The True California Garden 
as it is, the country is so strong a reminder of the 
Italian Riviera that here again there is little sense 
of stran2:eness in finding pergolas, stuccoed benches, 
and the various other familiar devices. But the 
use of Western garden sculpture is not lightly to he 
encouraged, and fountains are not as easily to he 
secured in Southern California as in Italy; and 
when all is said the Italian garden is too distinctly 
aristocratic in its every expression to he at home 
in the aggressive democracy of a new American town. 
A third important group has been content to 
renew, with California’s wide choice and delightful 
dersistency of bloom, the old-fashioned flower 
that each may develop as a specimen. 
Finally, as possibly another landscape suggestion, 
the tree lined avenue is a frequent feature—now 
stately, between rows of palms; now dark and 
mysterious, between sombre cedars, or pine, or 
eucalypti; now, beneath the feathery peppers, like 
a New England lane under low trunked elms. Out 
of all this serious thought, will the California garden 
come ? 
I do not think there can be doubt of that, where 
Nature has been so prodigal, and where so many 
have the will and the means, and are reaching out 
with straining effort to secure the garden appropriate 
Courtesy of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce 
GROUNDS OF MR. HOMER LAUGHLIN’s PLACE—LOS ANGELES 
AN UNUSUALLY GOOD ILLUSTRATION OF THE USE OF “PICTURE” OR SPECIMEN PLANTS 
garden of the home in the East. It is to this group 
that the successful small parks of Los Angeles lend 
their powerful influence, for they are laid out more 
conspicuously on that principle than on any other. 
The fourth, and largest group remains. It is 
that which includes practically all of the little gar¬ 
dens and a considerable number of the greater. 
This is the group that finds its garden ideals best 
satisfied by using the great plants that so easily 
grow in Southern California—as the palms, the 
banana, the cactus, pampas grass and century— 
as “picture plants,” to be placed in such isolation 
and beautiful, finding it as all who love a garden 
must—an untiring toy. As to its character, if one 
could make an acceptable prediction, he would 
have solved the riddle, and everywhere the true 
California garden would begin to appear. So it is 
idle to play the prophet, but two guesses may he 
hazarded. It will give an expression of bigness, 
rather than of diminutiveness. This might be given 
by large plants, by perspectives, or by both. It 
will also make use of the shaded avenues—because 
that is welcome where people are said actually to 
tire of sunshine; and sometimes at least the accent 
43 
