of 
the State’s climate that the supreme temptation is to plant some¬ 
thing of everything on earth and turn one’s place into a botanic 
museum. There is a considerable preponderance of such medleyed 
horticulture up and down the State, and it is, I think, a weak spot 
in California gardening. 
To the average eye, it must be owned, this tendency to floral 
coloratura is a venial matter, and is forgotten in the delight of 
discovery afforded by the vast variety of exotic shrubs and flow¬ 
ers that are in common outdoor cultivation on the Coast. Many 
people faithfully keep up the tradition of the eastern home with 
such old-fashioned favorites as lilacs, spineas, weigelas, abutilons, 
nasturtiums, verbenas, zinnias, marigolds, hollyhocks, and so on; 
and everybody grows the rose in its manifold varieties. All gar¬ 
dens have a sprinkling of these, but what gives distinctiveness to 
the California gardens are the tropic and semi-tropic plants un¬ 
known in the East, or at least cultivated only in conservatories. 
Besides the yuccas and acacias, bamboos, palms and agaves, which 
are easily recognized by every one, there are, in every community 
where the sentiment for flowers runs strong, scores of strikingly 
beautiful shrubs, vines and herbs that are absolutely novel to the 
tourist. It is a humilating fact, though, that too few of the owners 
of these exotic plants can tell you their names. They have gen¬ 
erally been had from nurserymen in response to orders for “pretty 
flowers and shrubs with beautiful foliage that will be drought-re- 
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