Spring 2020 Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Volume 23, Number 2 JOURNAL OF THE CALIFORNIA GARDEN & LANDSCAPE HISTORY SOCIETY EDEN EDITORIAL BOARD Editor: Steven Keylon Editorial Board: Keith Park (Chair), Kate Nowell, Ann Scheid, Susan Schenk, Libby Simon, Jennifer Trotoux, Noel Vernon Consulting Editors: Marlea Graham, Barbara Marinacci Regional Correspondent, San Diego: Vonn Marie May Graphic Design: designSimple.com Submissions: Send scholarly papers, articles, and book reviews to the editor: [email protected] Memberships/Subscriptions: Join the CGLHS and receive a subscription to Eden. Individual $50 • Family $75 Sustaining $150 and above Student $20 Nonprofit/Library $50 Visit www.cglhs.org to join or renew your membership. Or mail check to California Garden & Landscape History Society, PO Box 220237, Newhall, CA 91322-0237. Questions or Address Changes: [email protected] CGLHS BOARD OF DIRECTORS President: Christine E. O’Hara Vice President: David Laws Recording Secretary: Nancy Carol Carter Membership Officer: Antonia Adezio Contents Treasurer: Judy Horton Directors at large: Kelly Comras, Keith Park, Ann Scheid, Libby Simon, Jennifer Trotoux, Janet Gracyk The Mysterious Smoke Trees of Palm Springs Past President: Steven Keylon Steven Keylon ..........................................................................................................................................4 HONORARY LIFE MEMBERS VLT Gardner Marlea Graham, Editor emerita From a Renaissance Villa: William A. Grant (Founder) The Italian Landscape Style in America Barbara Marinacci Nancy Carol Carter ............................................................................................................................. David Streatfield 18 The California Garden & Landscape History Society (CGLHS) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization devoted to celebrating the beauty and Members in the News: CGLHS at Modernism Week diversity of California’s historic gardens and landscapes; promoting wider Steven Keylon ..................................................................................................................................... knowledge, preservation, and restoration of California’s historic gardens and 36 landscapes; organizing study visits to historic gardens and landscapes as well as to relevant archives and libraries; and offering opportunities for a lively interchange among members at meetings, garden visits, and other events. Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society (ISBN 1524-8062) is published quarterly. Subscription is a benefit of CGLHS membership. © 2020 California Garden & Landscape History Society California Garden & Landscape History Society Above: The mysterious smoke trees of Palm P.O. Box 220237, Newhall, CA 91322-0237 Successive owners have preserved Sarah Ferrell’s expressions of spirituality in the Georgia garden she began in 1841. Tichenor Brothers Collection, 1930s Springs. Photo by Millicent Harvey. www.cglhs.org postcard courtesy the Boston Public Library. 2 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Spring 2020 • Vol. 23, No. 2 3 Artist Paul Grimm (American, 1891- 1974) was inspired by the smoke trees of Palm Springs, painting them for decades. This painting is titled ”Smoke Trees THE MYSTERIOUS ‘Neath San Jacinto.” Courtesy Heritage Auctions. SmokeOF PALM SPRINGS Trees STEVEN KEYLON EDEN EDITOR 4 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Spring 2020 • Vol. 23, No. 2 5 The resort village of Palm Springs is known blue-gray clouds cascade down the dry, sandy “The nudist cult, which so many of the desert around the world for its golf courses, muse- washes like puffs of smoke on the horizon. plants appear to have joined in their battle to limit ums, entertainment, and shopping. However, In 1938, landscape architect Ralph D. Cor- Opposite: Artist Stephen one of the great pleasures of being there is the nell, who was fascinated by the flora of the Willard was well known for transpiration of moisture content to its irreduc- ability to get away from all visible signs of civi- desert, wrote a book titled Conspicuous Cali- his large-scale photographs of smoke trees, which lization very quickly, and to hike into desert fornia Plants. In it, he describes the smoke ible minimum, presents one of its most striking and he would overpaint with landscapes with dramatic rock formations, tree as “a softly outlined form of mythical Rembrandt oils. This example beautiful members in the form of the desert smoke often populated with Bighorn sheep. Deep in substance silhouetted against the deeper blue is titled Song of the Sunshine, the canyons, one can find cool, shady riparian of a cloudless sky.” Upon closer inspection of courtesy Hindman Galleries. tree. Such leaves as appear on the plant are simple oases, filled with native trees. Palms Washing( - the mysterious tree, he finds: All smoke tree photos and and few and persist on young shoots for a very few tonia filifera), sycamores (Platanus racemosa), captions are by landscape willows (Chilopsis linearis ssp. arcuata), and Its leafless branches divide into countless photographer Millicent weeks at most, seeming to be more of a jaunty ges- cottonwoods (Populus fremontii ssp. Fremontii) thousands of branchlets, which in turn may Harvey, who has kindly given line the creeks, the banks covered in trailing be reduced to slender spines in such profusion permission to publish them in Eden. ture than any serious attempt to convince the world wild grapevines (Vitis girdiana).2 that what actually is rather a harsh and thorny that foliage is necessary either to the health or plant presents the appearance of being soft and Above: Title: Smoke Tree 1 There is another native tree that has ephemeral in its illusory intricacy of structure. Ranch. During late May and beauty of well-ordered plant life on the desert.” captured the attention of artists for over a A scattered band of these trees seen traveling early June, the inconspicuous century. The smoke tree (Psorothamnus spi- in casual disorder down the drifted wastes of smoke tree goes into a full bloom for two weeks. Ralph D. Cornell, 1938 nosus; syn. Dalea spinosa) at first glance looks a desert wash, with the light of a full moon Photographed at Smoke Tree — Conspicuous California Plants, like its name—graceful groves of soft, hazy pouring its rich silver hither and yon o’er the Ranch in Palm Springs. 6 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Spring 2020 • Vol. 23, No. 2 7 night-softened forms of rugged landscape, is a of the Palm Springs Desert Museum in 1938, mystic sight that bestirs childhood memories of was an admired naturalist, educator, native ghost tales and goblins.3 desert plant champion, and author of the book Desert of the Palms (1938). In a 1935 For much of the year, the tree remains news article, he explained: cloaked in nondescript gray spiny branches. In the early summer, however, it suddenly The trees of our desert are few in number but erupts into a dazzling display of deep and fra- of a hardy strain, able to withstand the demands grant indigo flowers. As Cornell described it, of life in a land where the unfitted succumb quickly. There are seven kinds that might be clas- To know the smoke tree is an experience; but sified as native, six of these dwell in the sandy one cannot know it at its strikingly best unless washes and waste places, the other requires a he has seen it in full flush of flower in June or constant supply of water, hence is confined to early July, after the first blast of summer heat has the canyons and water holes. Of these seven, driven visiting dilettanti back to the refrigerated five—ironwood, Palo Verde, honey mesquite, comforts of coastal civilization. Then, the tiny, screwbean, mesquite, smoke tree—belong to the pea-shaped flowers, that have been described pea family. It is remarkable that a single family, as pure ultramarine and as deep as violet- extensive as it is, should furnish such a large purple, appear in such profusion and in such percent of the hardy desert trees.5 unbelievable intensity of color that they actually Below: Title: Desert Glow. An obliterate all vision of the plant structure with a The first inhabitants of the Coachella atmospheric day with dark clouds saturating deluge of brilliant pigment that can be Valley, the Agua Caliente Band of the Cahuilla and dramatic light reveal the seen from afar. Closer inspection also discloses a Indians, were known to have utilized the detailed beauty and varied color of delicate perfume that further adds to the illusory diverse flora of the desert. Dr. Katherine Siva the smoke trees in Araby Wash in 4 Palm Springs. charm of so unusual a plant. Saubel and Lowell Bean, who together stud- ied the Cahuilla’s uses and experimentations Opposite: The smoke tree creates It is surprising to learn that the smoke of more than 250 native desert plant species stark contrast and blends well tree is a member of the pea family (Faba- for culinary, medicinal, and technological with other desert flora, creating a beautiful palette of color. ceae). Even more astonishing is the fact that benefits, found that the smoke tree was not 6 Photographed in Smoke Tree so are most of the other trees native to the among them. The first non-native to dis- Ranch. Coachella Valley. Don Admiral, the founder cover the smoke tree was legendary Captain 8 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Spring 2020 • Vol. 23, No. 2 9 John C. Fremont, who undertook one of his such as Alson Skinner Clark, Paul Grimm, referring to it as the “land of the purple EDEN: How did you get started in fine art plant-gathering expeditions of the west in Gordon Coutts, Jimmy Swinnerton, Agnes shadow.” Known for his large-format pho- photography? 1844. One of the specimens he acquired on Pelton, and Carl Bray painted landscapes— tographs, he often painted over them with that trip was a smoke tree, bringing back native flora against the dramatic backdrop of Rembrandt oils, adding texture and color, MILLICENT HARVEY: In the early 2000s, I a small, incomplete sample.7 In 1852 Dr.