8o 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
February, 1911 
rather than the show places of the millionaires, that make the 
character of a place. Following out the plan of growing what 
is most easily grown, the average Californian has not made the 
best of the won¬ 
derful opportunity 
which the unique 
climate of the state 
sets before him. 
One garden is too 
much like another 
and there is room 
for better taste in 
the selection of the 
plants themselves. 
The artist of 
the family struck 
the weak spot in 
California garden¬ 
ing the other day, 
when she remark¬ 
ed : 
“Oh, 1 think the 
flowers here are 
perfectly beautiful, 
mar velous in 
growth a n d va¬ 
riety; but do you 
think the people 
always understand 
the harmony of 
a r r a n g ement to 
bring out the beau¬ 
ty as it deserves? The purple bou¬ 
gainvillea is simply a regal bloomer, 
but you find it everywhere — flower¬ 
ing furiously on house-roofs and 
pergolas and chicken corrals, while 
cheek by jowl with it, likely as not, 
are orange-yellow bignonias and 
scarlet tecomas. And then because 
red geraniums and yellow California 
poppies can’t help growing in this 
glorious sunshine, why let them kill 
each other by setting them side by 
side? Then again, why always 
make of a garden a dead level? If 
a man has a lumpy bit of back lot, 
he must needs hire a man with a 
plow and a scoop-shovel and grade 
and grade and grade, till you could 
play tennis on it. That is all well 
enough for a vegetable patch, but 
there is a charm in irregularity of sur¬ 
face which there is no need whatever 
to sacrifice in a flower garden.” 
In an individual case, we have 
found the plan itself of our garden 
spot the source of quite as much 
pleasure to our guests as the plants 
which beautify it. The lot devoted 
to it (90 x 60 ft.), was the side of 
an irregular slope, which dipped at 
the farthest corner some six or eight 
feet below the highest part, which 
was near the house. Instead of 
filling in or leveling to one common¬ 
place grade, we made the ground into a series of wide terraces, 
each dropping a foot or two lower than the one preceding it, 
and held in place by low retaining walls of gray granite boulders 
and cobbles hauled 
from the dry bed of 
a mountain wash. 
These are known in 
Southern California 
as arroyo stones. 
There were a few 
orange trees on the 
lot, and where these 
were above the level 
of the cut-down, we 
left ample space 
about them for 
flower beds, hold¬ 
ing them in place 
with the same sort 
of retaining wall. 
These low walls 
made many nooks 
and corners which 
serve t o domicile 
special plants that 
have for us some 
personal association. 
In one, for instance, 
grows a clump of 
a native peutstemon, 
raised from seed 
gathered at the 
Grand Canon ; in another, a patch of 
mint from the old home “back 
East,” makes perennial fragrance. 
Along the bases of the walls flower 
beds extend, and here and there our 
best rock-climber — ficus repens — is 
planted, relieving the otherwise 
monotonous line of gray stone with 
a covering of green leafage. 
If the plot, however, is naturally 
level, variety in surface may be in¬ 
expensively created by hauling in 
enough soil to make a low hillock 
or two. I have in mind such a gar¬ 
den in the flattest part of Pasadena, 
which is like a miniature bit of 
hill country, with a few boulders, 
large and small, set tastefully on 
and about two irregular mounds of 
soil where low growing shrubs and 
herbaceous perennials sink their 
roots beneath the moisture-conserv¬ 
ing stones, and require a minimum 
of care. 
Still another plan to break up a 
dead level, a plan especially desir¬ 
able in a land of outdoor living, is 
the arbor or small pergola. Ten 
dollars will amply cover the cost of 
putting in a structure of this sort 
made of rough timber. The floor 
space shoulu be laid with common 
brick or flat stones, and perennial 
vines planted for covering. Climb- 
Foxgloves grow wild in the California woods to a size and stateliness that make 
Easterners envious 
A Reve d’Or rose in the second year after planting 
for a porch screen 
