READING CALIFORNIA GARDEN
to encourage
awareness of the San Diego Floral Association, its magazine California
Garden, and the book California Garden, Centennial Compilation
1909-2009.
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California Garden Magazine |
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The magazine specializes in information for growing plants in the San Diego area. It is the oldest horticulture magazine in continuous publication in the United States. |
California Garden – Volume 1, No. 1. July 1909
Index
Foreword, Cover page
The July Flower Garden, Page 2, K.O. Sessions
The Rose Garden for July, Page 3, E. Benard
The July Garden in Southern California, Page 4, Geo. P. Hall
Romneya Coulteri, or Matilija Poppy, Page 5, K.O. Sessions
Illustration, Page 6: Romneya Coulteri, or Matilija Poppy
The Prize Contest for Home Gardens, Page 7, J.W. Russell
Notice of Meeting, Page 8
Annual Meeting of San Diego Floral Association, Page 8
Squibbet, Page 8: “Floral Association members who are out of town” — Geo. P. Hall.
Invitation Welcome! Join me as I read California Garden, word by word, article by article, issue by issue, from the first publication in July 1909 through to the current copy.
My attempt is to grasp the whole of the magazine’s contents. Together we will watch California and San Diego history unfurl. We will track the evolution of gardening in our area and scrutinize both the physical and cultural landscape. With the magazine squarely in our sights, we will assess its pages as design artifact.
California Garden magazine has been published for 102 years! Huzzah!
Despite the magazine’s proclaiming itself “the oldest horticulture magazine in continuous publication in the United States,” the stronger claim is it’s the second oldest continuously published garden magazine in the United
States. Horticulture, a journal published by the Horticultural Societies of Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, claims precedence over CAGa by a mere couple years. Assuredly, our magazine is the oldest horticulture magazine in continuous publication in the Western United States.
As editor of Centennial Compilation, California Garden 1909-2009, I do know some of the contents of some of the magazine’s issues. I have patchwork knowledge. This blog is an effort to encompass EVERYTHING.
Come along, embrace the quest.
Original Reader will pop up from time to time to offer opinion, give perspective, and clarify topics of the day. So many subjects covered in early
and ongoing copies of California Garden remain relevant in
current San Diego.
Much of this blog’s value will arise from interaction stirred up. If you, Blog Reader, can make corrections, offer details, deliver opinions – terrific, please contribute. Together we’ll create the quality blog California
Garden deserves.
Format I’ll start with the magazine’s index, report the state of nature in San Diego at the moment of my reading each issue, post a line or two on what was happening in San Diego in the month and year of publication. I’ll follow with a fuller index giving short article encapsulations. Next I’ll focus on one article and one contributor. Finally comes a content overview.
Catch-Up July 1909. City of San Diego population nears 39,500 with 61,600 people spread throughout the county. Newcomers arrive by transcontinental railroad, its terminus a Victorian station on
Broadway.
San Diego supports several vying newspapers and word gets passed through telephone. Electric lights illuminate city streets. A Carnegie public
library graces the town along with a State Normal School and a Marine
Biological Association. We also have theaters, opera and 1400-acre City Park.
Folks going out to see the County Fair marvel the celebration’s in its fortieth year. San Diegans get about through street cars and a cable car
system. Dams, reservoirs and flumes supply the area with water. Several
nurseries compete for business. On the site of the original Mission San Diego de Alcala, Presidio Park is two years into development.
Over in Point Loma, Madame Katherine Tingley presides over the Theosophical Society American headquarters from Lomaland, her 132-acre estate. A Madame of a different sort, Ida Bailey, runs Canary Cottage, a fancy parlor house on lower Fourth Avenue in the Stingeree district. She and her friends entertain, among others, the mayor and the chief of police. Idealistic William E. Smythe founds and leads utopian farm community Little Landers on 550 acres near the United States-Mexico border. Slogan: “A Little Land a Living.” Also a going concern is the University Club founded by thirteen women and eight men graduates of elite universities – Harvard, Vassar, Stanford, Cal Berkeley. An April 6, 1909, vote on liquor laws by male citizens – women not enfranchised – keeps San Diego wet and alcohol legal and pouring.
In this month of July, year 1909, Frenchman Louis Bleriot is first to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft. Orville Wright tests the first US Army airplane and late in the month the Wright Brothers deliver the nation’s first military plane to the Army. Also, the federal government gains power to tax citizen incomes with passage of the 16th
Amendment to the Constitution.
G. Aubrey Davidson, founder of the Southern Trust and Commerce Bank and president of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, proposes our town
stage a celebration of the Panama Canal’s completion. San Diego is the first
port up from the canal on the California coast, and commercial prospects in the making must be advertised to the wider world. 1915 is set as target date for the exposition’s opening.
Brought together by the founding of San Diego Floral Association in 1907, a small dedicated group launches the magazine California Garden, yearly subscription 25 cents.
Floral Founders Photo
This photo hangs on the wall in Floral’s office. Roger Showley, writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune, gives us the scoop: “The San Diego Floral Association held meetings and garden parties in its early years, including this one in 1912 at Rosecroft, the home of its founding president, Alfred D. Robinson, ninth from the left in light suit, cap in hand. Fourth from right is Kate Sessions in scarf and hat.”
READING California Garden
– Volume 1, No. 1. July 1909
First read on a bright warm January day, great sunny weather to launch the Reading California Garden project. Blue skies and a landscape scrubbed clean by early winter rains provide fresh aspect for beginning the read.
Index contents:
Foreword, Cover page.
The magazine “makes its bow,” gives its aims – “[f]lorally, San Diego is a law unto itself, and this magazine hopes to emphasize the workings of that law” – and finishes with flourish of admonition, “[i]t should be in every house, whether there is a garden attached or not.”
The July Flower Garden, Page 2, K.O. Sessions.
You’ll be cultivating a great garden if you apply all of Sessions’ advice. The great horticulturalist and nurserywoman’s first paragraph gives counsel on watering and mulching the July flower garden applicable to our area, and all these years later she’s still right. “Irrigate rather than sprinkle.” Sage too is her instruction on putting plants in the ground. “One must consider their size at ten to fifteen years at least – if not fifty years.”
Then Sessions lets her reader in on all the plant detail. “July is just the month for Bougainvillea planting or transplanting,” the same goes for “the charming Watsonias.” Carnation plants need pinching back of the central shoot, also chrysanthemums “if large and busy plants are desired.” Dig your oxalis and freesia bulbs for later resetting. In the next thirty to fifty days, sow seeds for winter bloom – corn flower, scarlet flax, California poppy; and “for the winter borders, cosmos, phlox, centaureas, stock, calendula, marigolds and mignonette.”
“Whoever,” Sessions asks, “had too much mignonette?”
“Summer afternoon — summer after noon; to me those have always been the two mostbeautiful words in the English language.”
—Henry James, American novelist and critic, quoted in Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance, 1934
In the heat of a mid-July afternoon, to me a most intriguing word in the English language is “fernery.” Sessions knows what she is writing about on this subject as well, “[t]hose who go to the mountains with their own conveyance, or can ship in a few sacks of leaf mold from beneath the old oaks, should do so, for nothing is better for the ferns and begonias.”
Each year come times under our searing sun I too would welcome being buried under “a few sacks of leaf mold from beneath the old oaks.” Short of that occurring, languishing in the coolness of a fernery seems immensely restorative, amongst the fronds and the begonias and violets Kate mentions.
Why does Sessions style herself “K. O.” in her byline rather than the more familiar “Kate”? Gabe Selak, speaking to a San Diego History 101 class offered by the History Center, informed us Sessions wrote books before she made San Diego home. The books, by author “Kate Sessions,” did not sell well. Reason enough to adopt obfuscating initials. Writer and garden historian Nancy Carol Carter thinks Sessions thought gender-neutral initials offered a more professional persona to the magazine’s audience. I do think it occurred to Sessions that muddling her gender with initials might allow for more authority than the girlish “Kate.”
The Rose Garden for July, Page 3, E. Benard.
“After the exertion of spring bloom, the roses, as a general thing, are resting, and now is a good time to clean them up.”
Many rose growers today fertilize and water and expect to see full bloom July through the rest of the summer. Benard, astute son of a French nursery family, recognized dormant season as Southern California summer. Scorching sun and heat are our rigorous equivalent to Eastern and Mid-Western winter blizzards.
Benard knew roses. He emigrated from Orleans, France, prime rose hybridizing and growing area. Account books of his Mission Valley Nursery show Benard placed plant orders for supplies from Paris, France; from California Nursery, his former employer in Niles, California; from San Francisco and even Chicago.
He calls out in this first column a long list of roses. In whites, Kaiserin Augusta Victoria he judges “unquestionably the best.” General McArthur, named for the father of the WWII general, “a new red, is proving its merit.” Dorothy Perkins, “pink climber, of the rambler type, is the rage just now.”
These are roses to make the heart of an old rose grower (ORG) thrum, and perhaps you can hear my heartbeat from where you sit reading these words. The majority of varieties Benard names are still available by mail order from specialty nurseries.
My garden has just received Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, and I hope Benard’s judgment proves true. Greg Lowery of Vintage Roses describes Kaiserin in his catalog with words echoing Benard, “still one of the very best.” The hybrid tea much resembles an earlier era’s fashion of tea rose. The many petals are quilled, white at the outside edges turning pale apricot to buff yellow at center. The rose is said to be “intensely scented.” Scrumptious by description, and I await the bush’s blooms. Kaiserin was very popular in its time.
In July 1909, Benard’s Mission Valley Nursery ruled as the town’s chief rose purveyor. Although Benard himself died in 1928, his widow continued to run the firm until 1945 when it was sold to a buyer who closed the place several years later. For me hope remains that a specimen or two or three from his nursery endures tucked in the back of someone’s garden.
I wonder if anyone else out there grows Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, inherited or bought.
“Subscriptions for The California Garden received by Rodney Stokes, 860 Third Street.”
The July Garden in Southern California, Page 4, Geo. P. Hall.
This is the column to which the backyard gardener will turn. You have a mighty agricultural machine going to judge by Hall’s portrayal of possibilities. He identifies our patch of planet as presenting an “all-the-year-growing-climate.” We learn, “as has been thecase this season, the months of May and June have been exceptionally cool, the probabilities are that the autumn months will make up for the spring deficiency of warmth by an extended season of warm, growing weather, far into the opening winter months.”
Hall counsels the wise among us to “plant more corn for later table use.” And here’s a tip: “It is always in order to plant more radishes, and with the application of nitrate of soda in water keep them growing rapidly, which gives crispness.” By way of encouraging the midnight gardener, he tells us, “[a]ll transplanting should be done in the evening, so the cool and shade of the night and possibly the next morning may aid the plant from recovering from its shock.”
A proper backyard garden will host a henhouse and chicken yard. Yes, rooster crows animated the San Diego scene, and not so far removed from downtown. Hall mentions the cackling creatures in passing. “Lettuce, parsnips, and peas are in the order of procession,” all bringing up the rear to “[k]ale for fowl.” I think we may infer Hall was a man who liked his breakfast eggs fresh and a roasted or stewed hen for dinner.
Sessions starts right out by declaring, “[e]xceeding all other poppies in the world is this half shrubby, perennial-rooted plant, six to fifteen feet high, with sage green leaves and immense bright white, crumpled silken flowers, six to nine inches in diameter. It is a native to the ravines and stream banks of Southern California, from Santa Barbara county to Ensenada, Lower California.”
As the owner of a nursery and cut-flower purveyor, Sessions knows, “[i]t is possible to cut half-blown buds, like the subject illustrated [see below] and ship as far as San Francisco, and they will open up large and perfect.”
To ensure we understand the value of our own native, she tells us, “[t]his poppy is the treasured plant of a few English gardeners, and it has been grown in Vermont for three years with careful winter protection. It thrives in the light soil of Coronado, as it requires a well-drained location.”
This last business about the poppy thriving in Coronado may be true, but my garden proves the reverse. Today, after near ten years of trying, at last a specimen rewards my effort by seeming to appreciate its location. (Bulletin:My plant flowered today!)
Oh, the splendid Sessions’ vision – “it is to be hoped that the nucleus now in the City Park will some day occupy at least ten acres.”
Where in today’s Balboa Park was this Matilija nucleus? What glory! Oh, to go for the vision today. California Native Plant Society, San Diego, are you reading?
Romneya coulteri, or Matillija poppy
Illustration, Page 6: Romneya Coulteri, or Matilija Poppy
Sessions writes in the above article, “[t]his flower is one of the most difficult to paint, and is only occasionally well done. San Diego’s artist, Mr. A. L. Valentine, is one who can equal nature, and his sketches of this flower will help bring fame to this deserving queen of wild flowers.”
Sessions uses the name reportedly bestowed on the artist at birth, but he is well known today as “Valentien.”
The Prize Contest for Home Gardens, Page 7, J.W. Russell.
With this first issue, the lance is raised. Prizes will be given to children for the best home garden – and the winners will be awarded “free transportation to Coronado’s Tent City for a day’s outing.” Hey, I’d sign up!
Russell explains the contest’s background: “This city, for which nature has done everything and man next to nothing, Mrs. Russell wished to see in all respects made beautiful and happily thought of interesting the many school children.” Thus the inauguration of The Russell Prizes three years prior, in 1907.
Hmm, the arithmetic, this being 1909 – oh, um.
“The Russell Prizes” are named in honor of and handed out by Mrs. J.W. Russell. Writer of the magazine’s publicity for the contest is … J.W. Russell. Family Russell works cooperatively in support of San Diego Beautiful and convinces little kiddies to improve their own back yards.
Notice of Meeting, Page 8.
“The San Diego Floral Association will hold its July meeting the evening of the 13th, with Mrs. Jarvis L. Doyle, 3328 G Street. Members are requested to bring with them floral specimens, and be prepared to consider the best means of maintaining an exhibit in the Chamber of Commerce rooms. The question of preliminary work for the fall exhibition will also be discussed.”
Annual Meeting of San Diego Floral Association, Page 8.
Here begins the “faithfully recording the doings of the association” proposed in the Foreword and continued now for 102 years.
Perhaps time’s passage supplies a golden charm that was missing for the Original Reader untouched by nostalgia, but the report conveys a loveliness which demands full conveyance here.
“On June 8th, in the San Diego Club House, the Floral Association celebrated its second birthday. The attendance reached over one hundred and was representative, though many prominent members were avoidably restrained from being there. The reports of the Secretary and Treasurer showed a balance on hand of $90, and 261 members paid up. Not much of the President’s report was taken up with reviewing the doings of the past year, but he feelingly referred to the passing from the ranks of Mrs. E.B. Scott and George Cooke, and the whole audience rose from their seats and remained standing a moment in reverent tribute to their memory. After brief remarks on the general conduct of the Association for the coming year, he suggested the publication of a monthly magazine, to be the organ of the body and also a general garden guide for San Diego and vicinity.
“After acceptance of the reports, the following officers were elected for the coming year: President, Alfred D. Robinson; First Vice-President, Mrs. Frank Salmons; Second Vice-President, Hon. Lyman J. Gage; Treasurer, L.A. Blochman; Secretary, Rodney Stokes, and these form the Directorate. The following committee was appointed to arrange for publication of magazine: L.A. Blochman, K.O. Sessions, Mrs. Manasse, F.A. Frye and A.D. Robinson. At this point L.A. Blochman, acting as spokesman, in a neat speech presented the President with a token of esteem in which the members held him. It took the form of a glass flower bowl with a wavy, broad edge, beautifully decorated with a floral design, silver deposit, and inscribed, “A.D. Robinson, from his Floral Association friends, June 8, 1909.” It was filled with pink carnations and maidenhair.
“A pleasing musical program, refreshments and dancing concluded the enjoyable occasion.”
What this Floral member would give to be present at such a sweet evening! And how wonderful to be able to award a President for service with a gorgeous gift as described! They well knew how to have good times back in the day.
Squibbet, Page 8: “Floral Association members who are out of town for an outing must bring to the club meetings reports of plant life which they have observed – and they must be more observing each year. Geo. P. Hall.”
Article Spotlight “Foreword” appears on the front page of the magazine below the masthead. It is a businesslike declaration of reasons for being. The impression given is of no time to waste. Friendly in attitude, this brisk Foreword might be construed to pitch a no-nonsense “forward!” rally.
I discern behind the piece’s concise format hard thought put to reasons for the magazine’s existence and the subjects it intends to take up. The style is succinct, and its clean commentary not so different from journalism practiced in our own day. In subtext, it exemplifies the character proclaimed for itself. It’s fun to read. “Foreword” makes a strong case for California Garden.
“Foreword” goes unsigned but we may infer the Page 8 listing of publication committee members identifies the involved parties.
The words are few, beautifully put together and still reverberate today. They are valuable enough here at the start of READING California Garden to give them in full.
Foreward California Garden July 1909
“FOREWORD
The California Garden makes its bow to the good folks of San Diego, with this, its first issue. It desires to be confidential, and frankly state how it comes to be published, and what it hopes to accomplish. In the first place, it is the official organ of the San Diego Floral Association, the objects of which are all towards a more beautiful city, a city of gardens – taking advantage of its wonderful climatic conditions and realizing some part of its possibilities floriculturally. In addition to faithfully recording the doings of the association, it proposes to give practical and timely information with regard to the flower garden and the vegetable patch. It will tell each month how to take care of that which is already growing, and what to plant beside. And the information will be furnished by local authorities from their own experience. Indigenous plants of merit will be dealt with in special illustrated articles, and the latest introductions in the floral world, worthy of a trial in this locality, will be brought to the attention of its readers. Through the publications devoted to gardening in the United States are most numerous and meritorious, they utterly fail as guides in San Diego. No rain in summer, no snow or frost in winter, a green and growing land at Christmastide, entirely upset their calculations. Florally, San Diego is a law unto itself, and this magazine hopes to emphasize the workings of that law. The California Garden has already secured the support of most of the local authorities upon subjects within its province. It has in preparation articles of great interest relating to local plants, shrubs and flowers, and it intends to open a query box for the many new-comers, and almost as numerous old residents, who just want to know.
Like all activities of the San Diego Floral Association, this, its organ, is engineered by volunteers. Its object is purely to make more effective the efforts of the association, so the subscription for a year has been fixed at the nominal sum of twenty-five cents, in the expectation that its circulation will be large and widespread. It should be in every house, whether there is a garden attached or not.”
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One trait stands out: the infant creation possesses a strong sense of self and purpose. The California Garden will deal with the native and the new. Its authors realize the special conditions of gardening in San Diego – “no snow or frost in winter, a green and growing land at Christmastide.”
“… information will be furnished by local authorities from their own experience.” They wrote it and they’ll read about it because this was an attentive, educated group. Middle class, economically secure, able to think of planting for pleasure but not overlooking supplying the kitchen from vegetable plot, orchard and chicken yard.
The writers envision “the many new-comers, and almost as numerous old residents, who just want to know.” Some, I’m sure, would find “a query box” helpful, but my feeling is this group enjoys playing together.
When the writers cite “… publications devoted to gardening in the United States are most numerous,” we are in an age other than our own. Garden publications today drop like – ahem –flies.
Another observation – they sure used commas lavishly back in the day.
Finally, all the wisdom to be found in California Garden is available for a “subscription for a year” of the “sum of twenty-five cents.” Twelve issues for a quarter! Pages jam-packed with information written in agreeable style available for such a small sum! The magazine, I’m guessing, operated at a deficit much as it does today.
Personality Spotlight – In July 1909 Ernest Benard reigned as San Diego’s king of roses. He arrived in our town in 1887 guarding a trainload of garden stock sent from California Nursery, Niles, California, to the Hotel Del Coronado. He stayed on to supervise the hotel grounds but soon resigned. Prospects here beguiled a born-and-bred nurseryman.
Benard acquired land in Mission Valley in 1888 and opened a sales yard at Sixth and “D” Streets. Eventually his sales yard consolidated with the Mission Valley growing grounds. The valley of Benard’s time contained dairy and vegetable farms, so his nursery was well located for an abundant supply of manure.
In 1891 Ernest Benard married his Margaretha in the home of A. Blochman, pioneer banker, loyal member of San Diego Floral Association and a contributor to California Garden.
Benard’s connection to his French roots served him and San Diegans well. From the first, he marketed fruits of the Mediterranean region – both wine and table grapes, olives, pomegranates, walnuts, figs, quince, loquats, guavas, persimmons, Logan- and strawberries AND (big breath intake) lemons, oranges, grapefruit, apples, pears, cherries, apricots and peaches. His clients also could find palms, flowers and ornamental plants and seeds.
His offering list advised, “intending planters will do well to examine my stock and obtain prices before purchasing elsewhere.” Benard supplied plant stock for Balboa Park, Point Loma, and early ornamental plantings for San Diego homes and estates.
His fame came from selling roses from one of the world’s leading hybridizing areas. He set himself out as “agent for G. Benard roses and nursery stock, Orleans, France.”
Reading an early catalog of rose offerings is to impel any Old Rose Grower to drool. Bernard advertised his was “the largest collection of roses in the county.” Price was “15-20 to 25 cts, each according to size.”
Did I mention I grow old roses?
In my yard are several offered by an early Benard catalog circa late 1890s. Caroline Testout, Duchesse de Brabant, Perle de Jardin, the tea-noisette shrub Madame Alfred Carriere covered with exquisitely-shaped buff-colored blooms. Rosamund was used for root stock, but still is a wonderful dark red once-blooming rose in its own right. The polyantha baby pink Cecile Bruner Benard terms a “Twlyantha,” a description I’ve not heard before.
Other roses he mentions that I covet include Marie Van Houte, Coquette de Lyon, Pink Cherokee, white Lamarque, and orange William Allen Richardson. Beauty of Glazenwood, the Gold Rush rose, comes with the tag “a sunset glory.” Rambler Dorothy Perkins, Benard writes, “is the rage just now. It grows like a squash vine, only faster, and comes into a pink glow of bloom in June, when most of the other varieties have gone on strike.”
Maman Cochet and its sport White Maman Cochet, also listed, come from a family of French hybridizers. I grow Niles Cochet unintentionally as it was Maman I ordered from a catalog. Maman is described as “[s]hades of pink, peach and blush in a large flower of high-centered form; very fragrant.” My Niles exactly, but blush edged with vibrant cherry red. The Cochet roses are late teas and grow in shrub form. All suit our area, growing to impressive size and shape and in constant bloom. Although classified as Old Roses today, when Benard advertised them the Cochet family qualified as cutting edge.
Benard regularly contributed rose-growing advice to magazine readers. As an émigré from France, English must have been his second language. His success in business argues he negotiated the intricacies and ambiguities of an adopted language well. Benard’s skill with words is such that one notices not a hint of Gallic construction. Perhaps he also hit lucky with an attentive editor.
Benard retired in 1925 and died in 1928. His widow ran the business until 1945. She sold the concern to Mrs. Clark M. Cavenee, who – no slouch in capitalizing on her predecessor’s fame – changed the name to “Benard’s Mission Valley Nursery.” Cavenee closed the business in the late 1940s.
OVERALL IMPRESSION California Garden Volume 1, No. 1. July 1909
With solid print embellished with a single drawing and free of distracting advertising, the no-frills first issue gets right down to business with the announcement of intentions and immediately gets on with presentation, confirming its word and the worth of the 25 cents subscription rate. The Foreword states what the magazine will do and then gets out of its way after the space of one page and goes about the doing.
We now know it has achieved its goal, “the expectation that its circulation will be large and widespread.” My feeling is the authors’ admonition has proved itself: the magazine “should be in every house, whether there is a garden attached or not.” More, I believe the magazine deserves the largest and most widespread distribution all over our state.
Remarkable beyond the all-business approach is the omitted mention of editor and editorial staff. In addition to names cited in article bylines are individuals announced as “a committee appointed to arrange for publication of magazine.” No great stretch of imagination is necessary to infer L.A. Blochman, K.O. Sessions, Mrs. Manasse, F.A. Frye and A.D. Robinson are the people behind the magazine’s appearance.
July issue puzzle: What does Sessions mean in “The July Flower Garden” when she writes, “[o]ne of the chief needs is the pinching back of the central shoot of all young carnation plants. They should be the size of a saucer, at least, before they are allowed to bloom”?
NEXT
August 1909, Volume 1, Number 2
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Much appreciation is accorded San Diego Floral Association for furnishing bound copies of the magazine to enable this blog.
“Thank you” goes to the San Diego History Center for their overall good work and for making the archives available for research. Special thanks to Jane Kenealy, History Center Archivist, for her counsel and assistance.
Thank you to Floral members, then and now, all the fine folk who work so diligently in pursuit of the mission.
Mission:
To promote the knowledge and appreciation of horticulture and floriculture in the San Diego region.
Learn the San Diego Floral Association history by reading articles written by the founding members and authors who came after them. 256 pages. See pictures of members, flower shows, early magazine covers and other activities.
Enjoy the long history of our magazine.
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