The Island of Rare Fruits and Trees

A Pleasure Island for Plant Nuts

Today we discovered a garden treasure in Fremont in a place that was so very unexpected. This garden is only a few miles from home.  It is on a peninsula, almost an island, in our local quarry lakes.  The garden, even in January, was full of bright colors, odd shapes, strange flowers, exotic plants, fruits, and a promise of free samples. Just the list of conifers takes up 8 pages. Wow.

I was as excited as Pinocchio when he first saw Pleasure Island, without the dire consequences (donkey ears) that Pinocchio's friends suffered.

The Palms go to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition

The California Nursery Company in Niles supplied many palm trees for the Panama Pacific International Exposition. In the 1915 catalog, there is a photo of Canary Island palms on a railcar. It says "Trainload of large Phoenix canariensis. Were planted on Palm Avenue at 1915 Exposition."

The Conifers go to the Fair

The 1915 California Nursery Company Catalog is a departure from the previous years' simpler text catalogs. It looks like something special is going on this year.  The front cover is beautifully designed. The catalog is filled with photos: Norfolk Island pines, Monkey Puzzle Trees, deodars, Irish Junipers, spruces, weeping Sequoia, and Irish Yew.  There are pictures of how the Spanish pines are dug and boxed. And that's only the first 15 pages of about 130 pages.

Nursery and Exposition Logos, 1912 - 1913

A smattering of logos from the Transaction and Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting of the California Association of Nurserymen, Held in Oakland, on Thurs. Fri. and Sat. November 7-9, 1912 and the Transaction and Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting of the California Association of Nurserymen, Held in Fresno, on Thurs. Fri. and Sat. October 16-18, 1913.

Stripy Rainbow Tulips at Holland's flower garden, the Keukenof

At an early age, I must have decided that flowers
could be stripy rainbow colors.
Orbiting above the flower and the earth,
I think it might be John Glenn,
also in rainbow color.
Our TVs were black and white
but our imagination was in color.

Keukenof is world famous for its spring flowering bulb displays. Their English landscape style garden near Amsterdam is huge. It takes a couple of hours to see the gardens.

In my family, flowers are not necessarily everyone's favorite thing to look at in large quantities, but luckily it was Mother's Day when we visited. And so I was able to cash in on that happy circumstance. I am so glad we went. It was the last weekend they were open to the public and many of the beds had already finished up. There was still an amazing display of flowers.