The Beaver herald. [volume] (Beaver, O.T. [Okla.]) 1895-1923, 1895-09-19
JAPANESE

ing OF japanese trees, shrubs and
flowers. particularly in this coast coun-
ties. grows more and more evident
rom year to wear. japanese gardeners
are visibly increasing In numbers, the
slose OF the war has already stimulated
immigration. Nor is IL only the gar
iener class that counts in this respect.
II California, as appears probable, Is
TO have fifty thousand or sixty o
sand Japanese merchants, students
and laborers of every class, oriental
forms of gardening art will be fostered
by all the newcomers, and the plants
II japan will be even more in demand.
Some energetic importers have aroused
public interest in Japanese vegetation;
now we have local nurseries also;
which prove attractive to Americans,
and ! expect to see the little Japanese
gardener an indispensable adjunct of
a fashionable country house before
many years pass.
The Golden Gate park possesses q
good illustration of japanese garden
art. developed from the best of several
gardens begun there during the early
part Of 1894 for the midwinter fair.
Adults as well as children derive con-
slant pleasure from these miniature
landscape gardens. What a terrible
national genius such gardens exhibit!
Century old pines and oaks, crags,
mountains, rivers and the whole free
wilderness one sees compressed into
liliputiau dimensions with an exacting,
relentless energy concealed under
,hildlike smiles. The children who
love the garden feel only its beauty;
but older persons can not forget it's
e~soteric significance. A thousand
years hence, when every inch of land
in America is precious, may not such
gardens become one of the leading
types, even here?
At present such n possibility seems
very distant. The mere increase of
Japanese vegetation in it's natural
forms is wholly consistent with occi-
dental garden ideas. Everywhere one
sees evidences that many of the char
acteristics plants of Japan are
becoming naturalized. Among trees
Salisburia adiantifolaa, Sciadop-
tvs verticillata and Taurus cam
phora, are becoming popular, and
the latter extremely so. The camphor
and the lilac-fiowered Paulownia inn
p~erialis are exceptions to the general
rule hat Japanese plants only thrive
in the Coast Range valleys, for one
finds extremely healthy specimens
even in the hotter parts of San Joaquin
valley, a p%aulownia tree | measured
not long ago that, having grown two
years from seed, and accidentally
broker off at the surface, had sent up
in one season a stem eighteen feet
high and over two inches in diamter.
The ~paulownia, massed on hillsides
with golden a~cacias, is in its properly
effective place, and southern Califor-
mans are beginning to use it on a
large scale. Oaks of east Asia are only
in nurseries as yet, but oak planters,
who are but few in any generation,
are watching them with much inter-
est. The %deciduous magnolias begin
to be fairly abundant. One nursery
has sold twenty-thousand trees in the
past ten years, including seven or eight
species, and now has half an acre de-
voted to this brilliant spring-fowcring
trees.
Another pleasant incident is the in
creased planting of the bamboos.
There is little or no botanical classif-
cation as yet, but the common varie-
ties and several good species of Japa-
nese bamboos are quite often seen in
gardens. There is talk of making a
tree-lined avenue from San Francisco
to San Jose, nearly forty miles. If
carried along the foothills such an
avenue would cross many streams and
moist places, where clumps of harder
species of the giant bamboo might
safely be planted, so as to give what is
now an almost unknown effect in the
California landscape.
The Japan naples thrive with reach
of the sea air. Superb specimens of all
the ~rich-colored, cut-leaved varieties
are to be seen in Sonoma, Marin, Ala.
media, Santa Clara and southwark to
Los Angeles, but without special care
they usually fail to prosper inland.
There is no reason why they
should not be grated on stonger-
growing native species, and some
of the dwarfed plants which
come from Japan strike deep
er root and become almost trees. To
the japanese gardeners such n maple
must seem a mere monstrosity, and
looked upon with serious disapprov.
al. They feel much the same way
about grating the pretty little dwarf
orange, the Oonshiu. on some sturdy
standard Seeding, where it soon makes
a large head and bears fruit of twice
the usual size.
Among more brilliant lesser shrubs,
the tree paeony of Japan bids fair to
become a notable California flower.
Not that N sees it frequently as yet,
but many are planted and growing,
and snowy masses of them attract
much admiration and inspire more
extensive planting. The roots are
usually somewhat expensive, though
sometimes good collections Of fifty
named varieties nave sold for twenty
five dollars per hundred, but this
vas rather late in the spring, when
care was needed to establish them.
They bloom early in April, a full
month before the herbaceous paeonies.
and in old gardens the plants stand
four or five feet high. They are emf
nently adapted to all parts of the Pa
rific coast.-Garden and Forest.
Too Old a BIRD.
.Iahhe falt ar sAha.a hatraA ~ AL.