An Oriental Garden in California 
A General View of the Garden 
By KATE GREENLEAF LOCKE 
O N a wide and beautiful street in the city of 
Los Angeles, California, stands the home of 
Captain and Mrs. Randolph Minor. The 
street is bordered with pepper trees, palms and 
grevillias and in itself resembles a section of some 
tropical, well-kept garden. Mocking birds sing in 
the branches that overhang the sidewalks and 
flowers blossom on the edge of the grass-plots. 
Thus the foreground leaves nothing to be desired in 
the setting of the house and its place on a corner of 
the lot carries out the perfect symmetry which char¬ 
acterizes the scheme of this house and its garden. 
There can be no question that the feeling for 
symmetrical pro¬ 
portions, the per¬ 
fect and carefully 
studied balance of 
lines and spaces 
which is becoming 
daily more closely 
interwoven with art 
in this country is 
caught from the 
Japanese; we are 
feeling it in the 
treatment of land¬ 
scape pictures by 
our leading artists, 
we are seeing it in 
the designs of our 
great architects and 
it is most evident in 
the work of our landscape gardeners. As we are a 
conglomerate nation we have naturally woven into 
our arts and our crafts the things which are most 
desirable and worthy in the arts and craff^ of those 
other nations from whom we draw oui citizens. 
We are to-day taking large draughts of inspiration 
from the Japanese and this is for our improvement, 
but alas that such an advance for us, should be 
reaction; there is also no doubt that we are com¬ 
mercially demoralizing the art of japan. This 
burning question, however, is aside from the subject 
of gardens. One has but to note the lines of Captain 
Minor’s house to feel agreeably its solid mass of 
rich, dark color, to 
realize that some 
quieting and re¬ 
straining influence 
has been at work to 
sober it and to mold 
it in the extreme 
refinement of art. 
As a matter of fact 
Mr. and Mrs. 
Minor have resided 
for a long period in 
japan; as an officer 
in the United States 
Navy Captain Minor 
was stationed there, 
and the y have 
brought away with 
them the feeling 
A JAPANESE GATEWAY 
197 
