Volume XIX 
N UM BER 2 
February, 1911 
A bank of mesembryanthemum in bloom under an orange tree, and dropping down over a retaining wall. 
The plants in the front row are Japanese poppies 
The Small California Garden 
WITH ALL THEIR WONDERFUL CLIMATIC ADVANTAGES CALIFORNIA GARDENS 
do not ‘Must grow”—the experiences of an easterner who went west 
by Charles Fra 
Photographs by C. F. and E. 
O UR first acquaintance with the flowers of California was 
during a winter's sojourn in Pasadena. We left the East 
ice-bound and snow-clad in December; and when, four days 
later, we awakened among the orange groves and palms and roses 
of the Land of Sunshine, we were enraptured—the advertise¬ 
ments were really true. 
That winter proved to be unusual in its mildness — you will 
find, if you ever live in California, that every season is “unusual” 
in some particular — and there had been very early rains, so that 
by the first of the year the wild poppies were making a blaze of 
color along country roadsides, and the gardens in Pasadena 
were a revelation of motivated bloom. There were sferaniums 
of every hue, banked in some cases house-high; callas grew 
literally in hedges serving as party-fences between city lots; 
fuchsias and heliotrope hid beneath their masses of exquisite 
ncis Saunders 
H. Saunders, and Alice Hare 
bloom the cottage walls against which they grew and looked in at 
second story windows; clambering roses smothered some houses 
completely, or climbed trees and hung festoons of rare color 
from the crowns twenty or thirty feet up in tire air. So, natu¬ 
rally, we carried home with us the idea that everything grew in 
California without trouble; in fact, more than one native had 
epitomized the art of gardening there as simply sticking in a 
cutting anywhere and keeping it wet a few days. The climate 
would do the rest. 
Since that year, we have taken up permanent residence in 
Southern California, and having wintered and summered for 
some years a small cottage garden planted by ourselves, we have 
acquired some views of our own. One of them is that the native 
notion aforesaid, has led to a certain unnecessary monotony in 
small California gardens — and it is the small gardens after all, 
( 79 ) 
