THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
337 
THE NURSERY BUSINESS IN CALIFORNIA: ITS PRESENT 
NEEDS AND FUTURE POSSIBILITIES. 
Leonard Coates. 
Before the Pacific Coast Nurserymen’s Association. 
In speaking briefly on this subject, I am strongly tempted to 
indulge in retrospection, for, while the “present needs” is a difficult 
phase to treat of, and one on which there would be many opinions, 
the “future possibilities,” while almost limitless, are also largely 
imaginary. It becomes almost necessary, in fact, to allude to the 
past, that a more comprehensive view of the whole may be obtained. 
By this I do not mean to inflict upon the members of the Association 
a sketch of the early nursery ventures in California, although I have 
abundant data therefor, having had occasion, some years ago, to 
search all known records. These data now, in view of the destruc¬ 
tion of the San Francisco libraries by fire, have an added value. 
All of the earliest nurseries were located near the Bay of San 
Francisco, or its branches, or along river banks close to tide water. 
It did not seem possible that elsewhere trees or plants could be 
grown, in a climate where no rain fell for six months at a time. 
Perhaps I may select four names as typical of our California pioneer 
nurserymen, without detracting from the honored memory of 
others equally deserving. B. S. Fox, John Lewelling, James Shinn, 
John Rock. The work of these men lives on, and, as aninstance of 
their enterprise it is worthy of mention that in 1859, B. S. Fox had 
in his nursery in Santa Clara County, 263 varieties of apple, 324 
varieties of pear, 89 of peach, 71 of cherry, 56 of plum, 14 nectarine, 
18 of apricot, 21 of currant, 86 of gooseberry; 12 of raspberry, 122 
of foreign grapes, 21 of figs, etc., etc. In 1858, W. C. Walker of San 
Francisco exhibited 264 varieties of ornamental plants in pots, and 
about the same time, A. B. Smith of Smith’s gardens, Sacramento, 
was propagating fruit trees on a large scale, and also demonstrating 
the profit in growing fruit in those days, the crop from two of his 
peach trees netting him in one year $326.50. 
It is well to “look backwards,” occasionally; our own achieve¬ 
ments are sometimes dwarfed by comparison with those of others 
who have preceeded us, and whose work has been accomplished 
under so much greater difficulty. These early pioneers in the nur¬ 
sery business in California attained success without the aid of rail¬ 
roads or any regular hired labor. California was then a wilderness, 
being gradually peopled by adventurers drawn here by the gold 
excitement of ’49 and ’50. 
We have learned—or might have learned—many lessons from 
the experience of the pioneers, but still we know but little. 
PRESENT NEEDS. 
The nursery business in California needs, first, and more than 
anything else, just such men as those I have named. • We want, not 
only men who are skilled horticulturists, but shrewd men of business, 
who ought to be able to see something of what the future has in 
store. Compared with nurseries in the Western, Southwestern, and 
Eastern States, our largest concerns here are but pygmies. It may 
be said that demand alone will create the supply. In a sense this is 
true, but supply also, and the natural accompanying advertising, 
creates demand. There are many ways by which the nursery busi¬ 
ness in California might be augmented. Why is it that Eastern 
firms can do such an enormous mail order trade, and we cannot do it 
here? We grow the seeds here, wholesale them East, and let the 
California public buy them of the Eastern houses to plant near 
where they were grown. The retail market of the United States is 
ours, or a good share of it, for seeds, and also, in time, for bulbs. 
These latter are being grown successfully, and it only requires a 
knowledge of the necessary conditions, and an application of tha.t 
knowledge, to insure success with all branches of commercial bulb 
culture in California. 
Must we “look backward” again, some fifty years, to be re¬ 
minded of the “incredible anomalies” of the California climate? In 
1857, Dr. Horace Bushnell in the New Englander said, “Whoever 
wishes, for health’s sake, or for any other reason, to' change the 
scenery or the objects and associations of his life, should set off, not 
for Europe, but for California. * * * It cannot be said of Cali¬ 
fornia, as of New England, or of the Middle states, that it has a cli¬ 
mate. On the contrary it has a great multitude of them, curiously 
pitched together, at short distances, one from another, defying, too, 
not seldom, our most accepted notions of the effects of latitude and 
altitude and the defenses of mountain ranges. * * * All the 
varieties of climate, distinct as they become, are made by variations 
wrought in the rates of motion, the courses, the temperature, and 
the dryness of a single wind; namely, the trade wind of the summer 
months, which flows directly inward all the time, only with much 
greater power during that part of the day when the rarefaction of 
the great central valley comes to its aid, that is from ten o’clock in 
the morning till the setting of the sun. * * * When this is fully 
comprehended, the California climate, or climates, will be under¬ 
stood with general accuracy. We now return to the middle strip of 
the great valley, when the engine, or rather boiler power, that 
operates the coast wind in a great part of its velocity, is located. 
Here the heat, reverberated as in a forge or oven, whence Cali¬ 
fornia (Caleo and fornan) becomes, even m the early spring, so much 
raised that the ground is no longer able, by the remaining cold there 
is in it, to condense the clouds, and rain ceases. * * * So, 
crossing the Sonoma Valley, he would come out into it from the 
west, through a cold, windy gorge, to find orange trees growing in 
General Vallejo’s garden, close under the eastern valley wall, as 
finely as in Cuba. In multitudes of places, too, on the eastern 
slopes of the mountains, he will notice that the trees, which have all 
their growth in the coast-wind season, have their tops thrown over 
like cocks tails turned away from the wind. This cold, trade wind, 
being once lifted or drawn over the sea wall mountains, and being 
specifically heavier than the atmosphere into which it is going, no 
sooner reaches the summit than it pitches down as a cold cataract, 
with the uniformly accelerated motion of falling bodies. * * * 
The winter climate is the trade wind reversed. 
These “climates” of California constitute our most valuable asset. 
It is because of this that it is no idle statement that no where else in 
the world, in the same area, can be successfully grown so great a 
variety of crops as in the State of California. 
Many carloads of trees are shipped into California, but when did 
we hear of a carload being shipped out of the state ? “California” is 
the name which sells fruits all over the length and breadth of the 
land; why is it not likely that the thousands of planters would like 
California grown trees if .they could get them? New Jersey and 
New York nurserymen grow hundreds of thousands of roses annually 
in California for their Eastern trade, because in eight months they 
can get a better plant than they can there in two years. For more 
than half a century seed and bulb collectors from Europe and the 
Eastern States have been searching California for new species, and 
supplying nursery firms and seedsmen all over the world. Why 
cannot these native seeds and bulbs be catalogued and advertised 
extensively in the United States and abroad in order to work up a 
direct trade with the planter? Or, why cannot these native plants, 
shrubs, and trees be grown extensively for retailing outside of our 
state. You will, today, find in the parks and private grounds of 
people of refinement in Europe more specimens and a larger variety 
of California trees and shrubs than can be found at home. 
WE NEED A MORE FRATERNAL SPIRIT. 
and the calling of this meeting of the Pacific Coast Nurserymen’s 
Association is, I hope, a means to this end. Not only is there ample 
room for all now engaged in the business, but room for many more, 
of the right kind. We must sink all petty jealousies and suspicions, 
let our views be broadened, and let us be ready to “live and let live.” 
There are many other “present needs,” general and local. Of the 
latter, a wholesale nursery for the growing of apple, pear, cherry, and 
plum seedlings is badly wanted; we are still in that extravagant, 
spend-thrift stage when we continue to send money away for what 
we can produce at home. 
I would prefer to deal with hard facts rather than to plunge into 
the realm of prophesy and let the imagination run riot in an attempt 
to portray the “future possibilities” of the Nursery business in 
California. 
And yet they have already been hinted. Give us more men of 
enterprise and horticultural ability, give us better transportation 
facilities, give us a Parcels Post, and there is practically no limit to 
the growth of the nursery business in California. 
