FOREWORD 
The 1946 catalogues are the first for these too many years to go 
forth into a world which for the most part is at peace again. If only 
mutual understanding, good wiil, and the expanding biessings of a 
humane science are allowed to disseminate themselves not too bad- 
ly hampered by cancerous ideologies or the prideful ambitions ot 
tyrannous men, there seems no valid reason why mankind can not 
march with firm, undaunted tread along the grand highway to a 
better worid. Filled with the earnestness of this hope we turn to our 
gardens as an important never-failing standby for strength, en- 
couragement, sanity, and inspiration, their good happily not con- 
fined within their walls or to ourselves alone, but to be shared with 
all who pass, with those less blessed indeed, and no less with those 
more richly endowed. It remains incumbent on all of us to avoid un- 
due use of needed basic materials and I shall therefore wait at least 
one more year before resuming a formal descriptive catalogue. The 
money instead will be put into the acquisition of new and beautiful 
subjects to be shared with you as rapidly as they can be tested and 
suitable stocks accumulated. 
So many people ask me each year for basic advice in choosing 
planis, and I aiways reply with so much the same general precepts, 
that this may not be an inappropriate place to outline them. There 
are two ways to make a garden attractive and interesting. One, of 
course is to arrange one’s material solely for beautiful and artistic 
effect. The other is to devote one’s space to the growth of plants of 
outstanding interest in themselves. Now one of the most beautiful 
large gardens I have ever been privileged to enjoy was one in which 
the owner achieved a lovely and at some seasons almost overwhelm- 
ing effect by the lavish use in well-planned combination of very 
common material. I have pondered this garden many times but al- 
ways with the thought how much more it would have justified all 
that expenditure of fine taste and effort if here and there had been 
included some particularly arresting shrub or tree, some group of 
uncommon perennials of special suitability to the position chosen to 
lend distinction to the planting and enhance rather than impair its 
beauty. Contrariwise one sees many a garden of rarities planted 
without the least consideration of their associates or setting. 
Like the museum it resembles, such a garden may be profoundly 
interesting, but modern museums are learning willy-nilly that artis- 
try in display is of nearly as great value as the rarity of the objects 
and I see no reason why even the most amateurish of our gardens, 
the smallest no less than the largest, should not be constructed on the 
same principle. The expense of the plants, even though some de- 
sired items be relatively costly as plants go, is after all the least of 
the major considerations, particularly here in California where land, 
labor, and water always constitute the real costs. In the end it will 
be a more fruitful investment all around if the planting is arranged, 
not in the cheapest manner possible, but in one which measures up 
to the unavoidable expense of the foundation. Once established it 
costs no more to take care of top-notch plants than those altogether 
ordinary, while the return is vastly greater. 
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