University of California • Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

California Horticulture Oral History Series

W. George Waters

ENGLISH GARDEN HISTORY, WESTERN GARDENING, AND
CREATING AND EDITING PACIFIC HORTICULTURE

With an Introduction by
Susan M. Smith

Interviews Conducted by

Suzanne B. Riess

in 1998

Copyright c 2000 by The Regents of the University of California

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading
participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of
Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of
collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a
narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-
informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the
historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for
continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected
manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in
other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material,
oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete
narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in
response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved,
and irreplaceable .

************************************

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement
between The Regents of the University of California and W. George
Waters dated July 7, 1998. The manuscript is thereby made available
for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript,
including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library
of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the
manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University
of California, Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be
addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include
identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated
use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with W. George Waters require that he be notified of the
request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

W. George Waters, "English Garden History,
Western Gardening, and Creating and
Editing Pacific Horticulture," an oral
history conducted in 1998 by Suzanne B.
Riess, Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 2000.

Copy no.

George Waters, Berkeley, 1982,

Photograph by Sharon Leong

Cataloguing information

WATERS, W. George (b. 1925) Editor

English Garden History, Western Gardening, and Creating and Editing Pacific
Horticulture, 2000, viii, 229 pp.

Boyhood in wartime London, conscientious objector status, alternative service
jobs; research work at Kodak, Ltd., 1954-1972, bicycling; British Garden
History Society activities, programs, horticultural groups, status; Waters 's
gardens in England; marriage, and move to Berkeley, CA; connecting with
California Horticultural Society, founding of Pacific Horticultural
Foundation, decision to revamp California Horticultural Journal: journal
format committee, financing, supporters, advertisers, distribution; discussion
of Waters 's editorial stance, book reviews, photography, Mediterranean
gardens, working with authors; distinctive Bay Area gardens, gardeners, and
Lester Hawkins, Marge Hayakawa, others. Appendices include an
autobiographical statement by Olive Rice Waters; and letters to authors.

Introduction by Susan M. Smith, Retired co-owner, San Francisco Travel
Service.

Interviewed 1998 by Suzanne B. Riess for the California Horticulture
Oral History Series, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Bancroft Library, on behalf of future researchers,

wishes to thank the following persons and organizations whose

contributions made possible this oral history of W. George Waters,

Southern California Horticultural Society
Strybing Arboretum Society of Golden Gate Park

Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust
Elizabeth and Stephen Bechtel, Jr. Foundation

TABLE OF CONTENTS--W. George Waters

INTRODUCTION by Susan Smith i

INTERVIEW HISTORY by Suzanne B. Riess iv

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION viii

I BACKGROUND AND EARLY EMPLOYMENT 1
Background and Family 1
Schooling, and Telegraph Messenger Job 5
Critical Awareness, Conscientious Objection 8
Surviving the War, in London 13
Strange Episodes, Wartime 14
Debating 16
In By A Back Door, Teaching 20
Senior Technician, Former Farmworker 21
Bedford, British Whiting, Motorbiking 24
A Garden on a Greensand Ridge 27
Work for Kodak, Ltd., 1954 to 1972 29

II ENTRY INTO THE WORLD OF GARDENS AND GARDEN HISTORY 34
Garden History Society, New Horizons 34
First Horticultural Society Involvement, Garden at Oxhey, 1961 37
Who Gardens in England, and Why 39
Publicizing the Garden History Society 42
Deeper Into the Oxhey Garden 48
Putting on Garden Programs 51
From Oxhey to Kings Langley, by Car! 54
The House of Flint 55
Iris Society Garden Party 57

III CALIFORNIA HORTICULTURAL BEGINNINGS 59
Finding Olive, Over the Irises 59
Becoming a Gardener in Berkeley 61
Connecting with the California Horticultural Society 63
Pacific Horticultural Foundation Founded 65
Plans to Revamp the Journal 67
Decisions on Editing, Designing, Printing, Distributing 68

IV LAUNCHING PACIFIC HORTICULTURE 72
An Ad Hoc Format Committee 72
And Other Editorial Committees 74
Limiting Factors for Pacific Horticulture 76
Thoughts on Some Other Garden Journals 78
Horticultural Stratifications, Fads 80
Assessing the Audience 82
Editorial Stance, and Letters to the Editor 85
Advertisements 87
Promotions, Subscriptions 91
Funding Through Loans and Grants 93

Friends of Pacific Horticulture 96

Marge Hayakawa's Place in the Picture 99

Objectives, and Who's In Charge? 101

Discussions in the Overheated Salon 104

V THE EDITOR AT WORK 108
Nora Barlow's Editorial Contributions 108
The Question of Succession 110
The Answer to the Question 112
On a Lighter Editorial Note 113
The Position and Intention of Book Reviews 114
Timber Press 117
Niche Magazines, and the Journal's Niche 118
Improvements: Prose, Pictures, Presses, Pleasure 119
Publishing Horticultural and Garden Books 122
Lester Hawkins and the Mediterranean Garden 125
George's Interviews with Garden Designers 128
Fair Treatment of Plant Groups, Payment to Authors 135
Marcia Donohue's Garden, and Other Berkeley Gardens 137

VI THE EDITOR ANSWERS VARIOUS QUESTIONS 139
Bicycling, After the War, and a Lost Film 139
Obstacles to Preserving Archives 142
Histories of Nurseries, and Passing Trends 143
More on Archives, Editors, and Bike Racing 145
The Royal Potential of Horticultural Societies 147
Speaking for the Greenhorns 149
Practical Writing Tips 151
Decisions in Making Up an Issue of the Journal 155
Personality, and Pat Talbert's Pieces 157
The Armchair Gardener 160
A Note on a Trend 163
George and Olive Waters' Garden in Berkeley 164
The Difference a Good Photograph Makes 168
Filing Systems, and More on Photographing 170
Inside the Front Cover 173
A Medal the Size of a Dinner Plate, 1990 174
The Garden Writers Association 176
Unfinished Business 178

TAPE GUIDE 179

APPENDICES

A. Biographical Statement 180

B. Report of the Journal Revision Committee to the President,

Pacific Horticultural Foundation 182

C. Some Books Read Over the Past Twelve Months 186

D. Peering Through the Web, by Olive Rice Waters 187

E. Letters from the Editor 190

F. Horticulture, Botany, and Landscape Design Series List 222

INDEX 226

INTRODUCTION by Susan M. Smith

I was surprised to see a tall angular fellow step into the
Ratcliffs1 car at Lake Shasta. I had a ride with Bob and Evelyn on a
California Horticultural Society weekend field trip to see the
wildflowers and conifers so well known in this Shasta-Trinity area of
northern California. Now, on the return trip, the company included a
stranger. As the Ratcliffs had taken a garden tour in 1970 that I had
organized to Virginia's great houses and gardens, we all began talking
of this. Soon I learned I was with the editor of Pacific Horticulture,
a magazine I greatly admired.

Learning that George Waters as a teenager had used his bicycle to
reach nearby great gardens in England, I visualized before me a
wonderful tour leader. Here was someone who could relate to and
describe English gardens, their design and influences. After all, the
English are the greatest of gardeners, artistic and knowledgeable.

Almost all museums, botanical gardens, and other nonprofits
sponsor tours now. Then it was unusual. There were decided benefits
for sponsors, including contributions to the sponsoring organization as
part of the tour cost. Of course, it would be impossible to obtain the
expertise of someone like George Waters with the average "tour."

The course our conversation was taking met with a bemused and
slightly mocking reception. Still, the interest such a tour would have
for readers of Pacific Horticulture was obvious. The Ratcliffs declared
themselves fellow tour member candidates.

The planning began on return to San Francisco where my travel
agency was located. The Pacific Horticulture tour to English gardens in
1978 proved a great success. George had written a fascinating article
describing the history of English gardening. We sent that in advance to
tour members. He had given it as a lecture before garden groups, and it
was immensely popular when presented to the California Horticultural
Society. During the tour George offered after-dinner talks about the
gardens of the coming days from the historic perspective he knew so
well.

I joined one of the several tours George led to English gardens.
I recall the small shock of watching tour members "bare-root" the plants
they had purchased for return through U.S. customs. This was done in
one of the bathrooms of the fine hotel in which we were staying!
Fortunately tour members had permission. I needn't describe the
appearance of the bathtub at the end of the process.

ii

Because of the prestige of Pacific Horticulture, and its many
readers in England, entree was possible to gardens not generally open.
It was a tremendous surprise to have one such garden owner treat the
entire group to a delicious lunch.

Unexpected moments often occurred. Imagine arriving at a lovely
country house with a long view over a beautiful wooded valley. At the
entrance to the garden is a rickety card table. It is the aristocratic
owner herself who is selling one-pound tickets for entrance to the
garden!

Early on, the potential for tours to other destinations led to the
establishment of a Pacific Horticulture tour committee chaired by Betty
Rollins, a keen gardener and former president of the Herb Society.
Over the years Pacific Horticulture tours visited South Africa, Japan,
China, Greece and Turkey, India, France and Spain.

Periodically Pacific Horticulture tours returned to different
sections of England, with its never-ending great and exquisite small
gardens — and owner-gardeners--to visit. I was involved in the planning
of the English garden tours, and some of the others as well. English
gardens were a personal enthusiasm. I was bowled over by what a British
gardener in the British climate could do with an herbaceous border, and
George Waters brought an intimate knowledge and understanding of that
tradition to the tours that he led.

The prestige and worldwide reputation of Pacific Horticulture
always meant so much in planning tours. When Brazil was decided on as a
destination, the tour leader drafted by George was Conrad Hamerman,
friend and biographer of the great Brazilian landscape designer and
conservationist, Roberto Burle Marx. The tour included a lunch hosted
by Burle Marx at his house and garden outside of Rio de Janeiro.

In the fall of 1987 in New Zealand, Gordon Collier, one of the
great gardeners "down under," led the Pacific Horticulture tour group at
George's request around his friends' gardens on the north and south
islands. He and his wife Annette then managed to put up some twenty
tour members "bed and breakfast" style with his relatives on the
neighboring peaks of an original family sheep station of some 20,000
acres !

Our 1985 Australia tour was led by an American resident of Perth,
Dr. Arthur Weston, a botanist and environmental analyst. It was
memorable that garden hosts in Queensland arranged books—all on the
native plants of the region—on a very large dining room table. It was
an impressive display of interest and knowledge for Californians who at
that time had little comparable in terms of beautiful books on the flora
of California.

iii

Pacific Horticulture tours expanded the interests and enthusiasms
of participants while interest abroad was reflected in the reception
given the groups traveling with George.

Barbara Pitschel, the popular and well known head librarian at
Strybing Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, told me of describing to
visiting students and researchers qualities of publications on hand that
might interest them. "It is the editorial and pictorial quality of
Pacific Horticulture and the very high standards which first come to
mind," she remarked. "George is impeccable in terms of detail—nothing
gets by him. Pacific Horticulture," she continued, "has a stated
mission and stays focused on it."

The Strybing Library, with its delightful garden setting, has a
wonderful collection of books and periodicals. In looking at their many
publications from the world of horticulture, Dick Turner remarked,
"There is nothing comparable to Pacific Horticulture. Other regions
envy us for it. It is unique."

He went on to tell me that taking over as editor from George
Waters was the highest honor. "He is someone I greatly respected and
admired for his editorship. Later I was impressed with how skilled the
production of the magazine had become and how organized those taking
part in it were," he added.

I should like to close on a professional and personal note. It
was a delight and pleasure to work with George Waters in this area of
his professional life. It was easy for me to do so--all went smoothly
forward. The tours were enthusiastically received and, I believe, very
satisfying to the participants. Fortunate we are in having this tall,
angular English-speaking bloke, witty as well as immensely talented,
at home on our Pacific West Coast.

Susan M. Smith

Retired co-owner, San Francisco Travel Service

San Francisco
October 1999

iv
INTERVIEW HISTORY- -W. George Waters

George Waters retired in 1997 as the editor of western gardening's
prize-winning journal, Pacific Horticulture, quarterly publication of
the member groups of the Pacific Horticultural Foundation. Very soon
afterward we sought him out to be an interviewee in the Regional Oral
History Office's series of interviews on horticulture, botany, and
landscape design.

Interviews grouped in ROHO's California horticulture series go
back to memoirs like that of John Gregg, who founded Berkeley's
landscape architecture department; Thomas Church, the region's most
famous landscape architect, and interviews with his staff and clients;
nurseryman and bonsai master Toichi Domoto; Ruth Bancroft, whose unique
Walnut Creek garden inspired organization of the Garden Conservancy;
Adele and Lewis Lawyer, plant pathologists and native iris hybridizers;
habitat explorer and personality Wayne Roderick; and California
Horticulture editor Owen Pearce. And it frequently happened, in my
twenty-plus years of conducting these interviews with Bay Area landscape
architects and horticulturists for ROHO, that I would be puzzled about
something, editorial or informational, and George Waters 's would be the
English-accented voice with suggestions at the other end of the questing
telephone.

But why would Pacific Horticulture's editor be my informant over
the years? Certainly the complete list of ROHO's interviews in
horticulture, botany, and landscape design (bound into this most recent
volume in the series) appears too varied, from plant taxonomists and
landscape contractors and foresters to the owner of Filoli, the landmark
estate in Woodside, California, and members of Kensington's Blake Garden
family, to be encompassed by one man's expertise. Yet unifying that
diversity is the near certainty that the persons interviewed for the
oral histories also made their appearance in Pacific Horticulture,
either as garden owners, or experts and authors. Editor George Waters
and his contributing authors cast their net as widely as possible, and
made of the journal a community of garden people.

* * *

About George Waters, as he says in his summary biographical piece,
he "moved to California in the early 1970s and worked for a while in
garden restoration and design. In 1976 he helped launch Pacific
Horticulture to provide gardeners in the summer-dry western United
States with their own publication... [then] became the editor of Pacific
Horticulture later that year, and discovered a facility with the
language that had been dormant since childhood." That far-too-
abbreviated summary is fleshed out in the following memoir in which

George tells his stories of boyhood in World War II London, coming to
grips with his conscientious objector status, and the many careers he
subsequently pursued, along the way becoming a "keen gardener,
cultivating in turn the productive greensand of Bedfordshire, the dry
gravel of Hertfordshire, and the clay and marl of the Chiltern Hills."

The foregoing three-line quote, brief as it is, is nevertheless,
for me, suffused with the voice of George Waters. A voice and a manner,
an accent, perhaps, that recurs throughout the oral history, and of
course in print in the editorial pieces and numerous book reviews he
wrote—and on occasion still writes — for Pacific Horticulture.
Beautifully illustrating his tone and approach are the thirteen letters
we have appended to this volume and titled "Letters From the Editor."
The reader will appreciate that while graciously, subtly, allowing his
authors to reconsider their text, George Waters makes his editorial camp
irresistible.

Once George Waters agreed to be interviewed, it was decided,
atypically for our office, to have the tape-recording take place in the
interviewer's home. George is a North Berkeley neighbor, by a mile's
level stroll, and he volunteered to walk up The Alameda to what we would
consider my "office" to be interviewed rather than put up with the
problematic parking logistics associated with a trip to the more neutral
space of a university library office. Such an arrangement, of course,
meant that there was on my part a certain uneasy sense of being hostess,
and of my garden being subject to the scrutiny of the retired editor of
the West Coast's singularly excellent quarterly journal. "Welcome, come
along my garden path, gaze down on my lawn, my trees, et cetera." I did
take advantage of George's informed interest in plants, and his eye for
space, and looked anew at my garden. And, as is the habit of the avid
plant person, we exchanged cuttings, in this case varieties of salvia,
in recognition of the end of the interviews.

An Interview History—what we call this piece of writing— is
placed at the beginning of ROHO volumes on the assumption that readers
will wish for a degree of insight into the experience of the oral
history conversation, the interaction, through some description of the
situation and the affect of the persons involved. And so, put simply,
George Waters came to be interviewed for five two-hour sessions, between
July 6th and September 19, 1998. But the tapes and the transcript
reveal meetings punctuated by an immoderate amount of laughter. It took
a transcriber as skilled and patient as Shannon Page to sort through all
the noisy amusement. George Waters told his stories modestly, self-
deprecatingly at times, but with an ear for the play on words, and the
surprising twists and turns of his life.

* * *

vi

I worried about how George Waters would handle the editing of his
oral history. On the first occasion when I encountered him in person,
sometime in 1997, seated with his wife Olive Rice Waters, and a plate of
potluck dinner, preceding a talk at a California Horticultural Society
meeting, I brought up the possibility of his doing an oral history
interview. He made clear then to me that he is a man intensely
interested in things being well written, and to the point. He quoted
George Orwell in Politics and the English Language, from whom he
declares he takes his cue as an editor—and I looked up the entire
quote- -as follows:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes will
ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying
to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom
will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an
effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I
put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably
ugly?

Needless to say, I made my case for applying different standards
to the spoken process that is oral history. But having to abandon
Orwell's control and standards in favor of respecting the apparent
randomness of question-answer conversation was probably excruciating for
George Waters. When it came to editing the oral history he did a
painstaking job with what he referred to variously and unlovingly as the
"Huge Pile of Paper," or the "White Elephant." I quote him:

My November note [to the interviewer] did come out sounding
off key, but was intended to convey only amazement at what,
between us, we had wrought. And you must admit that in it I
display some astounding verbal ticks... all those "and so
on's" and "I thinks." And all that laughter! It makes our
sessions sound more like riotous parties than intellectual
exchanges! (One paragraph of mine is so completely
incomprehensible as to suggest more Bacchanal than party!)
Fortunately colorful oddities diminish in later pages, where
recalling the significant incidents of my life demands only
shallow dredging in the murky waters of memory, and I'm less
surprised myself by what comes to the surface.

I do see that extensive editing would remove too much of the
interview flavor. On the other hand, readers are needlessly
irritated when their attention to the thread of the story is
deflected often by irrelevant words and phrases. So I hope
that you will find that mine is a middle course...

By proposing the addition of several extended discussions in the
form of inserted pieces of typescript (marked ++ in the text), he
added substantially to the background history and setting of scene.

vii

George Waters was a generous interviewee, both spontaneous in his
answers, and conscientious in his editing. It was a pleasure to work
with him. His proffered illustrations were thoughtfully chosen, and the
appended "Letters From the Editor" give particular subtle insights into
the job of being an editor. I appreciate the generous addition of her
story, "Peering Through the Web," told with great feeling by Olive Rice
Waters. Susan Smith's Introduction to George Waters is a real bonus,
bringing in the story of the Pacific Horticultural Foundation trips,
introducing the Library at Strybing Arboretum, and quoting George
Waters "s successor as editor of Pacific Horticulture, Richard G. Turner.
My thanks to all of these people.

The Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library thanks
most particularly the donors who made this oral history possible—they
are listed in the front of the volume. While acknowledged as
organizations, it is the directors and secretaries and foundation
executives of those organization to whom we are particularly grateful.
Their support is a validation of our work.

The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to
augment through tape-recorded memoirs the Library's materials on the
history of California and the West. Copies of all interviews are
available for research use in The Bancroft Library and in the UCLA
Department of Special Collections. The office is under the direction of
Willa K. Baum, Division Head, and the administrative direction of
Charles B. Faulhaber, The James D. Hart Director of The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Suzanne B. Riess, Interviewer /Editor

November 1999

Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
Berkeley, California

viii

Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library

University of California
Berkeley, California 94720

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I BACKGROUND AND EARLY EMPLOYMENT
[Interview 1: July 6, 1998] #//'

Background and Family

Riess: Today I want to have you tell me about your background.

Waters: Start from the 29th of March, 1925, and go on from there, shall I?

Riess: Yes. Where were you born?

Waters :

Riess:

Waters :

At Brockley, which is a town in the borough of Deptford, to the
southeast of Central London, on the Thames near Wapping. That
gives you some idea of the area's character. Most of Deptford is
regarded as a dreadful place: some of Dickens' grimmest scenes are
near the Thames in Deptford. But Brockley, I was told recently,
was regarded by others in Deptford as being the posh end.

Then, so far as I can tell, I was taken very soon, maybe
within a year, certainly within two years, to Dagenham, and
Dagenham is a large area to the east of London. It became a
humorous interlude for a comedian called Arthur Askey who in the
war years amused a lot of Englanders with his radio programs, and
references to the fictitious Dagenham Tea Rooms, where he would
take his girlfriend, whose name was Nausea Bagwash. [laughter]

Tell me about your parents
Dagenham?

What were they doing in Deptford and

My father, William Ernest Waters, from the first time I became
aware of him, was working for the London buses. He was a bus
conductor. About six foot one inch tall, sturdily built; not fat,
but sturdily built. Was often mistaken for a policeman in plain

'## This symbol indicates that a tape or tape segment has begun
ended. A guide to the tapes follows the transcript.

Waters :

Riess:
Waters;

clothes, a misconception he encouraged in some of the rougher
areas to which his work in London took him. He was sandy haired,
so called "Ginger" by his co-workers.

Mother, Dorothy, was considerably smaller. She was living
in Brockley--that's where her mother lived, anyway. How they got
to meet I don't know at all. My father's parents were running a
public house. I think it was called the King's Head, but I'm not
sure. And that was at Winchmore Hill, in north London. Probably
my father's mother ran the pub, along with a friend of the family,
a dear silver-haired lady, known to me as Aunt Kitty. She was
actually no relative at all. I think she was a barmaid at the pub
absorbed into the family when the pub changed hands.

When I met them, they all, including my father's two
brothers and three sisters, had moved to Dagenham. They were all
large people, crowded into a rather small house.

Riess: Were you an only child?

No, I had a brother, Edward, called Ted.
than me. So he came to Dagenham also.

He was two years older

My grandfather on my father's side was a retired policeman.
Very stern-looking man with a bushy mustache. Yes, I have some
fond recollections of that little house that my grandparents
occupied. I remember the family were at the center of a street
party celebrating the coronation of George VI, in May 1937, and I
joined in the festivities.

Later on, I used to earn myself sixpence every Saturday by
taking a large shopping bag around there, collecting a long list
of groceries, and then walking to the stores and filling up the
shopping bag and lugging it back again, to supply the groceries
for my grandmother's kitchen.

Did your own home have a garden, a kitchen garden?

No, but maybe there were the beginnings of gardening for me there,
because my grandfather had an ornamental garden which used to win
prizes from the Dagenham Corporation. You see, Dagenham was built
by the London County Council as a slum clearance scheme. Acres
and acres of red-brick houses which stretched over the horizon,
and all almost identical in whichever direction you looked.

It was a scheme done in collaboration with the Ford Motor
Company, as a matter of fact. The Ford Motor Company planned to
build a factory in England, and the LCC gave them concessions on a
site near the Thames estuary at Dagenham, the understanding being

that it would provide employment for a lot of the people who were
moved to the housing they were about to erect there. So a lot of
the people there worked at the Ford Motor Company.

The houses were well built and well maintained, although
only equipped in simple fashion: water was heated with a fire made
under a large copper boiler and pumped by hand up to the bathroom.
Lighting was with gas lamps. One of my uncles was a carpenter in
the employ of the LCC, based at a depot in the middle of the
estate. All of the houses were rented at that time, and they were
maintained extremely well by the LCC. Mind you, there was a
certain amount of uniformity there. Your door was painted the
color they happened to use, and so on.

Riess: Maybe gardens were an expression of individuality? Was it a front
garden?

Waters: Yes. Each one had a front and a rear garden, and they were the
equal of most city gardens. Not large, but adequate.

How was your grandfather's distinguished?

Well, by our modern standards, it wasn't. It was the usual piece
of grass with a standard rose in the middle, and annuals around
the edge and so on. But it was well and neatly done.

Riess: Was it a place you could play, or was it a place that you had to
stay out of?

Waters: No, not really. No, the front bit of my grandfather's garden was
always a place to stay out of. Our own front garden ten minutes
walk away was a place you could play in, because it was just a
patch of grass with a privet hedge around it. And the back was
where my father did his gardening, and that was a place where you
went to work. You didn't go to play.

Riess: That's interesting, fathers in gardens. Were fathers more in
gardens in Britain? My experience is mothers in gardens.

There is a difference in Britain, certainly. The history of
gardening here is one in which the men farmed and the women wanted
something useful around the kitchen door, useful and pretty. The
farmer would perhaps dig the ground and then walk away and leave
it for the mother to plant.

I think the difference is in the way in which gardening
evolved in Britain, it being, as it were, handed down from the
aristocrats who made it fashionable, with each successive wave of
prosperous people aping their social superiors. It was therefore

Riess:

the occupation of the arriviste, and respectable for the man of
the house. My own father I think was first in competition with
his father to grow things somewhat better. But gradually, he saw
it as a means of making money, and had a scheme whereby he would
keep graves in the local cemetery furnished under some sort of
contract. It was not a large enough garden for him to become rich
doing this, but it would have made him a little extra cash, and
for people in the Depression period, that became important.

He had bought a little prefabricated greenhouse in order to
raise seedlings for this scheme, and it was heated with a paraffin
stove which fell over, or something went wrong with it, and it
burned the whole thing down. So his enterprise was cut short.

Were garden clubs, garden organizations, part of your parents'
lives?

Waters: No, I don't recall that they were. There was a kind of ad-hoc
club among those who cultivated what were known as allotments.
Here they are called community gardens. Allotment gardens were in
an area of land at the edge of the Dagenham estate set aside for
people to rent. I can't tell you the actual size, because in
those days, they were measured in poles and perches, and I'm no
longer sure how to convert them. I think a perch is about five
and a half yards. They persisted in England right up until after
the Second World War, but Britain is decimal now.

Anyway, these were strips of land divided by narrow paths-
paths were just uncultivated strips, that's all. A bit like the
old strip system of Medieval Europe. And a kind of ad-hoc social
club develops in such places. People meet one another there, and
then maybe go to the pub for a beer afterwards or something like
that.

Riess: Would they talk about plants?

Waters: Oh, yes, they would compare one another's progress and so on,

offer advice. But all informally done. There was no organization
about it whatever.

I used to go there occasionally and help my father. I have
a vivid recollection of joining him--he used to ride his bicycle
there, of course, and when I got a bicycle, I did too. And I must
have been very, very inexperienced, because I remember arriving at
the gate to the area a little bit too soon. My father hadn't got
it open for me to ride through, and I fell off my bicycle into a
huge bed of nettles. [laughs] Which for a little boy in short
trousers was extremely irritating!

When my father was attempting his little garden enterprise,
my task was to collect horse manure from the streets. I dealt
with that in one of my editorials; it's called "The Scent of
Summer."2 [laughter]

Riess: On vacations, would your family visit great estate gardens?

Waters: Lord no. That is definitely a bourgeois activity. These were
just very plain working folks, bus conductors and drivers, not
very much more. In fact, it wasn't until my mother had a rather
serious infection in one of her legs that resulted in a temporary
lameness, the doctor advised her to ride a bicycle as a means of
exercising it, getting strength back into it. This was difficult
for her to contemplate until my father bought a tandem bicycle.
It was an extravagant outlay for him. The question of buying a
motor vehicle never occurred, it just wasn't even spoken of in the
house.

Riess: So you went by bus or bike.

Waters: As a bus employee Father had a free pass on all London buses, and
so he traveled almost everywhere within the City by bus.
Occasionally, he borrowed a motorcycle, I don't know who from, but
I do recall riding on the pillion of a motorcycle of the kind for
which oil had to be pumped by hand with a plunger every now and
again.

I recall a few day-long outings, but no prolonged vacations
until the bicycles came along in the late thirties. Travel was
distinctly limited.

Schooling, and Telegraph Messenger Job

Riess: You were born into the Depression, and then the war followed hard
on the heels of that. You were going to school through all of
this. What kind of schools did you go to?

Waters: The junior school, which began at age four or five, was called the
Alibon Road Junior School.

Riess: What's the name?

2Pacific Horticulture, Summer 1995.

Waters: [spells] I don't know that it has any meaning, unless it's a

variation of Albion, an ancient name for the British Isles. When
you lay out a large estate like that, you have to think of names
for streets—the namers must become quite desperate at times.

That [Alibon Road Junior School] had three parts. There was
the littlest kids part at the center. It was all, as I recall,
sort of mixed, mixed infants. And then at about, I'm not sure,
must have been about eight years of age, one moved into one of the
wings of the school, with girls on the left side and boys on the
right of the infants' building. And that went on until the age of
about ten or eleven.

Riess: Were you a good student?

Waters: Apparently not, because whilst a number of children who were

friends of mine got scholarships and went to the grammar school, I
never did. So I think that it was concluded that I was dim.

Riess: Dim?

Waters: Well, dull, or thick.

Riess: Would you think of yourself now as someone who had other
interests, or you were distracted, or what?

Waters: No- -I don't know. I often think about that, and I conclude that I
was just a bit slow developing, that's all.

In the absence of a scholarship to a grammar school, the
inevitable stage after this, and this would have been about ten or
eleven years of age, was Eastbrook Senior School, which again had
a girls section and a boys section, with wire fence down the
middle of the playground. [laughter] And that continued until
the age of fourteen, when you were let out to go and make your way
in the world.

Riess: And you had passed the point where you could consider university?

Waters: Yes. Well, you see, I don't think my parents were terribly
enthusiastic about schooling and education. There was no
discouragement, but there was no enthusiasm either and no
discussion about what the future might hold or anything like that.
When schooling ended, it was just a matter of, "Okay, now George,
we have to find a job for you."

My first job was as a telegraph messenger for the Cable and
Wireless Company in London. The District Line, part of the London
Underground system, came out to Dagenham, and the station was a

Riess:
Waters :
Riess :
Waters:

Riess :

short walk down the road. So I'd catch the District Line up to
London in my navy blue and red uniform, with brass buttons that I
had polished the night before, and deliver telegrams in London.

On foot?
On foot .
You got to know- -you had all of London?

No, no. Because the Cable and Wireless Company had depots all

over the City. My depot was the head office, which was on the

corner of Moorgate and London Wall, so it was right in the middle
of the City, an area that later was devastated by bombing.

You were fourteen, and out on the streets?
isn't it?

That's unconscionable,

Waters :

Riess :
Waters :

Riess:
Waters:

We weren't dangerous in those days. Oh, we boys fought among
ourselves, of course. My brother and I, for example, were always
fighting. But he was two years older and somewhat heavier and
stronger, so he invariably got the better of me.

So this is 1939?

Yes, just before the war began.
September '39 war was declared.

It began in fact in late '39;

Before that--I think it must have been earlier in '39--we
moved from Dagenham a little further towards the center of London,
to a place called East Ham. This was largely because of my
father's job, his depot for the bus company was a garage called
Upton Park. The London General Omnibus Company, that became
London Passenger Transport Board, had garages with buses all over
Greater London, and each garage had a number of routes to serve.
His route originated at Upton Park, and by moving to East Ham, we
were much closer to it.

Unfortunately, the house we occupied in East Ham was an
early casualty of the bombing. It wasn't demolished entirely, but
it was made unsafe for habitation by the blast. So we had to
leave.

Your father was not in the war because of his job?

He was conscripted later. He was conscripted at the age of
thirty-eight.

Nobody older than thirty-eight was conscripted, so he got
into the war just in time for the invasion of Europe. One of the
lessons learned by the British Army in its first encounter with
the German forces (just prior to Dunkirk) was the need for
transport control to enable large ground forces to move quickly.
My father was assigned to a new unit the purpose of which was to
direct the movement of motorized columns during advance or
retreat.

Strangely enough, he doesn't regret his time in the army--or
didn't, I should say; he's dead now. Like a great many people who
had rather dull and repetitive jobs in civilian life, the forces
provided—for some of them, at any rate--a total change of
environment and social climate, which had its compensations. I'm
not denying that it was dreadful for many, and I know he had his
share of that—one or two of those experiences he told me about- -
but on the whole, it was obvious to me that the experience was
treasured, because it took him out of his rut. On leave during
training he looked younger than I'd remembered him.

Critical Awareness, Conscientious Objection

Riess:
Waters:

Riess:
Waters :

Were you conscripted?

I was conscripted when I was eighteen, but I didn't go. I
registered as a conscientious objector and was sent to face a
tribunal.

That would have been 1943. Was that difficult?
easily- -what you had to go through in England.

I don ' t know how

Well, it varied with the region in which you lived. Tribunals
were set up all over the country. Usually magistrates served on
the tribunals, and a lot of what I suppose for want of a better
word were called important people. I didn't understand these
people or their outlook.

My father had been active in the trade unions, so that in
addition to my schooling, I was picking up certain attitudes
outside school that made me critical of the world around me. In
fact, perhaps the only commendation from my teachers was noted on
a report that said: "George views the world around him with
critical awareness." [laughter] Rather charming, isn't it? And
another did comment on my use of the language. It hadn't occurred
to me that there was anything extraordinary, but obviously, he had
perceived something, and he did encourage it a little. He took me

and one or two other boys to the nearest theater, the East Ham
Empire, where plays were put on from time to time. There were two
or three of those visits, as I recall. But again, this didn't
influence anything that my parents may have said to me.

Riess: Were you a great reader?

Waters: I was certainly inclined to read. My brother, who was intensely
physical—everything he did involved expenditure of physical
energy—he derided me as "the professor." I didn't understand
that. For example, it gave me a false idea about what professor
meant, you see, because 1 didn't see myself as being particularly
professorial, as I now understand the word. But since he was
using it derisively, I construed that there was something nasty
about professors!

Riess: Was there a library that you could use?

Waters: My father was reading—oh, yes. In addition to his frustrated
attempt to organize a flower service for the dead, he seemed to
have some liking for the idea of being perhaps a cartoonist or
something like that. Hutchinson's Publications were bringing out
a history of the world in monthly installments— magazine-type
publications which ultimately formed a comprehensive history of
the world. He would encourage me to draw pictures from these
things. I'm not sure whether there was ever any reward to this
beyond the collection I was able to build.

Riess: He was encouraging you.

Waters: He was encouraging me to copy them, yes. I don't think I ever

developed any particular skills in draftsmanship or drawing, but
probably I did get some kind of an inkling about marvelous things
happening over the ages [laughs] throughout the world. I saw, for
example, horsemen riding under triumphal arches over thousands of
corpses. I can remember pictures like this. That might have
affected my attitude to the war.

And I do remember too, there was a strike of London buses-
yes, yes— and my father was involved--! think he was representing
his garage at meetings of trade union members. And since there
were no buses running, we went to a meeting on the tandem bicycle
he bought to exercise my mother. And when I was a boy, I could
ride the back of it quite well—it was a specially made tandem
bicycle, because he being so big and she being so small, a regular
machine would not accommodate them both equally. So it was a
large frame at front joined to a small one behind.

Riess: And she got her exercise.

10

Waters: She got her exercise, and they traveled to some interesting
places. A tandem tour in Germany planned for 1939 came to
nothing, but they went to Devon and Cornwall instead.

Riess: So you went to the union meeting.

Waters: I went to the meeting. I remember meeting Ernest Bevin. Do you
remember Ernest Bevin?

Riess: I certainly know the name.

Waters: He was the head of the London Transport and General Workers Union,
which was a large and influential union. And because of his
leadership of that union, he was taken into Churchill's wartime
cabinet as the minister of labor, and that's where he made his
reputation. And I do recall sitting with my father in Bevin1 s
office at Transport House, I think it was, in London, talking
about the strike.

Riess: We have gotten to this because you were talking about your
conscientious objector status.

Waters: Oh, that's right, yes. Trying to understand how it came about.
I'm saying that I formed ideas about trade unionism, and its
limitations as a means of alleviating social ills.

II

Waters: This took me towards thinking more broadly about political

activity, and eventually led me to the feeling that nothing that
could come out of the war would justify the destruction and
slaughter, nor would it resolve anything. And that was the basis;
it was sort of humanitarian and sociological objection that I
brought to the tribunal in Fulham Town Hall.

Waters: I was quizzed for about forty-five minutes by members of the

tribunal. A friend named Anthony Turner, a man older than myself
and a well-known and widely admired speaker at Hyde Park Corner,
came forward with the assurance that my objection was a deeply
held conviction, and not the result of recent conversion.

3++ This symbol indicates the beginning and end of segments inserted
by Mr. Waters during the editing process. Inserted segments are noted on
the tape guide following the transcript.

11

Since then some have asked how I could object to a war that
ended the dreadful treatment of Jews in Europe. They forget that
the war was, ostensibly, a defense of democracy and a brake on
German hegemony in Europe; it was not launched to rescue Jews from
systematic persecution and genocide the true horror of which was
revealed to us only at war's end.

The origins of World War II had more to do with German
industrial expansion than with defending democracy. Even prior to
World War I British diplomacy was aimed at keeping Germany bottled
up in ports on the North Sea, while Germany was eager to gain easy
access to eastern markets. She felt that Britain, with an
extensive empire, should leave European markets to her, but the
argument fell on deaf ears. An attempt to reach the Middle East
by building a railway from Berlin to Baghdad was thwarted by
British and Russian interests. World War II was another attempt
by Germany to grab manufacturing resources demanded by a highly
developed industrial country, and take over markets for the vast
quantities of goods she was capable of producing. In Britain
there were influential people unable to countenance the threatened
loss of European markets, and who had much to gain by preventing
the spread of German influence there.

Riess: Were you alone among your friends in making this choice?

Waters: Once I had registered, I began to make contact with others who had
also appealed conscription. They were not numerous, it wasn't
common. But likewise, there was a great deal more tolerance,
officially, towards conscientious objectors than in the First
World War. In the First World War, from what I've read, they were
imprisoned and brutally treated. It was not uncommon for
objectors to be forced into uniform and then sent to the front,
where they would inevitably die.

Riess: As punishment.

Waters: Yes. They were often deliberately killed, because nobody wanted
to serve with them, so intense was the jingoism, you see. They
were put in prison. I've read of instances where they were
invited to dig a hole six feet deep and made to then stand in it
for days on end. I'm not aware of anything like that in the
Second World War; jingoism was less pronounced. I encountered
only a few examples of resentment of my status as a C.O.

Riess: For you, was it a brave stance? How difficult was it at the time
to do this?

12

Waters: I was in turmoil. Partly it was not knowing how I might stand up
to hostile questioning; how my friends would react to my stand;
and how I would endure prison—the remaining alternative to the
army if my appeal failed. My brother was already dead; my father
was in the army. He supported my position, but could do nothing
directly. My mother also was supportive, but as a parent hoping
to keep her remaining child from harm, and this, I felt, would do
nothing to help my case before the tribunal.

Waters: I guess I was more fortunate than those whose objections were

disallowed. My tribunal was held at Fulham, and I have since read
that the tribunals at Fulham were more difficult than many, that
there were other tribunals where people were more commonly given
exemptions. I was given conditional exemption. The condition was
that 1 would take up work in the fire service, in agriculture, or
medical work.

And it so happened that I had a friend at that time who was
employed by the Burroughs Wellcome pharmaceutical company, in
Beckenham. It's a well-known company- -they've recently merged
with Glaxo. And the Burroughs Wellcome Company was doing a lot of
research into antibiotics, things of that kind, which were
becoming widely used then. They were derived from blood by first
mildly infecting animals, usually horses, and when the antitoxins
were produced, they would draw off some of the blood, refine it,
and inject it to stimulate human resistance to the disease.

I went there, submitted this as meeting the requirements of
the tribunal, and it was accepted. So I worked at Burroughs
Wellcome for a number of years.

Riess: Were you in the lab?

Waters: It was actually a pilot scale plant. I guess they were using any
place that they could to produce this stuff. We were producing a
few hundred large bottles a week for tetanus, gas gangrene, and
other diseases.

Riess: This was for the war effort?
Waters: Largely for the war effort, yes.

13

Surviving the War, in London

Riess: Were you living at home?

Waters: Well, I mentioned that the place at East Ham was bombed. And

again, there was a need to find somewhere else to live. My father
had explained that the east side of London is not the most
desirable place. The reason for that is that it was the
industrial side, and the prevailing wind is southwesterly, as it
so often is. So you find that the better-off people tend to live
on the west side of a smoky city, and the rest are left to live on
the east side. And we had been on the east side. And because of
the industry there, it also had more attention from enemy bombers.

So he invited me to join him on this wonderful tandem
bicycle. We rode right across London, and out to the west side,
and we finished up at a place called East Molesey. There was also
a West Molesey. The River Mole, from which Molesey 's name comes,
is a tributary of the Thames, and East Molesey is in fact right at
the point where that tributary enters the Thames, and the nearest
place of note is Hampton Court, the famous palace.

We found that many of the original inhabitants of East
Molesey were well enough off to be able to go even further away
from London than we were, so there were a number of large houses
left, one of which, because of the need to control rents during
the war to stop profiteering, we got very cheaply.

Riess: Your little family of four?

Waters: Well, I'm not sure whether to ignore my brother or not. [laughs]
He, being the activist he was, had joined the army under age. In
fact, long before he even joined the army, he joined the auxiliary
fire service. Those red flashing engines just fascinated him.
And when, again under age, he joined the army, I don't know what
he told them--he told them he was older than he was. I guess they
didn't look at birth certificates or anything like that. He was a
sturdy young lad, and there was no reason not to accept him in the
army. So he was gone. He had gone, even from the point where we
were still at Dagenham, he had vanished from the home. He was out
into the world.

Riess: Were your parents supportive of your brother's decisions also?

Waters: Oh, yes. It probably seemed inevitable in view of his character.
Our parents were generally agreeable. There were certain parents
who struggled and fought a lot, and there were others, like ours,
who struggled and fought less. But no one was seen as

Riess:

dysfunctional; it never occurred to us. In fact, the word was
unknown .

You first described your father as quite the authority figure, and
that sounds like much more the father of the enlistee.

Waters: I think that he felt the need to ensure that the family was

properly clothed and fed. I think he saw my mother as being—what
shall we say?--slightly irresponsible, so that although she had
sufficient to feed us, almost all the larger expenditures he
maintained control of.

The result was that my mother was usually clothed in
extremely good, hard-wearing cloth, and sturdy leather shoes.
This seemed to me to be a good thing, but I don't think she saw it
as such. You can imagine, can't you? I can remember the sturdy
green tweed coats that she was clad in, and wonderful Barrett's
shoes. Barrett's made very fine shoes, guaranteed to keep your
feet in good shape and healthy, and to wear out very slowly,
[laughter] But especially in retrospect, I now see--.

At the time, there was mild discontent on my mother's part
which I was subconsciously aware of. And I now see that very few
women would have been happy in these circumstances, no matter how
warm the coat and how sturdy the shoes. Nonetheless, I think that
with the limited income available, I can also understand my father
saw that there was little money and strictness was necessary.

Riess: Yes. So you were then quite well housed on the west side for the
rest of the war.

Waters: This was grand, yes. A few bombs fell in Molesey, but not many.

Strange Episodes, Wartime

Waters: But once we'd moved onto the west side of London the train service
up to the Cable and Wireless Company in Central London was less
convenient, and so I got a job selling shoes in a shoe shop in
Kingston-on-Thames. Dolcis was the name of the company. They
have depots over here, but not many. You haven't heard of them?

Riess: No. I guess if I'd heard of them, I would have thought they were
Italian.

Waters: Well, they just sold shoes, and I sold shoes for a while. It was
a strange episode in my life. The manager of the store was a Mr.

15

Christmas, who wore stiff wing collars. They were still quite
common then, especially among the managers of clothing stores.

Riess: And you were seventeen or so?

Waters: Sixteen, seventeen, yes. I guess I was a telegraph boy for one or
two years, something like that, and the ferocious bombing,
particularly of the Docks in East London, and the City, was
beginning. I can remember being more or less imprisoned in the
basement of the Cable and Wireless Company office because it was
not safe to leave. And I remember also the bus services being
totally dislocated, both buses and trains, by the bombing. I had
to walk almost all the way home on one occasion, through East
London to East Ham, over broken glass and between smoldering
buildings. Some of that bombing was—well, you've heard about it,
seen it in pictures—quite devastating.

Riess: Was it terrifying?

Waters: No, no, not for a boy of my age. Except momentarily- -delivering
messages in London in the blackout was often very difficult at
night; in daytime, it was no great problem, but at night it could
be very difficult. Walking down dark streets, imagining shapes of
things in front of me and putting up my hands to make sure that I
wasn't hitting things. On one occasion I had put up my hands and
realized that there was nothing there, put my hands down and then
walked smack into a big iron structure.

The horse era was not quite gone, and it was common to have
these iron structures. They were shaped a bit like U.S.
mailboxes, except that they were made of cast iron, very
Victorian, of course. And they went right down to the ground, and
they contained sand, which was scattered on the road when it was
slippery so that horses wouldn't lose their footing. And what I
had done was to walk into one of those sand bins, and they were
just about this height. So in fact, I got a terrible bash in the
mouth. But the telegram had to be delivered, and so I walked on,
groaning.

That was the kind of thing. You had to walk; you were not
allowed to run. There were inspectors out to make sure that we
were not slovenly, and kept to the rules. The Cable and Wireless
Company employed hundreds of us boys, and inspectors walked around
in mufti to keep an eye on us.

Riess: Why were you not allowed to run?

Waters: Oh, it just was unseemly. We were issued a uniform and boots.

There was one depot, and that was attached to what they called the

16

London Exchange, and those boys were issued with shoes, and they
were expected to run, but they were the only ones who were allowed
to run. That was because, of course, financial messages were
important and especially urgent. [laughter]

Riess: After the shoe job was when you were conscripted or drafted?

Waters: Yes. I had fallen out with Mr. Christmas. I think it was a

prearranged thing. He had a very good customer whose boy was just
looking for a job, and he had promised her to take him on, and he
had to get rid of me.

So I went round the corner and got a job with a company
whose specialty was making tennis courts. But they had a machine
shop, and the machine shop had become a place where all kinds of
war apparatus was made. This was the only job the Ministry of
Labour would offer me once I was no longer working for Dolcis.
The Ministry of Labour became the arbiter of what I did, and this
was where they sent me.

It was quite a change from the shoe shop; you have to get
your hands dirty to manufacture things in metal. But I did pick
up lathe work there, and all kinds of mechanical aptitudes which I
found I was quite good at. Once I had registered as a
conscientious objector, one of the questions they threw at me at
once was , "But you are working in a machine shop which is
manufacturing--" not actual armaments, but things which made
armaments possible.

I said, "Well, yes, and I'm asking to be relieved of that
job also." So I was relieved of that job and went to work at
Burroughs Wellcome. So there were one, two, three, four jobs now,
okay. We have to keep tab of these, because there are a great
many to come. [laughs] Those are the first four.

I'm not sure how much of this is relevant, but a lot of it
seems relevant to the person I subsequently became, do you see?
That's why I'm tending to include so much of it. Although you may
not have enough tape on hand!

[tape interruption]

Debating

Waters: I suppose what I'm doing essentially is trying to maintain this

thread. I think it's this "critical" business that was mentioned

17

earlier, by the teacher, that led me to be a conscientious
objector. And of course, it changed the character of my life,
because it brought me in touch with others with similar ideas.
But these were comparatively few people. Most of the other people
that I met had no sympathy for these ideas at all. So I was in
constant debate.

And I think that's where my education came from. In fact,
at one point while at Burroughs Wellcome, I joined a debating
society organized by the vicar of the local church, who sat as
chairman of the meetings. It was known as the Penge Parliament.
Penge was the locality—another of those areas in the outskirts of
London that are a source of jokes for radio comedians.

This Penge Parliament was organized like a mock Parliament,
with the vicar as the Speaker of the House sitting on the
Woolsack, and then on either side the Labourites and the
Conservatives. I joined neither and sat on the crossbenches . I
had no sympathy for either of those views, because I didn't think
they were terribly relevant to what was needed in society.

Waters: I wanted to dig deeper than most political discussions allowed,

and to test ideas that seemed to need debate but which were rarely
if ever alluded to in newspaper reports.

For example, there was, and still is, always a lot of talk
about the poor, but little real thought goes into it. The idea
that poverty is necessary to competitive industrialism seems
outrageous to everyone I mention it to, but it is so. The voting
population is convinced that by electing their favorite candidate
to office all wrongs can be redressed. But no politician has the
power to eliminate poverty, and any suspected of attempting it
would quickly be removed from office. The simplest reasoning
shows that without the poor to provide a reservoir of labor
threatening those who ask for wage increases, wages would rise to
levels unacceptable to employers—unacceptable because wages
subtract from dividends. The simple fact is demonstrated in war
time, when armed forces recruitment dries up the labor reservoir,
resulting in a labor shortage and a steep rise in wages. Labor
is, after all, just a commodity bought and sold like any other,
and shortages cause price (wage) rises and surpluses keep prices
down.

Some others cherish the idea that they'd be better off if
only government taxes were lower. But if taxes were reduced the
benefit to working people would be limited and temporary. Wage
and salary levels; are based on the cost of living; many employers

18

have routine cost-of-living salary adjustments. Taxes are part of
the cost of living, so any fluctuation in taxes will eventually be
reflected in wages and salaries. A reduction in taxes may not
bring about a coincident reduction in wages, but it will certainly
defer increases until parity with cost-of-living is reached. From
this it can be seen that employers pay taxes, their employees do
not. The anti-tax lobby serves employers, not their employees,
although wage and salary earners are routinely urged with tales of
government wastefulness to join in pressing for "small government"
and tax reduction. But any economies brought about by shrinking
government and reduced taxes will have only a temporary effect on
our wage packets.

I also looked for opportunities to question the claims of
the agriculture industry when it speaks collectively of "feeding
the world," as though hunger were the result of poor crops. A
corporation using public television these days to promote itself,
ADM, is particularly fond of spreading the myth. But ADM is only
one among many; for decades we have heard farmers defending the
use of pesticides by claiming that "the world can't be fed without
them." In fact, farmers aren't attempting to feed the world; they
are concerned only with selling food to those who can pay for it.
This is obvious when we see the laden shelves of local
supermarkets and their already overfed customers, then turn to see
the poverty and malnutrition suffered by many at our own back
door. In the late 1940s a famine in India was reported in British
newspapers by a writer who spoke of stepping over starved and
dying bodies on the railway station platform to reach the
restaurant for breakfast of bacon and eggs. After such an
experience I'm sure that reporter could never see hunger as
anything but a manifestation of poverty.

Riess: It's rare here to put an eighteen-year-old mind to work defending
ideas.

Waters: Well, that's right. Some few years back I visited somebody up on
Indian Rock who was on the UC campus--a professor or something
like that. And he had just come back from a sabbatical in
Cambridge, England.

He said, "You know, the extraordinary thing that I noticed
there was the readiness of everybody to just debate ideas for the
sake of it, just throw ideas backwards and forwards." He said,
"In the States, mostly people are interested in ideas only if
they're going to lead somewhere. If they can see that they are
helping to make something, or decide something."

19

Riess:
Waters:

I saw what he meant and began to feel a need again for just
debating ideas, but I couldn't find the equivalent of that
debating society anywhere. Not even in Berkeley, which I would
have thought would have been the very place you would find it. Do
you know of any such thing here?

No.

All this leads me to believe that my main education was during the
war- -that period when I was forced, as it were, to defend my
ideas .

Waters: While at Burroughs Wellcome the VI rockets began arriving from
occupied France. They were slow moving compared with modern
rockets—even compared with the V2s that came from the German army
in France a little later. Air force fighter planes were able now
and then to fly beside the Vis and tip the wings causing them to
drop before reaching the target. But most reached their
destination, which was usually London. The Vis were soon called
doodle bugs because of the pop-pop noise from the power unit,
which spurted flames as well. When the noise stopped the rocket
fell, and those below knew that a tremendous explosion would
follow. The sudden silence when the power of an approaching
doodle bug switched off was terrible because we knew it would fall
nearby.

Frequently I worked at night, when the blood plasma had been
filtered and needed bagging in plastic for dialysis. Dialysis was
a slow process and so it was important to begin it as soon as
possible and to free up filtration equipment for further use.
Cycling to and from my lodgings at night gave me many
opportunities for observing doodle bugs, and plenty of experience
in throwing myself quickly to the ground behind any available
cover when their engines cut out.

V2 rockets were more like today's missiles—quiet , much
faster, and exploding without warning. There was nothing to be
done about them unless one were to spend his life in a bomb
shelter. But in some strange way they were less terrifying, since
their arrival and explosion could not be anticipated.

During that period I changed address three times as each of
my lodgings were damaged by bombs.

20

In By a Back Door, Teaching

Waters: I wasn't supposed to leave Burroughs Wellcome until my period of
conscription was over, but I did, actually. This was because I
had the idea that I might become a teacher. So I applied—there
was an emergency training program for teachers set up immediately
after the war, and I thought that might be my entree. They
weren't insisting on degrees or anything like that, applicants
just had to go before an interviewing board and answer a number of
questions to show their worth.

Anyway, I was turned down, and I was disappointed. Then I
saw a job advertised for someone to look after the laboratories, a
laboratory technician, I suppose, at a teacher's training college
at Cooper's Hill, near Egham, Surrey. And I thought that it might
be a back door to teaching. So I got the job on the basis of my
experience in Burroughs Wellcome, because I was now sort of a
laboratory technician, although this new job was totally different
from the work I was doing in the pharmaceutical laboratory.

Anyway, I got the job. And I told the lecturers about my
ambitions, and they were very helpful. The emergency training
scheme consisted of alternating periods of several months of
college training, and then several months out as working teachers
at schools in the neighborhood. And after I had been there for a
while, I was told that if I would like to, I could go out with the
students and pass myself off as a trainee teacher. I thought,
Well, the lecturers must have confidence. They work around me all
day, and I'm working around them, inevitably listening to their
lectures, so they must realize that I have potential.

So I went as a teacher—as a trainee teacher, I should say— to
a school in Walton-on-Thames. (All this is taking place by the
Thames. Although I was living away from home during the war, I
resumed Molesey as my base after the war.) The experience of
teaching in a school was very enlightening. I thoroughly enjoyed it,

Riess: You were a science teacher?

Waters: Mostly teaching science, yes. I would rush to the library each
evening and read up on the next lessons, and devise fabulous
demonstrations and experiments to keep the boys' attention. We
were demonstrating refraction of light in water and all that kind
of stuff. I also taught English grammar.

And the science teacher was impressed and gave me a good
recommendation. I then confessed that I was a fraud, you see, and
he said, "Well, if you want to get accepted, go to the headmaster

21

and get a letter." So the headmaster gave me a letter saying that
as soon as my training was completed, I could have a job there. I
thought I'd won!

Then I went to the principal of the training college and got
a letter from him. He described me as extremely capable,
conscientious, and so on. I went to another tribunal and took my
letters with me, and they turned me down a second time. After
that I gave up on teaching.

Riess: They were hewing to the real letter of the law?

Waters: Newspaper reports of the activities of local education authorities
around the country suggest to me that there was a great deal of
prejudice against employing people who were conscientious
objectors. Although there was nothing in the rules about who the
scheme was meant for, it was implicit in the nature of the thing
that what they were trying to do was to take in ex-servicemen.
But other conscientious objectors had been enrolled as teachers,
and I knew of several of them. I just guess I was unlucky and I
met the wrong kinds of people.

Senior Technician, Former Farmworker

Waters: At some point then, the Ministry of Labour caught up with me and
said, "George, you're supposed to be at Burroughs Wellcome. What
are you doing up there?" I told them, and they said, "No, you
can't do it." The only thing I could do then was to take up
almost any job that complied with their requirements, and so I
worked for a while on a farm, I suppose you'd call it a farm, the
special kind of farm that you find on the fringes of cities where
land starts to get cheap, where produce is being raised to feed
the market.

Riess: Truck farm.

Waters: Truck farm, that's right. That's also mentioned in "The Scent of
Summer." So I worked there for a while, but I wasn't terribly
good at it.

Waters: I remember being sent out to a field that seemed to go on forever
on a frosty morning, and picking Brussels sprouts. In Britain,
they have a feeling about Brussels sprouts, that they're never
worth eating unless there's frost on them, you know. So they

22

Riess :
Waters:

Riess:

Waters:

Riess :
Waters:

Riess :
Waters:

would always pick the Brussels sprouts when the frost was on them,
and of course, I was only a few rows done by the time my fingers
were numb, frozen stiff.

And they didn't just whack off the whole stalk?

No, because there's still more to come. They whack it off
eventually, but not until the yield has gone down.

In fact, I was late the first day I started there, and then
some months later, I was late again, and the farmer told me to
clear off, he'd find somebody who could get out of bed earlier. I
wasn't sorry.

I'm fascinated that the Ministry of Labour kept such close tabs on
you.

Oh, yes. But as I say, it was slow, because I'd done a fair
amount of teacher's training college, as you can see, before they
did catch up. I was banking on that. I thought there was a
possibility they would catch up eventually.

But then when I left the farm I guess I took another gamble,
and this time it paid off, because in the meanwhile, my age group
was demobilized, and that meant that my restrictions ended too.

I was now fairly well up on the idea of laboratory work, and
scientific activities of one kind or other. I'd kind of gotten a
rudimentary grounding in all kinds of sciences by this time. I
had a certificate to operate 16 mm. sound movie projectors,
[sighs] Well, I keep getting led aside by these--

But I won't

Sounds like a happy learning experience.

Yes, yes, it led to all kinds of marvelous things,
divulge all the details of that.

Were you saving money through all of this?

Oh, no. No, no. My early introduction to bicycling had taken
hold of me, and it became a center of my social life. I belonged
to two clubs, and I was bicycling for pleasure on vacations, and
for necessity almost everywhere else. Even when I moved lodgings,
I would strap everything on my back and on my bicycle and trundle
off to wherever my new job took me.

My next new job took me to University College, in London,
and the department of geology. I was now to become acquainted
with the science of geology.

23

Riess: You saw an advertisement?

Waters: Yes, I just saw a notice in the paper and applied.

Mainly, I was making microscope slides of rock sections,
which were then examined through Nicol prisms to show up different
constituents of the rock. The varying refractive indices of
minerals caused them to appear differently colored under the
prism, if the slice was thin and well made. But the man in charge
of that laboratory—there was a head man, and there were two of us
lads who helped him—was reluctant to part with information. I
think he felt threatened by the idea that his assistants might
know as much as he did, so he was rather secretive about things.
One had to almost wring information out of him, and after a while,
I got tired of it.

I did have a resurgence of my interest in trade unionism,
and I joined the Association of Scientific Workers. I attended a
few meetings, but I wasn't very deeply into it by then.

So I left there and took a job at a polytechnic institute in
north London. It was known as the Northhampton Polytechnic, not
because it was in Northhampton, of course it wasn't, it was in
London. But it was on land in a part of London that was owned by
the Marquis of Northhampton. It's not called Northhampton
Polytechnic anymore — it ' s now a college associated with the
University of London, I think.

I was by this time regarded as a senior technician, and I
was in charge of the chemistry laboratories, several of them, and
I had a half a dozen people working under me at the time. I was
there for about two or three years.

Riess: In order to know what you were doing, you had to keep studying
what you were doing?

Waters: Yes, a certain amount of it, yes. That's true. But I still
wasn't terribly focused. I wasn't ambitious or anything like
that, and I didn't see any great future for myself. It was just
mostly a matter of keeping body and soul together, and it so
happened that through my need to meet the demands of the Labour
Ministry during the war, I finished up in a laboratory, which
happened to be Burroughs Wellcome. And that kind of set me on the
course towards some kind of science, but my understanding of it
was generalized.

But I did become active in a trade union here. It was the
National Union of Public Employees. A colleague working in
another college and I formed a branch of the union, and as

chairman I even attended the national conference as delegate. It
was a young union headed by a far-sighted man who saw the benefit
of organizing by location, not by trade or occupation. Management
gained from negotiating with representatives of one union instead
of several, as happens in large institutions.

Bedford. British Whiting. Motorbiking

Riess: What an extraordinary resume you have. It certainly doesn't turn
up in the biographical statement you gave me.

Waters: Oh, no, that doesn't have any of this. It skips very lightly over
it all. No, this is all for your benefit, my dear. These are
things I haven't recollected in centuries. So if this is too
rambling you have only yourself to blame for encouraging me.

Anyway, where am I?

Riess: You are denying that you were going about your life in a very

focused way. So what is it that brought you into focus--! mean,
I'm assuming that you had a moment of truth.

Waters: I think the moment of truth only came at the tribunal. That was
the moment of truth.

Riess: So you kept on at the Northhampton Polytechnic.

Waters: Yes. The man in charge, I mean the head of the department of

chemistry, Dr. Charles Garside, was from Manchester. I think he
had had a lot of difficulty keeping people there. I don't know
why. I liked him. But he had a lot of difficulty keeping people
there, and he wanted me to undertake to stay at least two years,
and I said I would. And in fact, I think I stayed for three
years, just to make sure that he got his money's worth.

But I think I wanted—at that stage [after three years], I
wanted to do more hands-on things. It had become somewhat an
administrative job, organizing laboratory demonstrations and
making sure the classes had the equipment they needed, and all the
bottles were filled and cleaned and so on. He offered to involve
me in actual teaching at one point, but I made up my mind, and I
took a job in Bedford.

This is the first time I'd worked really way outside London.
Bedford is about fifty miles north of London, a nice little town
on the River Ouse, noted for its schools. But I got a job with

25

the British Whiting Association, the British Whiting Research
Laboratory. Whiting, you know, is something that happens when you
spread chalk on things. Compressed chalk was sold as whiting in
blocks to women who wanted their steps to look nice. You know,
those front steps that are often the only bright spots in dismal
factory areas of Wigan, Leeds, and Glasgow?

Riess: Yes. And this was called the British Whiting Association?
Waters: Whiting Research Laboratory.

There was a government department known as the DSIR,
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and its job was
to encourage manufacturing associations—in this case, a lot of
people who dug chalk out of hillsides--to get together and set up
research laboratories. Through the DSIR they would get advice and
some money to start them up. And this was one of those
organizations .

Whiting was used as a filler in putty in the days when it
was made with linseed oil. So I spent a lot of time devising ways
of taking lumps of putty and stretching it to see at what point it
broke. The machine would be known as a tensiometer. I devised a
tensiometer for putty, one of my great achievements. [laughs)

Riess: And were you involved in doing the chemistry?

Waters: There were chemists, there were qualified chemists involved as
well. I was merely, after discussion with them, devising these
pieces of apparatus and then helping make them. At this point,
I'm going back to the job after the shoe shop, because now I'm
using my experience on working a metal turning lathe and things
like that. There was also an automatic device for sieving so that
one could put a sample through at one end of the machine, and it
would pass through sieves of different finenesses, and thereby you
would separate the whiting into particle sizes. It involved
suspending sieves in a chain and vibrating them.

But then a merger was proposed with the lime people, the
people who produce lime, which is a product of chalk and heat,
isn't it, as I'm sure you know.

Riess: I thought you might merge with the blueing people. [laughter]

Waters: Now, that's a possibility! Though I think Recket's were probably
one of the companies involved. Recket's Blue was something every
housewife used to make her whites whiter. Then Recket's merged
with Coleman Mustard and became Recket-Coleman.

26

Riess: The merger with the lime folks.

Waters: I saw my future threatened at that point. That proved to be a

very profound event, because that was when I applied to Kodak for
a job.

Riess: When was that?

Waters: Oh, it would have been the early fifties.

Riess: Early fifties? Is this possible that all these jobs--?

Waters: Oh, lord, yes. I never stayed at any of them more than two years,
two or three. [laughs] I was moving fast.

Riess: And you were certainly living on your own by then?
Waters: Oh, yes, in various diggings — lodgings and so on.

But, whilst working at British Whiting, I found a cottage on
the Duke of Bedford's estate which I could rent very cheaply.
That's when gardening reappeared, because there was half an acre
of land around it. But it was a fair piece into Bedford from
there, so I bought a marvelous little engine made by the Duchatti
Company in Italy and clamped it under my bicycle, and became
motorized for the first time in my life.

Riess: This is something that a person can just do, is make a motorbike?

Waters: Oh, yes. After the war in Britain, these little engines were

cheap, and there was a great craze for them. This is when Vespa
scooters were being turned out in Italy. Well, if you couldn't
rise to the level of a Vespa, you got an engine—most of them were
two- stroke engines- -and clamped onto the back behind the saddle
and drove the rear tire through a friction pulley. Very crude
arrangement, but they were popular and cheap.

Duchatti was way ahead of that. Very few people would
believe it when they saw it, but the Duchatti was actually a four-
stroke engine. It had a sort of semi-automatic gear change. It
had two gears, and neutral, and it drove through the chain to the
back wheel. It was a sophisticated device, and actually terribly
dangerous because of the speeds it would reach. Duchatti is a
famous maker of racing motorcycles, and I suppose they thought
there was a market here. And it was an extremely ingenious little
device.

But I had to be very careful. Eventually, a company in
Britain made a special frame to accept it, which was lower built,

27

heavier, on fatter tires, so that the thing became less dangerous.
But clamped on an ordinary bicycle, it was hair-raising, because
the weight of the bicycle was so low and the engine so fast,
[laughter]

Anyway, I went to my interview at Kodak on this motorized
thing, it poured with rain, and I arrived soaked. But, wet as I
was, I was taken on. There I remained for about eighteen years.

Riess: Did you stay on at the Duke of Bedford's estate?

Waters: Oh, no. Once I got the job at Kodak, I found lodgings at Harrow.

Riess: That's where Kodak was?

Waters: Yes, Kodak Harrow. The company is known as Kodak Ltd., and that
differentiates it from Eastman Kodak in the U.S. And likewise it
differentiates it from the French company which is known as Kodak
Pathe. But all three of them have research laboratories. And it
was in the research laboratory that I went.

A Garden on a Greensand Ridge

Riess: Let's step back to the Duke of Bedford's estate,
say more about that acreage- -what did you do?

Surely we can

Waters: Oh, yes, that's right. First of all, it was on a ridge.

Northward from this ridge, Bedfordshire was clay, and in fact, two
things happened in clay like that. One is you can grow marvelous
cabbages, so there are fields and fields of cabbages. Heavy clay
makes good, sturdy hearts to cabbages.

Riess: And they can't go anywhere, stuck in the clay!

Waters: That's right, stay and wait for some poor swine to come along and
cut them off.

And the other thing is that you can make bricks from clay,
and there were brickfields in there. And the brickfields were
particularly profitable because the clay contained a certain
amount of carbon, which meant that you could fire them with very
little additional fuel. The bricks would essentially fire
themselves. These bricks were known as flettons, and Fletton is
the name of a place further north in England--! think in
Northhamptonshire, I'm not sure- -where the first clay was found
that had this marvelous quality.

28

The brickfields were developed by the London Brick Company
in Bedfordshire, because they had the same kind of clay, but
flettons were not terribly high quality bricks, and mostly they
didn't weather terribly well. Brick houses in Britain are built
with two faces, the inner face and the outer face, and the
flettons were very suitable for the inner face. But techniques
were found for coating the surface of a fletton brick so that its
exterior became more weatherproof. Usually it was some kind of a
sand that was blasted with steam onto the surface while the clay
was wet, just before it was fired, and then that surface became
part and parcel of the brick, which was now more weatherproof.
The ordinary common fletton was not very suitable for outdoor use.
But they were cheap, so builders, of course, found lots of uses
for them.

Riess: So, cabbages and bricks.

Waters: Yes. The ridge overlooked the brickfields, so when the wind

turned in the direction of the brickfields, the sulphurous fumes
would make working the garden that I had not too pleasant.

Riess: Maybe the sulphur kept the cabbage moths from the cabbages.
Waters: That might have been true.

But the ridge that I was on was greensand. Which isn't
green, of course, it merely means geologically it's young, I
think. But anyway, a fair amount of greensand crops up. This
region went right along up to a place called Biggelswade,
Cambridgeshire. And it was very popular with market gardeners,
because it was easily worked, it wasn't heavy in clay like the
land below, and yet it was reasonably fertile.

That was the first garden I had of my own, and it created
expectations of success that I've never been able to repeat.
Because not only was it greensand, which had these wonderful
qualities, but in the village nearby—it was called Ridgemont, and
the address was 40 High Street, Ridgemont--there was a dairy
farmer who invited me to take whatever muck I needed. So I was
fortunate. I had all the cow manure that I could carry. This was
perfect for greensand, because cow manure is heavier than horse
manure and tends to bind sandy soil, whereas horse manure heats up
more quickly and tends to break up clay soils.

But also, this cottage was rather primitive, and I had an
outdoor privy. And so I had to process that as well. So between
the farmyard and the privy, things really shot up out of the
ground! I had sweet peas that were the marvel for miles around.

29

Riess: And you had a source of lime, which of course is part of it.

Waters: That too, which helps to process the privy stuff. I see you're

acquainted with these things. You've obviously had outdoor privy
experience [laughter]. Good. There were various products. The
one that I used was based on formaldehyde, with which one killed
off undesirable bacteria. And yes, the lime, which I would bring
home as waste material from the laboratory. I think the sweet
peas were just glad to get out of it. [laughter] Anyway.

And also in the garden there were a number of old apple
trees, including the famous old "Ribston Pippin," which were
marvelous .

Riess: It sounds like you could have ended your life there, happily,
[laughter]

Waters: Your wishful thinking! [laughter] Oh, dear. And I'm still not
thirty years old, almost thirty, I think, when I went to Kodak.

Work for Kodak Ltd.. 1954 to 1972

Waters: At Kodak I was engaged to help some people who were working on the
physical side, and they were trying to construct equipment of an
unusual nature. My job was to help them do that, because I was
bringing experience with lathes and precision tools and an
experimental turn of mind. I worked with a man who's still a
friend, although he remains in England, and we correspond
occasionally. He would prefer to telephone and I prefer to write,
so I write letters to him and he telephones me back and says he's
got them. [laughs] That's about as far as it goes.

Anyway, he became a real friend. I was rather sorry when it
broke up. But eventually, I joined two other people in a workshop
which essentially was a group of three of us who specialized in
making extraordinary equipment that wasn't available anywhere
else.

Riess: For scientists who could describe what they wanted.

Waters: That's right. They would come along and talk about it, and make
sketches and so on, and we would develop the beginnings of this
equipment, and then discuss further improvements with them.

In other words, I was now working more or less for anyone in
the lab who had an idea that needed working up. For example, I

30

made a microdensitometer. These people were studying photographic
images, you see, and when you consider the sharpness of an image
in film, what you are actually doing is seeing a transition from a
light area, say, to a dark area, or from one color to another.
The rapidity of that transition essentially is a measure of
sharpness. If it's a slow transition, then the picture tends to
look blurred. This is known scientifically as acutance.
Subjectively it's known as sharpness.

We needed to get a measure of that acutance, that transition
period. So we needed to read changes of density over a very, very
small area. The sample would travel very slowly and steadily over
a distance of a millimeter through a narrow beam of light. The
amount of light that could be used to get a measurement of density
was very small too, because it had to be a mere pinpoint. The
broader the beam of light, the more averaging and less informative
the measurement.

So a small amount of light had to be picked up at the
receiving end with a photo multiplier, the kind of thing used to
enhance night vision, and amplified so that its variations could
be recorded. For this, we used a commercial microscope to scan
the sample located on a table moved by a rotating cam. It was
successful, and became the subject of a joint paper at a meeting
of the Society of Cinematograph Engineers.

Riess: Were they developing commercial films, or films for industry?

Waters: Oh, all, yes. The money makers were color films, and so a lot of
money was poured into anything which would improve the color part .
But a lot of scientific films, industrial films, if they sold
well, like x-ray films, they would benefit, they would get money
put into them too. After all, Kodak was a profit-making company- -
there was a fair amount of pure research done in the laboratory,
but that was always tending to shrink, because pressure increased
to make money out of this research, particularly as competitors
like Fuji came along.

Waters: An ideal photographic film would give equal increments in density
in response to equal increments in exposure, but silver doesn't
behave that way. Instead of the straight line graph that would
depict the ideal, films tend to give a shallow, elongated S, with
an almost straight middle section that is not quite long enough to
accommodate the images we need to make . The bends at top and
bottom of the curve—the "shoulder" and the "toe"--are where a lot

31

of effort is spent in improving the response of film: its ability
to reveal detail in shadow areas, at one end of the curve, and to
retain an image in over-bright light, at the other.

One approach used in Kodak films divides the work between
two layers of emulsion'1: one faster than the other. The slow
emulsion is active only at high exposure levels, thus the curve
showing response to light for the two layers can be straighter
than was previously given by one layer alone.

Earlier color film had three basic emulsion layers, one each
sensitive to cyan, magenta, and yellow wavelengths; now, with this
technique to achieve a straighter response curve, there are six
emulsions. To this number must be added other layers: sub-layers
for adhesion to the support, inter-layers for light filtration,
anti-halation layers to check the spread of light within the film,
supercoats for abrasion resistance, and final correction of color
balance (sometimes needed). So in many products there are about a
dozen layers in all. When dried they are about one ten-thousandth
of an inch thick, and must be applied to the support accurately,
quickly, in almost total darkness, and as far as possible
simultaneously. It is a demanding task.

When Kodak contracted with Dr. Land for the production of
Polaroid film it was expected that since the technology was
similar to that used in the company's own products making them
would be plain sailing. But difficulties arose because of the
need for extremely rapid processing within the camera. The
gelatin in the emulsion slows up processing by inhibiting the
movement of processing solutions, so the Land formula called for a
minimum of gelatin to support the silver halides. So thin and
watery were the solutions to be coated that halides tended to
settle out on the way to the coating point. Settled particles
interfered with the layers as they were laid down, producing heavy
and light lines in the finished product—and in images on the
film.

My next task was to help in the design and construction of a
pilot scale machine that would allow the study of coating
problems, with those connected with Polaroid products having high
priority. Almost before the machine was complete I found myself
replicating the defects encountered in production and using the
unfinished equipment to find ways of avoiding them. This led to
my complete involvement in coating studies. With a team of ten we

'Emulsion, the term commonly used for the mixture of silver halides,
gelatin, dyes and doctoring agents that comprise the light sensitive layer,
is a misnomer; it is better described as a suspension.

32

were able to use the machine (it performed like a production
machine, but was one-tenth the size) to show how some defects
could be avoided, and to demonstrate possibilities for running at
much higher speeds and, at the same time, improving quality.

The potential for increase in coating speed was a highly
attractive way of recouping the investment in full size production
coating machines, which are hugely expensive to build and run.
The result was a kind of treadmill on which products were studied
one after another to find the level at which speed and quality
were optimum. I lost interest in the work, and resigned.

Riess: What was Land's part in the development?

Waters: Dr. Land developed Polaroid film for instant pictures. He offered
it to Kodak at one point, but they weren't interested. And of
course, once Polaroid looked as though it was catching on, they
[Kodak] tried to produce their own, and Dr. Land sued them. It
only happened recently, in the last ten years, I think. Took them
to court, saying that they were infringing his patents. Even at
the time that I was there, people in the lab were examining Land's
patents to see how they could get round them and produce Kodak's
own version, and they marketed something for a while, but in the
end, they withdrew it.

Riess: It all sounds enormously challenging. Working in the dark, and
maintaining a totally clean atmosphere.

Waters: Yes, it had to be clean. Everyone who went into the coating area
would put on a white coverall suit then pass through an enclosure
in which air was blasted at them from all directions to blow off
and suck away loose hairs and dust particles. And the coating-
even these multi-layers are only about a tenth of a thousandth of
an inch thick, and it had to be better than 3 percent even.

Riess: Now this was just the British Kodak?

Waters: Yes. Well, there was collaboration, because — in fact, at one

point I went over to the Eastman Kodak Company to compare notes
with them, and they occasionally sent people to us. And likewise
the French company sent people and I went to Paris and discussed
with them and so on. We were trying to avoid duplicating each
other's work, but they were all interested in the same kinds of
problems.

33

Riess: Were you paid in shares of Kodak?

Waters: Oh, no. Lend-Lease during the war stopped all that. Because one
of the arrangements for Lend-Lease was that stock for American
companies in Britain was sacrificed. So in fact, no employees at
Kodak had any stock at all. I was amazed to discover when I went
to Rochester that all they ever talked about there was their stock
purchases .

One of the amusing things was, of course, that this was in
Rochester, New York, where Xerox Corporation had put up its
headquarters right next door, deliberately a higher building than
Kodak's on State Street. [laughs] Just to show off. And people
in Rochester were moaning that they had resolutely refused to take
any stock in Xerox, but then their wives had all gone out and
bought it, and at one point their wives' portfolios were worth
more than theirs. [laughing]

Riess: Did you do much photography yourself early?

Waters: No, I didn't. I got an appreciation for what was possible with
photography. And in fact, one of the training programs that I
went through actually had me making my own emulsions and coating
them onto glass plates, exposing them and testing them with
sensitometry.

At that time too, the camera manufacturing department was
also on the site at Harrow. Subsequently, it moved out of town
and went to Stevenage, but at the beginning, it was at Harrow.
One of my pleasures, when I had reason to visit other parts of the
plant, was to go by the camera department and look in scrap bins
to see what bits of equipment they had thrown out. I assembled a
cheap camera that way, from pieces of scrap. It was the camera
known as the Retinette. The Retina, which was made over here, was
quite a famous camera; Retina 3 was the last model, I think.

Riess: I had a Retina.

Waters: Oh, yes? A little folding camera.

Riess: Yes, with a bellows.

Waters: Yes, splendid little job. Well, the Retinette was almost an

insult, because it had very few of the qualities of the Retina.
But it was a good cheap camera, and I took a number of pictures
with this thing made from scrap pieces that cost me nothing at
all.

34

II ENTRY INTO THE WORLD OF GARDENS AND GARDEN HISTORY

Garden History Society. New Horizons

Waters: But by this time, about the time--aha, I have to retrace. Okay?
Riess: That's okay.

Waters: About the time I went to Kodak--! 'd had another garden. I had
become quite interested in gardening, and I had started to buy
books on gardening. I quickly realized that most of the best
books on gardening were out of print. But there were a lot of
hacks turning out books on almost any subject a publisher might
want. (We've got them here too, you know.) I had a few of these,
and I realized that I had to look elsewhere, because I couldn't
enjoy these books. Not because of the information, but it was
just presented in such a dreary way.

So I started to look for books by people I'd heard about,
like William Robinson and Reginald Farrer, and a few people like
that. I haven't bought myself a car yet, I'm still bicycling
everywhere. And when 1 went bicycling around the countryside, I
would invariably call in at any used book store on the way to see
what I could find.

So this--and I suppose too the early interest in history
that my father encouraged in me by these books that he sent for--
led me to the Garden History Society. I read somewhere about a
garden history society that was being formed, and there was a
meeting to be held at the Royal Horticultural Society's offices in
London. I went up to it, and that's where I met a number of
people. Ray Desmond, who was the librarian at Kew, William
Stearn, the author of Botanical Latin, and several other
interesting people.

Riess: Did you put together quite a collection of garden books?

35

Waters: Yes, oh, yes. It's now giving me problems of storage. I brought
all of them over here to the States, and I've added to the
collection since. It now fills more than 200 feet of shelving.

Riess: I interrupted you. You started to meet people-

Waters: --interested in gardening and in history, and people interested in
design. This is the point at which I started to think about the
design of gardens, not just the growing of plants. And of course,
I acquired a historical perspective by virtue of my interest in
the Garden History Society, because at that meeting an executive
committee was formed, and the fellow sitting next to me, we seemed
to get on very well together, a fellow called Laurence Fricker
nominated me, and so I, to get my own back, nominated him for the
executive.

Riess: What were the aims of the society?

Waters: It was to provide sources of information for people doing

research. It was the brainchild of a man called Hunt, Peter
[Francis] Hunt, who had just written a book called The Shell
Gardens Book. Essentially it was a pocket encyclopedia and guide
for people interested in the great gardens of Britain, and it also
gave snippets of the history, and the principal features of the
gardens. It contains discussions, for example, on garden urns,
gates and gate houses, borders, topiary, and so on. All things
that are being done much more grandiosely now, but Peter Hunt
essentially was beginning guides of this kind.

He realized that he was having great difficulty finding this
information, so he thought that the Garden History Society would
be a means of organizing people with similar interests so as to
make the information more readily available to everybody. It is
also an effective force in garden conservation.

Waters: One of the first needs of the new society was to become better
known. With this in mind I collaborated with Miles Hadfield,
author of a history of gardening in Britain, in putting together a
set of notes on garden history and a collection of color slides
that together could be rented from the society for lectures. I
was able to have good duplicates made of slides borrowed from
members, and from them put together two or three sets of about
eighty pictures each. These were in constant use for several
years.

36

Riess:

Waters :

Why do you think there was an interest at the time?
early sixties?

Is this the

Nineteen sixty-five dates the foundation of the Garden History
Society.

Yes, certainly gardening literature was increasing
enormously. Whereas at one time, one or two publishers, like
Country Life and Colingridge were the publishers of gardening
books, almost alone in the market. Ward, Lock were publishing
guides, touring guides. Each had a specialty. And indeed, that
was part and parcel of the publishing business, because it meant
they could keep specialist editors on staff who were able to vet
manuscripts and say, Yes, this is a good one, and this is no good,
we shouldn't bother with it.

Suddenly, there was a crucial publication, and it was a
wildf lower book by a cleric, William Keble Martin's The Concise
British Flora. Martin, as he traveled around visiting his
colleagues and perhaps standing in while they went on vacation,
would make watercolors of the wildflowers that he saw. He got
pages and pages of this stuff. Took them to publishers--! think
his daughter did, because he was getting rather old. Nobody
wanted to touch it.

Riess :

But then a publisher did pick it up, got the Duke of
Edinburgh to write a preface, and in 1965 the thing went like
wildfire! All the publishing houses that previously hadn't
concerned themselves with plants or gardens suddenly realized they
were missing out. So almost every publishing house in Britain was
producing gardening books.

That's interesting. I think that was about the time that Knopf
published Julia Child, and nobody had published cookbooks before
then.

Waters: That's right, the same thing was happening in cooking. Those two
fields particularly. But of course, it also meant that the day of
the hack had arrived, because many publishing houses no longer
needed—or felt no need—to keep specialist editors and would just
print any damn thing that was offered them, and that's the
situation. It's been that way ever since, pretty well, hasn't it?

Waters: Editing also suffers from the automation of book production.

Machinery has so reduced the cost of preparation, printing, and
binding, that the editing process now looms as an expense much
larger than others in a publisher's accounts sheet. When

37

economies are looked for as a means of increasing profit or
staving off bankruptcy, it is the editing that seems most labor
intensive and to offer greatest saving in costs. In many
publishing houses work once shared among specialist editors is now
attempted by one, and the months once allowed for it are reduced
to as many weeks .

A comment on this subject in a Pacific Horticulture
editorial1 prompted a response from a reader who had left the
publisher for whom he had been editor, disgusted by the limited
attention to editing now allowed there. He was now a professional
gardener and wholeheartedly endorsed my assessment of trends in
horticultural publishing. An example of these failings was
singled out for mention in a Pacific Horticulture review2 of a
book published by Doubleday in 1978. Listing enough errors "to
indicate the limits of the author's comprehension" the reviewer
summed up the book as containing "so much misinformation that [it]
cannot be recommended for beginning gardeners, and should be read
by others only for amusement."

Waters: That was, I think, essentially what was happening, and this

obviously stemmed from a tremendous—the beginnings of what has
now become almost an avalanche of books as a result of growing
interest among people in Britain for gardening. And the same
thing happened here about ten years later, I would say.

First Horticultural Society Involvement. Garden at Oxhey, 1961
[Interview 2: July 14, 1998] ##

Riess: From our first interview, it seems you lived a number of places.
When we come to the editing, I will want it to be clear enough so
that the reader isn't saying, "What? Where? Where was he
collecting manure? When did he have his motorcycle?" All of
these things will get cleared up, I hope, at the end.

Waters: Yes.

'Pacific Horticulture, Winter 1977, p. 1.
Pacific Horticulture, Fall 1978, p. 52.

38

Riess: And the autobiographical editorial pieces in the issues of Pacific
Horticulture added even more locations. For instance, where was
the garden that you mulched with municipal compost and hops?3

Waters: Oh, that one, yes, you're referring to my reference to it. That
was at Oxhey, as a matter of fact. It was a very long, thin
garden. It was only about thirty- five feet wide, but it was about
300 feet long. A long strip.

Riess: And where is Oxhey?

Waters: Oxhey is in Hertfordshire, on the outskirts of the town of

Watford, a town northwest of London, just beyond the greater
metropolitan area and much better known. There was a large golf
course at Oxhey at one time that had been abandoned by golfers and
was now just a kind of public park. On one side of the park,
before the Second World War, there had been a private housing
development, and on the other side in the postwar period the
London County Council put up another housing project, which had
become known as South Oxhey.

As a matter of fact, while living in Oxhey I became involved
in local council activities. I campaigned and got a seat on the
Rural District Council. But anyway, that garden was at Oxhey, and
it's where I first became involved in horticultural societies.

The pre-war, private development, was quite a tight
community. There were half a dozen streets, and in one long
evening you could walk around putting notices through letterboxes.
So it was a convenient unit within which to organize a
horticultural society. And when, in 1955, I first went to a
meeting, it was obvious that the society was almost defunct,
because nobody wanted to be an officer. So there was going to be
no show that year. I thought to myself, better a show secretary
who knows nothing about it than no show secretary at all, so I
volunteered.

And that had a magical effect, because I suddenly discovered
that the show secretary was supposed to know it all, do you see,
and I thought, My god, I haven't the foggiest idea what these
people are talking about. So I went out and bought a book, and
that was the beginning of my garden library. As well as the two
flower shows, I arranged film shows in winter, drawing on the
several libraries offering 16 mm. sound films on technical
subjects, and bus trips to fine gardens.

^Pacific Horticulture, Winter 1992.

39

Riess: Are all the horticultural societies a part of the Royal
Horticultural Society?

Waters: Not necessarily, no. Some do make some kind of affiliation to the
RHS, but no, this was just an independent unit that had two flower
shows a year, one in June and another in September.

They also had a building—actually, more of a hut. It was
the air raid warden's hut that had been erected during the war,
and the society had taken it over to store fertilizers and things
like that. These things they bought wholesale and sold on Sunday
mornings to members at cut prices. So it was a useful
organization.

Riess: You got this great strip of garden with your cottage?

Waters: Yes. It was actually just a semi-detached house, that's all, part
of this small private development. Not as monotonous as the
estate in Dagenham-- there was a greater variation in the
buildings, and they were stucco, not just plain brick.

Who Gardens in England, and Why

Waters: I had become interested in fuchsias and went to a nursery and met
a very friendly Irishman called Alfred White who was the owner and
ran it with his two sons. He encouraged my interest in gardening.
He was already a revered member of this society—he lived in one
of the streets nearby. He also grew irises, and that's how I
became particularly interested in irises.

Riess: What did you have in that show the first year?

Waters: Oh, I don't recall. I do recall showing my first delphinium. I
got really interested in growing them taller and thicker than
anyone else. I was quite successful with delphiniums.

Riess: And this was because of your composting and mulching?

Waters: That's right, yes. I quickly latched onto the idea that if you

fed the soil, the plants would look after themselves. So my idea
was that those soil bacteria just had to be fattened up and just
pushed everything they might enjoy at them that I could lay my
hands on. [laughs] And it did seem to be quite successful,
although the soil there at Oxhey was fundamentally very poor. It
was extremely gravelly. It was said that that part of
Hertfordshire had been the repository for the last huge pile of

debris from the ice ages. The debris--gravel--was left behind in
Hertfordshire by the receding ice as the climate became warmer.

Riess: When you talk about the tallest delphinium, it reminds me of the
competitive aspect of gardening.

Waters: Yes, and you find competition here, too. There are iris, dahlia,
lily, and other societies dotted around this country, and they
have competitive shows. But they're probably less attractive
because of their specialty—they 're just competitions among iris,
or dahlia enthusiasts.

The flower shows we were holding were less sophisticated in
that there wasn't a great deal of specialization, but you would
find all kinds of things exhibited there, including vegetables,
and the women would bring along their jams and their special-
recipe cakes and things like that, and they would all be subject
to competition. Being a judge at these shows meant being a
gourmand as well. The prizes were negligible, of course. It was
a social event, in reality. You might have got half a crown or
something or other, and a blue ribbon. It didn't really amount to
anything. It was a token. But it brought people together, and it
was a great social event.

Mr. White, the Irishman I was telling you about, was in
great demand because of his knowledge as a judge in the next tier
of shows, which were the equivalent, I suppose, of county fairs
here. They were called county shows in England. And they were
quite large events in which one would maybe spend the whole day,
because there were amusements as well. There were also cattle and
dog and cat shows, among other events, and the horticultural tent
was usually quite large. People came from all over the county and
from other parts of the country to compete, and the prizes at
county shows were significantly larger. Alfred White occasionally
took me along as his assistant when judging at county shows, so
that I could learn the ropes and broaden my horticultural
horizons.

But yes, the competition is an aspect of it. In fact, in
Britain there are books for gardeners on how to be successful in
competition, with all kinds of hints about the need to groom your
specimens, and place them well. When you stage your exhibit, the
books tell you to place it next to that of a fellow competitor
whose flowers are pale so that your vivid red ones stand out and
hit the judge's eye, and that kind of thing.4 But mainly they

*E.R. James, Flower Growing for Shows, Penguin, 1959. George
Whitehead, Growing for Showing, Faber, 1978.

41

tell how to grow exhibition plants really well, and carry them to
shows without damage.

And in these horticultural exhibits which might call for,
say, a dish of potatoes, the prize would be heavily weighted
towards that dish which showed evenness in size and shape, and in
the case of fruit, for example, it was quite common for the judge
to slice it open and taste it to see if it was up to scratch, and
a really good example. Though there would also be a class, maybe,
for the longest bean, whose size, not quality, was the decider.
There are all kinds of classes to enter. The schedule would be as
crowded as it could be, but in the end, the page had a finite
length. So you couldn't have a schedule which included every
possibility.

Riess: And at the bottom of all of it is competition.

Waters: But the competition at local shows is usually friendly; prizes are
given mainly to encourage exhibitors. Only at specialized
national shows does competition become serious. Among garden
makers too, there's competition. Obviously, there's pride in
producing a garden that attracts more visitors. Garden visiting
in Britain nowadays is a major industry. It's so important to
tourism. I think it's had a deleterious effect on garden design
in Britain, insofar as now owners of famous gardens, eager to
attract visitors, want to provide what will draw the crowds, not
necessarily that which is artistically superior.

Riess: Are these the gardens that are supporting the old houses?

Waters: Yes, in some cases. They need the money, and that again becomes
an aspect of competition, I would imagine. The prize being the
gate money.

In fact, I won't mention names, but on my last visit to
England I encountered a gardener who rather deplored the fact that
he hadn't been able to attract the visitors that he needed to
maintain the garden. He said that a week or two hence, a number
of the best-known names in horticulture, who were sympathetic to
his need, were to stage an event there which would give him an
opportunity to publicize his garden. So attracting visitors had
become essential to him.

Riess: No more secret gardens.

Waters: Oh, there are secret gardens as well, people who don't maintain

them for visitors. But a lot of people in Britain are landed, as
it were, they've inherited the property, and it has a famous
garden, a garden that has not been taken over by the National

42

Trust, and somehow or other, they feel the need to keep it going,
Admission fees are one way of doing it.

Riess: In 1961, you were at Oxhey. In 1965 when you helped found the
Garden History Society, were you still in Oxhey?

Waters: Yes. Yes, most of the time that I was at Kodak, from 1954 to
1972, I was at Oxhey.

Publicizing the Garden History Society

Riess:

Waters :

Tell me more about the Garden History Society,
them? Did it have a publication?

Did you write for

Riess:
Waters :

Yes, it had a publication. I didn't contribute to it, no. At
that time, it was little more than a newsletter. I do have all of
them on file, as a matter of fact, from number one. Peter Hunt
was producing it for the first few years. It had all kinds of
news of the society's activities, and announcements about what was
being attempted in the way of compiling a register of important
gardens throughout the country and so on. That was part of its
activity, and bibliographies were being compiled by certain people
in the society. In other words, people who were active in
historical research were reporting what they were doing in the
newsletter, but it was fragmentary in the main at that time.

How did you make the Garden History Society known?
Yes, publicizing the thing was a problem.

Coming out of an early meeting, there was a little group of
us, including Ray Desmond, of Kew, Frederick Doerf linger, who
represented the Dutch bulb industry in London, and Sandra Raphael,
a librarian working at Oxford at the time. We were charged with
finding ways of publicizing the society, and one of the things
that we did was to put up shows at the Royal Horticultural
Society's meetings. Kay Sanecki, the secretary, and I conceived
of a display at a Royal Horticultural Society show at Vincent
Square, London [November 21-22, 1967].

This first exhibition was of old garden tools. We had a
slightly raised platform, and in the center of it we erected a
wooden tower, a four-sided tower, and for the sides I made
photographs of one of the depictions by Brueghel, a thing called
"Spring," a lot of Flemish gardeners digging away. (You probably
know the thing, it's quite famous.) I made four photographically

43

enlarged copies—poster size—and put the society's name above
them. On the platform beneath the tower, we displayed a lot of old
garden tools collected from various sources around the country.

We had found a cache of old garden tools near St. Albans,
Hertfordshire. They were the property of a man called Salaman, a
relative, I believe, of Redcliffe Salaman, described by Herbert
Baker as "the potato's chief biographer."5 He had all kinds of
old tools, including an Irish fack, which was the name for a
wooden tool used in cultivating potatoes.

Digging tools are very localized in Britain. Almost every
region had its own favorite shape. The blade was narrower, or
longer, or broader or, in some cases, had a toothed edge,
depending on local soil, weather, and the sort of crops grown.
The toothed edge would be found in areas blessed with heavy clay,
and was a means of helping to cut into it. Anyway, there were
lots of other things there as well. Some of the famous old
cloches, bell jars, which were used for propagation, he had
several of those intact. We borrowed all this from him, or a lot
of it--he had a whole barn full of the stuff—to put on our
display. And that was the first GHS display. It attracted
attention, but it did not win a medal from the RHS.

Our next display, at the RHS show in February, 1970, did
win. It was a series of photographic enlargements illustrating
the main styles and periods in British gardening over about three
hundred years. An illuminated panel was devoted to each style:
the pagoda at Alton Towers, the Japanese garden at Tatton Park,
the bridge at Sezincote, all showing Oriental influences; gardens
at Studley Royal, Stowe, and Chiswick House, showing the Search
for Nature. Other headings, given here in no particular order,
included The Grand Manner, Patterns and Traceries, The Plants Take
Over, The Italian Revival, and Space For Living. Original
photographs for this exhibit came mainly from those members who
had helped with the slide lecture, notably Arthur Hellyer, editor
for many years of the British weekly, Amateur Gardening.

That was one of the very first exhibits- -so far as I know—
at the RHS's fortnightly shows that was electrically lit.
Individually, obviously the hall was illuminated for most
exhibits. But my friends at Kodak got behind me on this, and they
made all the enlarged prints for me, and they even designed the

5H.G. Baker, Plants and Civilization, 3rd edition, p. 42. Wadsworth
Publishing, 1978.

exhibit insofar as they found folding display panels, and arranged
for each panel to be lit from above. And they transported and
assembled the whole thing, so the Silver Lindley Medal given to
the society for the exhibit was theirs too, I'd say.

Riess: Was Kodak a sponsor?

Waters: No, this was all done privately. No, I don't know that the

management actually knew anything about it. It was all done by a
network within the company. "Yes, George, we can fix this for
you"--a friendly arrangement. Most of it was done in odd moments.
But the company was reasonably tolerant in those days. Fuji
hadn't started making inroads into their profits as they have
since. [laughs] Fuji was just a shadow on the horizon then.
They were paying license fees for several manufacturing processes
developed by Kodak.

Waters: I was also active in the British Iris Society, at whose shows in
the RHS halls in Vincent Square I helped with displays as well.
For one of these we built a darkened closet, about eight feet
square, in which were five large bowls of irises illuminated with
beams of light filtered to produce extraordinary colors in the
flowers. The intended futuristic effect was somewhat lessened by
the sun entering through high windows in the hall that almost
overpowered our electrical light sources. We had not anticipated
such bright weather--but evening visitors to the show saw our
exhibit at full power.

Riess: There was no consciousness of the history of gardens until the
Garden History Society?

Waters: The Garden History Society was obviously a response to a growing
interest, but at that point the interest from academia was almost
nil. Most of the people who founded the society were gardeners,
they weren't academics, you see, although William Stearn was well
established academically.

Roy Strong, who subsequently made a name for himself in
academic circles in the area of garden history, was director of
the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and in 1979 put on a big
exhibit called A Celebration of 1,000 Years of British Garden
History. But Strong was inclined to dismiss the Garden History
Society because it wasn't sufficiently academic in its approach to
the subject.

Riess:

Waters:

Riess:
Waters :

What about Sissinghurst and places like that?
history, weren't they?

They were garden

I'm not sure now when Sissinghurst passed into the hands of the
National Trust, the date escapes me, but in the sixties, I think
Sackville-West was still there. And it was an important and a
much admired garden, but at that point, it was not seen
necessarily as an historic garden. Although the building around
which it was made was historic, the garden itself was just a place
that she wrote about, and therefore, it was famous and people went
to visit it.

What were historic gardens?

The earliest garden in Britain is an excavation on the south coast
where archaeologists unearthed the foundations of a Roman villa.
So that's a remnant of the Roman occupation. And they also
unearthed tile work which outlines the garden that accompanied
that villa. I think it's called Fishbourne. And since those
days, I think there have been other relics found of Roman gardens
in Britain; I'm not sure about that.

Waters: Little is known about gardens in medieval Britain. They are
believed to have differed little from those of the time in
mainland Europe, where a few manuscripts describe them. Our
conjectures find confirmation in the writings of Thomas Hyll6 and
a few anonymous authors of slightly earlier date, who include,
inter alia, chapters on gardening.

Waters: But there are odd relics from the period. For example, in New
College, Oxford, there is the Mount, which was a distinctly
medieval artifact in gardens, but not much else other than the
walls that surrounded the garden can be called medieval.

Things start to get a bit easier once you come to the
European, the French influence particularly. There are signs of a
garden made in the classic French style at Hampton Court. That
was done for William and Mary. It's said that Le Notre visited
Hampton Court, presumably in an advisory capacity, but I'm not

'Thomas Hyll, A Most Briefe and Pleasant Treatyse,.., 1563, London,
and Hyll, The Gardeners Labyrinth, 1577. (The first of these is the
earliest book in English on gardening of which copies exist. The second is
the best known of Hyll's several books on gardening.)

46

sure that's true. It's disputed. And also at Melbourne Hall,
Derbyshire, Levens Hall, Cumbria, and Wrest Park, in Bedfordshire,
there are remnants of gardens of distinctly French influence. So,
scattered around the country we find evidence of early gardens.

With the huge revolution in taste in the 18th century, then
the evidence becomes thick on the ground. But despite the fact
that the 18th century revolution destroyed a great deal of what
went before, there are those earlier remnants.

Riess: "Arcadia."

Waters: Yes, that's right. It's a revolution that's quite fascinating in
itself. There was a Romantic revolution throughout the arts, and
in many ways, I think it's possible to show that garden design,
then considered the highest art, preceded all others. So it's
worth digging into, and it's also interesting that humanist ideas
were bandied about quite a lot in those days. Which incidentally
coincides with the revolution over here.

It could be argued that the revolution taking place in North
America was not in fact an anti-British activity; it was a
humanistic revolution. Something similar was also taking place in
Britain, but without warfare; it was occurring in Parliament.

Waters: John Locke's social contract theories, which endorsed the

individual's right to the pursuit of "life, health, liberty, and
possessions," are the basis of the U.S. Constitution. But Locke
was influential in his own country as well, and his ideas provided
the philosophical and moral underpinning for the Age of Reason and
the emergence of the English middle class.

Pointers to the similarity of direction in the two
countries, if not the mode of travel, are seen in the replacement
in Parliament in 1757 of Walpole, for long the condoner of
corruption and privilege, by Pitt, with more democratic leanings
and opposed to corruption. A minister popular with the people was
a novelty. As Dr. Johnson had it: Walpole was a minister given by
the King to the people; Pitt was a minister given by the people to
the King. The shift towards a new spirit of humanism is seen,
too, in literature (Fielding), religion (Wesley), and even in the
administration of law, with the appearance in London of police
courts where even the poorest could gain a hearing; sometimes a
sympathetic one.

In other words, there was in England at that time the same
reaching for individual liberty and the same struggle to be free

47

of the yoke long maintained by the landowning aristocracy. The
engine of change in both countries was powered by steam from coal.
But those philosophic connections with the Revolutionary War need
more examination; I'm speculating only.

Riess:
Waters;

Riess :
Waters :

Riess:

Waters :

Waters:

Riess:

It goes to show how far garden history as a concept could go.

Yes, and now the Garden History Society is well established both
in practical fields, in advising government departments on
conservation and so on, and also as a sponsor of academic studies.
In fact now its journal has transformed itself into a splashy
thing with a colored cover and so on. There are now two journals:
one published by the Garden History Society and the other
published independently. So there's lots going on.

Do we have the equivalent in this country?

There are garden history societies associated with states. There
is the New England Garden History Society, which publishes an
academic journal. And there is, to my knowledge, a California
Garden History Society which hasn't published anything beyond a
newsletter at the moment, it's still trying to get itself into
shape. And there are almost certainly others throughout the
country, but I don't know much about them.

But from the outset the Garden History Society has been
international. An early membership list includes many U.S. names,
and others in Europe and Africa.

And of course here we have the Garden Conservancy,
member of the board of the Garden Conservancy?

You've been a

No. I came to it appointed as a referee, as I think they call
them.

II

The Ruth Bancroft Garden probably could be said to be the spark
that got it [the Garden Conservancy] going. Frank Cabot, as you
know, is the founder, essentially, and the source of its first
energy. I guess it was there I met him, and he asked me to serve
in that capacity.

Do you bring likely projects to the attention of the Garden
Conservancy?

48

Waters: Yes, it works both ways. Usually what happens is that they get to
hear of a project, and send the details out to the referees asking
for their opinions. They assemble responses from referees, chew
it over, and decide whether there's anything the conservancy can
do to help the applicants convert a private garden to public use.

Deeper Into the Oxhey Garden

Riess :

Waters:

Riess:
Waters:

In my further pursuit of when you were where you were, I noted
that you have written about "pleiones in a greenhouse."7 On what
property did you have a greenhouse?

This was at Oxhey.
at Oxhey.

In fact, I finished up with three greenhouses

Riess:

That you built yourself?

Well, they all came by different means. The first was a very
small wooden thing that came from one of the many companies in
Britain that made prefabricated buildings. It was quite small, I
don't know- -ten feet by eight feet, something like that.

Then I got hold of an aluminum structure which was in the
nature of a conservatory in that it was designed to be attached to
the wall of the house. So I hung that on the back wall of the
house. It was very modern; it was all made from aluminum
extrusion, and the glass was set in in specially extruded plastic
mountings and so on.

Then I became friendly with Percy King, who was a lawyer in
Watford with a large garden that he could no longer manage, and he
sold off half of it. On the part to be sold, he had two
greenhouses. One of them was twenty feet long and about ten feet
wide. He said that if I wanted to dismantle it and take it away,
I could have it.

So along with the two fellows who helped to shift plants --
Oh, "Gerard and Jack?"8

7Pacific Horticulture, Spring 1991.
"Pacific Horticulture, Winter 1984.

Waters: --Gerard and Jack, they helped me take the thing down, and we
loaded it onto the flatbed which had previously accommodated
plants. We laid it piece by piece--it was still glazed, it was an
old-fashioned wood structure, with putty glazing and so on. We
laid it down, carefully, one piece on top of another, and took it
round to my garden and unloaded it, and eventually I put it up
there. It was one of those greenhouses that sits on a low brick
wall about two feet high. That was quite an achievement. I think
I broke one piece of glass in the whole process of putting it up.
That was pretty good, I thought.

Riess: This is sounding a little crowded, your garden space.

Waters: [laughs] Although the lot was narrow, it was 300 feet long, so

there was a fair amount of space in it. By this time, I had quite
abandoned the idea of growing grass, I thought that was a waste of
time. So the only area that wasn't cultivated was a small paved
path from one end of the garden to the other. All the rest of it
was stacked with plants.

Riess: Stacked with plants in what you would now think of as an artful
design?

Waters: I would call it an artful design, yes. I thought it was artful
then too.

Riess: But don't you think gardening is a totally evolutionary process?

Waters: Yes.

Riess: That your taste just is constantly changing.

Waters: Yes, indeed it is. That's true. As I say, 1 abandoned the idea
of a grass lawn. The path waved about a bit, so that the borders
on either side, which filled most of the garden, would provide
different aspects. One side would be shady and allow me to grow
hostas, even in gravelly soil. And the other side would be sunny,
so I would grow maybe azaleas or whatever on the sunny side.

Riess: What do you think your gardening instinct was then? Is it to see
whether things will grow, and the fun of it, or what?

Waters: Yes, that's right. There was a certain amount of acquisitiveness
attached to it. One has to learn about plants. Even if one
subsequently decides not to grow them, he must handle them and
have them and see the plants. So there was acquisitiveness in
there .

George Waters at 87 Raglan Gardens, Oxhey, Watford, Hertfordshire,
photographed for Garden News .

G.W. notes: "Garden News published human interest stories of the
achievements of gardeners. Word of the plants that Jack, Gerard, and I
had moved from gardens about to be 'developed* must have reached them,
and this photograph by Ken Lauder accompanied their story on my garden
in Oxhey. It shows me fondling an eight-foot Osmanthus heterophyllus
lifted from a garden in Harrow and helped to survive the move with a
soil-heating cable buried at its roots." [p. 48 in the oral history]

50

Riess:

Waters :

There was an element of defiance, of course, in growing
things that people said could not flourish in that area. There
was defiance also in deliberately abandoning one aspect of a
garden that everyone said was essential: green grass. So there
were all these things operating. There was the necessity to
learn, because I spent many years in this horticultural society
with people expecting me to answer all their questions, you see.
So I was reading by this time a great deal, and learning about
plants, reading about plants that attracted me from what was said
about them, and therefore setting out to acquire them. So there
were all kinds of things influencing my gardening.

Are there stories of how you acquired these plants?
all over England?

Did you range

No, mostly around West London. Jack was at Ruislip. Gerard was —
he wandered around a bit. He was kind of out in the Watford area
for much of the time.

Riess: These are gardening pals?

Waters: No, these were colleagues at Kodak, and their gardening interest

arose in different ways. Jack became fairly enthusiastic, because
he had a large piece of ground that needed to be made presentable.
Gerard never had a very large garden--oh, he did at one time for a
short while—but he never really became a man of the soil. He
became especially interested in Japanese maples, and he still is
interested in them.

Riess: In the Bay Area there is a great range of nurseries, and the
botanic gardens have their plant sales. And then, of course,
catalogues. How did you go about getting your plants?

Waters: I was getting catalogues from the famous firm of Hillier's in

Winchester. Their catalogue was a most delightful thing, almost
completely unillustrated, by the way, but the plants that it
listed—the stock was enormously varied. And they must have
maintained a lot of stuff that wasn't economic, because the
proprietor himself was proud of the fact that he could supply so
much.

Gradually, with new generations of owners coming along, the
company [Hillier's] decided to reduce its overhead by getting rid
of a lot of stuff. By that time- -this would have been the late
sixties, seventies—by that time there were many other small
nurseries in Britain, and these smaller companies deliberately
went to Hillier's and arranged to take over part of the stock that
Hillier's was disposing of. The plants thus were dispersed among
several specialized nurseries. The owners felt that what was not

51

economic for the large nursery might be profitable for a small
one.

Riess: And this was a happy solution?

Waters: In a way it was, of course, but Hillier's as the source for almost
everything was such an enormous convenience.

Riess: Did you know Hillier?

Waters: I was acquainted with one or two people on the staff, but I never
met Harold Hillier. One of his staff—when they first published
what was known as Hillier's Manual of Trees and Shrubs, which was
just a reference list of everything that they had ever stocked, I
got a copy, and this young woman arranged for Harold Hillier to
sign it for me. That was about as close as I got to him.

I met Roy Lancaster at some point, and he became somewhat of
a friend. And he was on the Hillier staff. Oh, that's right, he
was curator of the arboretum. The private garden, the Hillier
garden down in Hampshire, by default became an arboretum, and
Hillier eventually handed it over to the county council, which now
maintains it. Roy Lancaster was the first curator, and he had
been on the Hillier staff up to that point.

Riess: I was asking how you decided what to put in your garden, what

proportion was through a growing acquaintance with the people in
the world of gardening, and how much was reading catalogues during
the long winters? But mostly today I want to get you out of
England ! [ laughter ]

Waters: Yes, you'll have to schedule that for '99. [laughter]

Putting on Garden Programs

Waters: Where are we? Yes, the Garden History Society obviously brought
me in touch with lots of people. We tried to form regional
groups. I'm not sure how successful this has been, but we had one
in Hertfordshire. We arranged visits to famous gardens. For
example, Ashridge in Hertfordshire is a famous garden. It has
remnants of Humphrey Repton's work in it. We had a very fine
visit there. It's now a privately run business college.
Delightful part of Hertfordshire. And we had several others.

So this was essentially widening my scope. Arthur Hellyer,
for example, who was active in the Garden History Society, was an

52

Riess:
Waters ;
Riess:
Waters :

Riess :
Waters :

Riess :

Waters ;

editor of Amateur Gardening magazine. He was a revered plantsman,
provided some of the photographs that went into the exhibit of the
Garden History Society. And Miles Hadfield I met through the
society. He wrote one of the first books on garden history to
become quite popular in Britain.

Were you propagating and grafting, and all those things? [laughs]

Yes, all those things.

Did you ever take classes to learn how to do this?

No, it was all by reading, and talk with people like Alfred White,
you know, the old nurseryman I was telling you about earlier on.
He had ideas about gardening and propagation and I was constantly
in discussions with him. But no, in the main, it was through
reading. The only classes that I can recall being associated with
were those I had the audacity to set myself up as teacher of.
[laughs]

That was in this period also?

Yes, that's right, it was all in this period. The first and most
successful set of classes was in Welwyn Garden City in
Hertfordshire. Teaching classes was all part of the process of
building confidence.

That's interesting, yes.
could you teach a class?

And if you hadn't taken a class, how
And why did you want to do this?

Why? That's a good question. I suppose I'd had this yearning
that was frustrated earlier on of being a teacher. Maybe that was
it. I can't remember now the circumstances under which I took it
up. I must have heard of the fact that they were looking for
somebody to run such classes. I don't really know, I can't recall
how it came about. It was a short but happy period.

Oh, yes, that's right — in the local horticultural society I
was trying to take care of those long winters you were talking
about by running movie shows. Through my contacts at Kodak I knew
that there were a lot of 16 mm. sound movies available, and if you
remember, I had got a certificate in using 16 mm. sound movie
projectors from one of my earlier jobs. So I arranged movie shows
for the winter for the members of our society.

I wrote off for the movies and booked the local hall that we
used for our shows—it was associated with some kind of a tennis
club, I think, I'm not quite sure now. And to make sure that
people knew about it, I printed announcements on an old offset

53

Riess :
Waters :

printing press that Kodak had scrapped. There was a--I suppose
you would call it a recycling depot in the factory where anything
that any department didn't want was dumped. People in the
recycling depot disposed of the scrap, if possible by selling it.
But if a member of the Kodak staff found anything that they
wanted, they could sign a chit and take it away.

I saw this little offset printing press which looked as
though it would function, so I took it back to my laboratory and
put it in a corner, and in the evenings I would go and tinker with
it. Eventually I made it work, with advice from people in the
laboratory who knew more about these things than I did, and I made
handbills inviting Oxhey residents to my film shows. Films about
birds or other animals were popular, and I tried to include one in
each program.

I remember the first handbill, I think I still have a copy
of it. It was in two colors: black and blue. They were the only
inks I had available. And I pushed these through the letterboxes
of all the people on the estate of half a dozen streets in Oxhey.
We got quite a nice crowd of people as a result.

And you showed films about gardens?

I tried to make up programs that had some deliberate garden
instruction. A lot of it was promotional- -we call it "public
relations" now- -material, from people who were making fertilizers
and pesticides and things like that. But some of it was extremely
good.

One had to do with a company that was raising new grain
crops, cereal crops. Their agent went to a remote Italian village
to persuade these people that there were seeds far better than the
ones they were raising. The movie examined his work and the
difficulty he had overcoming the villagers' innate suspicion of
him. Of course, their suspicion was justified, we now know that,
[laughter] But he seemed a terribly dedicated man, and judging
from the movie's evidence, he did them a favor. But it was a
revelation to realize that there were people living in Italy in
such remote circumstances.

All kinds of movies. I think it did a great deal for the
society, bringing them together throughout the winter now and
then.

5A

From Oxhey to Kings Langlev. by Car!

Riess:
Waters :

Riess:
Waters :

Riess :

Waters

How large was Oxhey?
and so on.

With the tennis club and the garden society

Oh, there may have been about a thousand houses. There was
absolutely no commercial development attached to it at all, no
shops or anything.

Was it charming?

It was more charming than South Oxhey, but no, if you wanted
charm, you had to go to the next-door community of Bushey, which
was a Victorian development. It had one or two famous people.
There was a painter called Herckomer, who made some highly-
regarded portraits in Victorian days. And there was a kind of
atmosphere hanging around Bushey which no doubt Herckomer was
partly responsible for. I think there may have been something of
an artist's colony there at one time, and maybe Herckomer was just
the best known of them.

So Oxhey was on the fringes of charm,
say for it.

That's the best I can

I wonder if your greenhouses and your garden exists at all any
more. Have you ever gone back to see it?

Ahah. I've avoided it. Some years back, when I was visiting in a
rental car, I did stop in the street outside and look, and I could
recognize the front of the place quite well. It hadn't changed
enormously.

But I knew that—when I sold it I made play of the fact that
there were a number of unusual plants in the garden, and it came
to the notice of a man employed by a publishing company that was
producing a gardening newspaper. He wanted it for his daughter
who was getting married. He was fascinated by it all, and I
thought, Ah, how wonderful to have found someone for this.
Anyway, his enthusiasm for gardening was not inherited by his
daughter and her husband, not in quite the same way, because some
of the plants, some of those things that I had shifted almost
fully grown, with enormous expenditure of effort and sweat, were
just--I think he bought himself a new saw and decided that he
needed to go through the garden and cut things down.

No, it's not going to do me any good to go back there. I

m

sure it's not a good idea. After all, in these circumstances it's
no longer yours, you have no right to grieve over it. You did

55

what you wanted there, and your successor does what he or she
wants. You have no right to tell them what they should be doing.
You can advise them that this plant is such-and-such, and is a
rarity, and then after that, it's theirs.

Riess: Yes, you're right. What prompted your departure from this heaven?

Waters: Oh, I had another garden in England. From Oxhey I went to Kings

Langley, which was about, I don't know, ten, fifteen miles further
out on the road towards Aylesbury, found on maps of England on the
A-41, I think. The A-40 goes to Oxford; the A-41 to Aylesbury.

Riess: Why did you move?

Waters: It was basically the idea of making a different kind of garden.

And Kings Langley was still fairly convenient to Kodak. By now I
had acquired a motorcar, I was no longer bicycling everywhere.

[laughing] I just remembered a funny incident at Kodak when
I was dining with some colleagues. The tables held about six. I
was still bicycling in those days, and one of my colleagues said
to me--it had been raining heavily all day, and I had bicycled
through the rain. He said, "I passed you bicycling into work this
morning, George. In the rain. You looked so miserable, I thought
it might be a service to run you over." [laughter] I thought
that was a gem.

Anyway, about '65, that was the year I bought a used Ford
Cortina wagon. You still see those Cortinas around, not often
now, but it was quite a popular car in Britain.

The House of Flint

Waters: So, while out one day I saw a small cluster of attractive little

places and managed to find out who was responsible. It was an old
guy, Knight his name was, Leo Knight. He was an individualist who
had got caught up in the naturist movement and all that kind of
thing in the thirties, I suppose. He had decided to build himself
a house in this still rural area, and in looking up methods for
building houses oneself, he had discovered that when one dug into
the chalk — Kings Langley is at the edge of the Chiltern Hills,
which are predominantly chalk- -one found flint, which is an ideal
building material in many ways, since it is almost completely
impervious. After all, it's a naturally occurring form of glass.

56

But for some reason- -and I've never discovered why, and I
don't think geologists have ever explained it fully--it [flint]
occurs in chalk, but apparently only in chalk, as quite bizarrely
shaped lumps. I think they result from seepage under intense
heat, because the silica must be molten when it forms these
shapes. But there is also evidence that it tends to form around
some kind of nucleus, because very often if you break into a
flint, you'll find sometimes a quite attractive cluster of calcite
crystals.

So Knight abandoned ideas of building in wood and decided to
build with flint. He had acquired this piece of land, and he
built houses from the flint that he dug out when forming the
foundations. But because of its shapeless nature, it was
necessary to use bricks to form quoins, the corner parts, because
you can't make a sharp corner with flint. So the flints formed
panels within brick quoins.

Waters: He built one house a year, and sold it, and lived on the proceeds.
Riess: Am I right that naturist is nudist?

Waters: Yes, that's right. There was a strong naturist movement in

Britain in the thirties--! suppose it's still there—but I think
its notoriety arose from the fact that nobody else published
pictures of nude people. So boys in public school were titillated
by Naturist magazine- -they didn't have Playboy or anything of that
sort in those days.

Riess: When you bought your place, it was new?

Waters: Oh, no. When I met Knight and talked about the whole project, he
said that one of the earliest ones was about to become vacant, and
he would let me know. Later on, he told me that the place was
available, and so we did a deal. It was standing in about an acre
of ground, a lovely hillside, with lots of trees. He was
deliberately building low facades so that they would fit nicely in
among the trees. He was a man of some discernment in many
respects, although he had some cranky ideas in others.

It was quite small, but he agreed to add another room for
me. He put the addition on himself, exactly as he had built the
place originally. He even removed some of the old tiles from the
roof of the original building and blended them with new ones on
the extension, so that there would be a gradation instead of a
sudden change from old tiles to new, because he couldn't find roof
tiles to match the old ones, of course.

57

The extension was a small utility room to hold hot water
heaters and things of that sort. And he also built a garage for
me. But he mixed the concrete with a shovel, he didn't want to
disturb the rural quiet by bringing in a cement mixing machine .
That's the kind of guy he was. He had to bang a hole through the
original wall, which after all was not only of flint but of poured
concrete. The technique—do you know the technique?

Riess: No.

Waters: Well, essentially, it's in situ poured concrete. He builds the
outer wall of flint and brick, and he places beaverboard, as it
was called- -now he would use plaster board. And he would prop the
beaverboard up on the inside, build the outer wall, and then pour
concrete down between, so the two layers formed a sort of
shuttering for the concrete.

Riess: A sort of shuttering?

Waters: Yes, shuttering. They call them forms here, I think. They're
called shuttering in Britain.

In any event, it's not easy to make holes in the sandwich of
flint and concrete that results. He was actually banging his way
through that wall on his seventieth birthday while I was busy at
Kodak earning the money to pay him! [laughter]

Iris Society Garden Party

Waters: Because of the slope on this place, and the difference in shape,
and the fact that there were a number of mature conifers, there
was the possibility for all kinds of interesting garden areas
there. The first year I was there, I borrowed a sizeable marquee
that practically filled the area of grass laid out in front of the
place, and had a celebration for the iris society that I belonged
to--the local group of the British Iris Society- -known as the
Mercia group.

It was called the Mercia group because Mercia was an old
Anglo-Saxon kingdom in England that through the years changed its
shape by virtue of gains and losses from other kingdoms. First it
was this bit, and then it went up this way, and then it sort of--
it was a kind of amorphous territory that enabled us to recruit
members from almost anywhere, because it was so uncertain in its
boundaries. [laughs] But roughly, it corresponded to the old
Hardy area, Wessex, the area southwest of London.

58

Riess: You had the marquee and the show on your lawn.

Waters: That's right. Oh, we had a kind of cookout, and it was a dark
canvas marquee, so we had a movie show. The American Iris
Society, which is a much larger organization, had had a convention
in New York in 1970 or thereabouts, and a guy had made a movie of
the whole thing. So I wrote to him, and he sent me over the
movie, and I showed it to the members of the Mercia group. So we
had a good time there.

Riess: Had you made a garden there?

Waters: Yes, I had plenty of room there for the marquee, but had cleared
only a little of the area around it.

Mr. Knight taught me his technique of building with
concrete, flint, and brick, so I built a terraced wall along the
front of the place so it all matched up. What else did I do? I
found an area that seemed to me ideal in its sunny exposure for
irises .

Riess:
Waters:

Elsewhere on the lot there had been a quarry there where
marl had been taken out. You know marl? It's the naturally
occurring clay-lime mixture used by farmers at one time to improve
fertility in their fields. Lime does it by hastening
decomposition of organic matter, and helping coagulate the
particles of clay itself which, by virtue of the electrical
charges it holds, is a very fertile medium, although it's
hellishly difficult to work. Once you've got it into a suitable
tilth, it's highly fertile. So clay in one form or another is
desirable, and mixed with lime, it's more likely to form that
tilth by virtue of the coagulation that takes place.

So marl was quarried and spread on fields, and I think
that's probably what had happened. The result was that there was
a concave slope at what was said to be the back of the house. I
don't think I was ever quite sure which was the front and which
the back of that place, but I regarded this as the back, because
it was the least sunny side. On that, I raised maples, Acer
hersii, Acer davidii, from seed, and planted them out there. I
also planted lilies, but left the contour of the land intact.

Had you thought that you would be there for long?
Probably, yes.

59

III CALIFORNIA HORTICULTURAL BEGINNINGS

Finding Olive, Over the Irises

Riess: What prompted your departure for America?

Waters: Several things. I met Olive, and I became somewhat disillusioned
with my job at Kodak, for the reasons I explained to you: the
treadmill result of what was initially a useful find becoming
something of a burden. So I decided suddenly to make a change.

Riess: You met Olive through the iris society?

Waters: That's right. She came to Britain and joined in the fiftieth
anniversary festivities of the society.

So in the end, 1 decided to go to Calif ornia--or come to
California, I should say.

Riess: Making the decision, I should think she would have thought you had
a splendid situation there.

Waters: She had a family and I didn't. So she was not likely to feel
inclined to move. So her family adopted me.

Riess: Tell about meeting Olive.

Waters: I was helping put up a show, an iris display—this was in

Westminster. Olive, I think, was on one of those Berkeley-Oxford
Extension things. But she was already active in the American Iris
Society over here, and she knew about what was going on in Britain
too.

I think I spoke to her first when I was putting up this
exhibit. Working at Harrow, I'd come to know about a company
called the Greyfriars Glass Company. Quite a famous old company
that used to do stained glass work for William Morris—you find

60

references to them in William Morris's records. Greyfriars was an
area in London where they once were, but they had moved out to
Harrow, and were just across the street from Kodak.

I went to visit them—they threw the place open to groups of
us who used to go across there to see the glass workers. Some of
the Kodak engineers had been helpful to Greyfriars in designing
some special equipment during the war. They were undertaking to
make thermometer tubing in quantity. The old way of making
thermometer tubing--and I saw them doing it there—they'd take a
large annular ring of molten glass, two people with tongs gripping
this annular ring of glass, and they would run apart until it was
reduced to a thin tube. That's a fact!

Obviously, the diameter of the hole through the middle of
the tubing was important, and so they would do it by selection.
They would determine the diameter of the hole and cut out pieces
that were right.

What they decided to do was to build a tower in which the
molten glass would be pulled out mechanically, presumably at some
controlled rate. And I think Kodak engineers actually designed
the mechanism that would do the pulling for them, because they
were used to devising means for having things happen at controlled
rates .

And so we would occasionally assemble groups and go and
admire their work. Changing crucibles without extinguishing the
furnace was an especially dramatic scene, like something from
Dante. They were proud of their traditional methods, and they
still had an area devoted to the design and construction of
stained glass work. They had contracts for all kinds of work for
churches and cathedrals in Europe, even in Sweden, which is a
country quite well known for its own glass.

At Greyfriars I saw an experimental panel. In addition to
traditional stained glass with pieces set in lead, they were
experimenting with techniques for taking pieces of glass of
different colors, laying them side by side and in places,
overlapping, and then fusing the whole thing together as a solid
panel. I saw such a panel, and I was impressed with the
similarity in color between the glass and iris petals.

So when we were talking about ways for the Mercia Group to
put up an exhibit at Westminster, I thought of approaching these
people and asking them if I could borrow that experimental panel.
They agreed, with some trepidation, but I assured them that I
would look after it and bring it back safely.

61

A group of us in the society arranged to erect this,
vertically—it was a tall, thin panel, about six feet high and
about two feet wide- -illuminate it with fluorescent tubes from
behind, screen it out with black curtains, so that it just stood
there as a bright glowing column, and in front of the black
curtain we would arrange bowls of irises in colors that
corresponded with the glass.

One of the people who was judging at the local flower shows
was a man called Fletcher who taught at the art school in Bushey.
He agreed to come up and make the arrangements in bowls for me, so
I provided the irises and the panel and the black curtain, and he
came and arranged the irises, perhaps as many as 200 stems, and it
was a very nice display.

And that's what Olive was looking at, and I was adjusting
the lighting, and we got talking. One thing led to another, as
they say, and that's it. A mystery, isn't it? [laughter]

Riess: You hadn't traveled to America?

Waters :

Only for the company once, and that was also in '65-- 1965 was a
busy year for me. That was the year I helped found the Garden
History Society, and I bought my first motorcar, all in 1965, a
watershed year.

Becoming a Gardener in Berkeley

Riess:

Waters

Riess :

Waters :

Riess:
Waters :

Now, how did you plan to make a living in California? Did you
come here first and look for a job?

No, I just felt that it was a place where I could be comfortable.
I got the impression that the language was somewhat similar, so it
wouldn't be difficult to get by. [laughs]

No, but it was a big change.

Yes, there is a pattern I can now see of these sudden changes,
sudden decisions, in an otherwise conservative life.

A full life, as you describe it.

Yes, that's right. And then suddenly feeling the need to make a
change, yes.

Riess: Olive lived in Berkeley?

62

Waters: Yes. She was still studying at UC at the time,

Riess: And, Berkeley, late sixties—you had heard about Berkeley?

Waters: Oh, yes. But it didn't deter me- -it may have been almost an

inducement, because politically, I was somewhat nonconformist.
Not that I was anxious to join in the street fights or anything
like that, but by and large, the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the
place is a comfortable environment for me. I've visited a number
of other cities in the States, although I haven't lived or even
stayed in them to any great extent, and I wouldn't, I'm sure, feel
as comfortable in most of them. I mean, the university has had an
enormous influence on the cultural environment of Berkeley, hasn't
it.

So yes, the transition was easier in Berkeley than it would
have been elsewhere in the U.S. [tape interruption]

We started out with a sort of little garden business, we got
a Toyota truck, Olive and I, and we did maintenance work, all
kinds, any odd job. Mostly it was a matter of rescuing people
from gardens.

You know, people come from the East Coast and they have no
conception of what more than 300 growing days a year means to a
garden, and they suddenly find themselves enclosed with
vegetation, and they call up and say, "Come and get us out!" And
anyone who can do that can make a living in Berkeley. All you
have to do is to have a pair of shears and know the way to the
city dump [laughs], and you can call yourself a gardener.

Riess: How did you get known?

Waters: Well, one leaves a card, a business card, at the Berkeley

Horticultural Nursery, and you put a little ad in the newspaper.
What was that thing we used to have in those days? It was full of
all kinds of ads. You'd get a free notice in it too,

Riess: Did you bill yourselves as designers?

Waters: Oh, no, although gradually that kind of work started to come
along, designing work. What did we call ourselves? I've
forgotten now.

Riess: But mainly you were just maintaining?

Waters: Just anything that came up. As a matter of fact, when garden work
was in short supply, through a contact we made with real estate

63

people in Telegraph Avenue called Freeholders. I also did
carpentry and plumbing.

If

Waters: They put odd jobs in my way, like repair work, when somebody had
their front door broken into, so the door jamb was damaged and
needed replacing and things like that. And there was some work on
somebody's chimney, and a gas line I ran underground between a
house and detached garage. So these were odd jobs that I was able
to fill in on when there wasn't enough garden work.

Connecting with the California Horticultural Society

Waters :

Riess :
Waters :

Riess:
Waters :

One of the things I did [to become better known] was to offer to
give a talk at the California Horticultural Society, feeling,
having joined it, that that was a good way to make contacts and
get better known.

Cal Hort was the center of horticultural activity in the Bay Area?

Oh, yes, that's where the knowledgeable gardeners were meeting,
there's no doubt about that. There were some very well known
people, and some of them are still about, of course.

For the Garden History Society in England I had put together
a slide lecture. I did the accumulating and duplicating of
slides. We had three copies of it. Miles Hadfield did the text
to accompany them. We mailed these slides out to people who
wanted to entertain an audience on the history of gardening in
England.

Well, I knew most of these notes almost by heart, and many
of the original slides were mine, so I made up some of the
photographic gaps in the meanwhile by one means or another and
delivered a talk to the California Horticultural Society.

It was a strange experience.

Why?

Well, most of their meetings are held in the Morrison Auditorium
of the Academy of Sciences, but for one reason or another, which I
never understood, they decided to move this talk to that big room
in the Hall of Flowers. Do you know that place? It has a

64

Riess:

Waters :

Riess:
Waters :

Riess:

Waters;

platform on the diagonal- -and the acoustics are appalling!
the most god-awful place to give a talk.

It's

There was a very big crowd there. And then the sound system
broke down. So here was this guy with an accent that many of them
were having difficulty understanding, in a hall with very bad
acoustics and a sound system that ceased to work! I don't know
whether anyone actually ever heard it, frankly.

But they had a journal, the California Horticultural
Journal, which was being edited by Owen Pearce, whom no doubt you
know of.

Yes, we have an interview with him.1

Owen said, "Well, what I'd like to do is to run that talk, the
text of it, in the journal." So I polished it up a bit and it was
published in the journal-- [laughs] those people who didn't
understand had an opportunity to find out what it was all about.
I gave that talk in several other places, and it all helped to get
me established.

What were you feeling then about where your life was going?

Oh, it was fine, for a while. But it gradually dawned on me that
I had been sedentary for so long, the nonstop physical effort of
gardening was nearly more than I could manage.

So that was why, when the proposal came to launch Pacific
Horticulture, I threw myself into it. Because though we had no
idea that it might develop to the point where one might earn some
kind of income from it, it did seem worth a try.

What other ways did you get acquainted?
most interesting about being here?

And what did you find

Of course, the first thing that confronts a gardener from Britain
is the absence of so many familiar plants, and the presence of a
great, great many plants that one's never met before. That's
bewildering.

Riess: And that's what you called yourself? If someone asked "What are
you?", you would have said, "I'm a gardener"?

Waters: Yes.

'F. Owen Pearce, California Garden Society Publications, 1947-1990,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, 1990.

65

Riess: You wouldn't have said, "I'm a research chemist."

Waters: No, no. That was irrelevant, wasn't it? [laughs] And in a way,
it's important if you want to do something different I think to
make some kind of a change like that. If you continue in your old
environment, you're subject to all kinds of social pressure to go
on doing what you've always done. People have certain
expectations of you. But in a new place, people have no
expectations. They're still looking to see what on earth you're
going to do. They're trying to make something of you. They have
no preconceived ideas. So I think that's an important way of
making a change, if you're going to.

So yes, in answer to your question, I was going to all kinds
of other garden meetings, and I was on the board of the Friends of
the Botanical Garden for a while. I was trying to learn about
plants. It's not easy.

Riess: Did you take classes?

Waters: No.

Riess: How substantial a garden library had you by then?

Waters: Oh, it was about half the size it is now, mostly garden books,
overwhelmingly, yes. There were a few other things, novels and
things like that. And a few political tracts.

Pacific Horticultural Foundation Founded

Riess: Let's go on to your involvement with Pacific Horticulture.

Waters: Well, we had a Toyota truck, and Owen Pearce said he was in need
of somebody to distribute the journal, California Horticultural
Journal, and the Toyota truck was a good way of doing it. It
meant going to the printer for the copies of each issue when it
was finished, taking them home, sticking all the address labels
on, and then bagging them according to zip codes for the post
office, and taking them to the post office. That was what the
distribution amounted to.

So Olive and I took that on, and that meant that we went to
meetings of the board of the foundation. It was by that time
being published by the Pacific Horticultural Foundation. Briefly,
the history goes like this: the journal was founded by Sydney
Mitchell when he was president of the California Horticultural

66

Society. He launched it in early 1940, and it was then the
journal of the California Horticultural Society.

But in 1965, the society got in contact with the Strybing
Arboretum Society, and the Western Horticultural Society, which is
centered in Palo Alto, and they formed the foundation [Pacific
Horticultural Foundation] , which is a nonprofit group for the
purpose of publishing the journal. So the name of the publication
was changed to the California Horticultural Journal. That was
1968.

And then the Southern California Horticultural Institute, as
it was then called, came in I think in '70 or '71 to the
foundation. So a wider distribution for the journal became
possible. At the time that I got involved in sending it out,
somewhere in the order of 2,500 people were getting it.

Riess: Wider distribution, but also greater financial support?

Waters: Well, it was still being paid for out of members' dues to the
societies. They met all the bills out of their dues--
proportionally, of course, according to the number of members.

Riess: What did the foundation do? Foundations ordinarily mean money.

Waters: Well, that's true. The Pacific Horticultural Foundation has never
been terribly adept at drawing funds in, not until comparatively
recently, anyway.

Riess: But initially, why create a foundation? There were all these
sponsoring entities already, Western Hort and Cal Hort, and
Southern California. You could have published a magazine without
a foundation, couldn't you?

Waters: Oh! I see what you mean. Yes, that's true, it is feasible. But

Riess :
Waters :

there are advantages in having a nonprofit entity.
for one thing.

Mailing rates,

It was created to facilitate publishing the journal, that's all?

Yes, that's right, that's what the foundation does, yes. It's not
only a nonprofit, it's also an educational entity, and so the
mailing rates that the foundation is able to get are the lowest
the post office has to offer. And that's quite significant.

That's true, the advantages of cost in printing larger
numbers just comes by having any kind of ad hoc organization, but
the foundation does give certain advantages. There is a tax
advantage, though the foundation has never made enough money to

67

make that significant, but it's there in case of need. [laughter]
We have been audited several times, incidentally, but have always
passed muster.

Riess: And who was on the foundation board?

Waters: Well, first it's probably well to say that Victor Reiter
certainly, and probably other members of the California
Horticultural Society on the board of the foundation had the idea
of increasing the distribution, making the journal a Western
publication, not just California. And several members went up to
the Northwest to explore the possibilities of gaining the support
of horticultural societies there as well. I think their report
was not favorable, but the background was there. I mean, there
were other people before who had seen the need and the
possibilities of such a more general publication, but nothing had
come of it.

Planning to Revamp the Journal

Waters: Then in February 1975--the board only met once a year, in

February- -Richard Hildreth was the president at the time, and
Marge Hayakawa was a member of the board—and at that meeting the
question came up once again, "Well, isn't a pity, with so much
good material, that there are still so few people who receive it?"

Being the new boy, of course, I felt I knew the answer, and
I said that the material was good, but it was not sufficiently
attractively presented, that there were things one could do to
improve it. For example, I remember mentioning that the paper was
too glossy and it glinted when light struck it—that it was
hurtful to the eyes. Things of that kind.

And it happened that a number of other people on the board
had those feelings too, but were disinclined to say so, because
they felt it might upset Owen Pearce, who was the editor. But as
the new boy, of course, I was somewhat impervious to that kind of
thing. You know the way it is. I don't have to elaborate on
that, do I? [laughter]

Anyway, the idea of revamping the thing caught on quickly,
and Dick Hildreth said, "Well, okay, those people who are
interested in something of this sort, stay on after the meetings
and we'll talk about it." The board charged the committee in the
end not with making a report, but with actually producing a
revamped magazine in January the following year.

68

And I think that's the key to the whole thing. That is,
Hildreth essentially gave us those terms of reference, essentially
to produce a new magazine one year hence. Not to study the
possibilities and make a report, because we know that's often the
death of any project. So people like Harland Hand and Marge
Hayakawa, Dick Hildreth himself, Emily Brown, Helen Markwett, and
a number of others--.

Riess: Fred Boutin, and Charles Burr, and Owen himself?

Waters: Owen himself, yes. Boutin would come up from southern California
occasionally. Charlie Burr was an occasional member. I remember
Elizabeth McClintock attending one or two meetings too.

There was a core group of probably I should say Harland,
Hildreth, Marge, Olive, and myself, who convened the meetings, and
the others came as and when they were able. We held the meetings
all around the place. There was one at Emily's house. Several
were held at Harland 's house. One or two at the California
Academy of Science, and so on. Wherever we could find a room.

Decisions on Editing, Designing. Printing, Distributing

Waters: But there were frequent meetings, and as we got near to the

publication date, Marge took me aside and said that she felt it
was important that there should be an assistant editor. The
reason was understandable, and that was that Owen was somewhat
less enthusiastic about the changes than the rest of us were,
because he'd been in the editor's seat for, what, fifteen, sixteen
years, I think, a long while, and felt that the present
arrangements were okay. Although he didn't hinder our
discussions, he clearly wasn't subscribing quite as
enthusiastically .

Anyway, Marge thought that by appointing an assistant
editor, we could make sure that the changes were brought about. I
didn't answer her immediately, because I could see that it was not
going to be an easy thing to do. For one thing, it would almost
certainly mean conflict with Owen. And the other thing was that
it would take time which couldn't be paid for. The foundation had
no money, it just met its bills.

Riess: Did it pay Owen?

Waters: No, Owen was a volunteer. Up to that point the job had been

unpaid. But now we were thinking about beefing up advertising,

69

Riess :

color printing, and things that would essentially consume a lot of
time .

While you were meeting as a group, did the journal continue to
come out?

Waters: Well, yes — that's yes with reservation. One of the problems that
we were confronting was that it was often months late. And again,
that needed to be attended to if one were going to be serious
about it. In other words, while it was just going to members of
the organizations there was a great deal of tolerance. But if it
was going to be sold or offered to subscribers who were
independent of these organizations, as we anticipated, then it
would have to come out when it was promised.

And advertisers would then regard it as a professional
publication, and would expect their ads to appear when promised,
too. Not some time later, "When we get around to it, old man."

So I went back to Dick and to Marge, and I told them that if
and when a conflict occurred, that I expected that they would back
me. And secondly, that if it became possible to give the editor
some compensation, that that would be necessary too, because I had
no private resources. They might have thought that I had, and it
was important that I disabuse them of that idea in case it were
lurking there somewhere.

We didn't write anything down, we just agreed on these
things. There used to be a thing, you probably remember it, from
way back, called a gentleman's agreement?

Riess: Yes. A handshake, actually.

Waters: That was all it was, that's right. So that's how it began. We

had gained the services of a designer who participated in several
of the later meetings. That was Laurence Hyman, who was
professionally designing for--I think he was doing freelance work,
but some of his jobs were for Freeman's, the technical publishers
in San Francisco. We had looked at the work of others who were
more familiar with magazine production, but their ideas were
somewhat bizarre, and we didn't intend to abandon the somewhat
conservative layout, we just wanted to make the thing look more
attractive. Laurence was well aware of that. I think he was
already working on Fremontia with Marge--she was editing
Fremontia, and I think he was working for her on that. I can't
remember exactly which came first, but I think that was it.

Laurence established the Palatine type, and he did a lot of
the early discussions with the printer. He found a printer for

70

us, which was Dharma Press in Emeryville. But although they had--
I think they had printed some color, but it wasn't the four-color
lithographic process. They were doing some vivid color posters
for various Buddhist groups and so on, which I saw. They printed
the first issue, that came out in January '76. We retained the
volume numbering from the old journal, out of respect for Sydney
Mitchell and the people who had followed him, but we did change
the name. It was important to get a name that would not be
rejected immediately by people outside California.

Sunset magazine gave us a very good write-up of the first
issue, which was very encouraging, because subscriptions came
rolling in. In those days, Sunset was almost a bible to many
people in the West. But that write-up almost overwhelmed us. We
had printed about 5,000 copies for the first issue. That was
rather ambitious, wasn't it? We only had 2,500 readers at the
time. But the result of the Sunset write-up meant that we quickly
used up that 5,000 and we had to reprint.

Riess: Was Walter Doty your contact at Sunset?

Waters: No, he had left Sunset. Joe Williamson was the editor of the
garden section—and he eventually came onto the board.

Riess: Did you change the cost with the new issue?

Waters: We were advertising a subscription at five dollars a year, for
four issues.

Riess: And that's what it had been?

Waters: Prior to that there was no price for a private subscription. It
was just for members of the societies, you see, so there was no
subscription price. But I remember the first issue, the first
announcements were five dollars a year.

Between receiving those subscriptions and getting a reprint
things got a bit shaky, because we were still using the old
Addressograph method of printing mailing labels that had been used
for the old journal. This meant the sudden manufacture of all
kinds of new plates--you know that system, don't you, the
Addressograph machine? An embossed plate with the name and
address on it is slipped into the machine and plunked down onto an
inked screen to make a label. But those embossed plates were
something that you had to send away for.

The person who had been doing that for the California
Horticultural Society—well, for the old foundation, but a member
of the California Horticultural Society--couldn' t cope with this

71

sudden rush of new subscriptions. And then we had to get a
reprint done, and we were having difficulties, because Dharma
Press had produced the first batch quite successfully, but were
not doing too well with the second. We were beginning to realize
what their limitations were.

One or two people who had sent in subscriptions got restless
and had their lawyers write to us! Anyway, Olive got busy and
found a firm—they were called One Hundred and One Methods, in
Oakland somewhere --who ran a computer devoted to maintaining lists
of addresses for organizations such as the repertory company in
San Francisco, ACT. They were maintaining lists and doing
mailings for those people. So she had them transfer all our names
and addresses to their computer. That was before personal
computers came along-- everything was big and bulky and very
expensive. But they did that job for several years, and it got us
out of a hole, because we had to do something quickly to get these
magazines out.

72

IV LAUNCHING PACIFIC HORTICULTURE

[Interview 3: July 21, 1998) ##
An Ad Hoc Format Committee

Waters: Last time we had just reached a point where the format committee
was formed, is that it?

Riess: Yes. I'm interested in how that committee worked, and about the
importance of the other committees, the editorial committee.

Waters: Yes. Essentially, as I think I said, the format committee was
created at a meeting of the Pacific Horticultural Foundation in
February of '75. And it was—would it be right to call it a sort
of ad hoc committee? I mean, people weren't named to it. Those
who were interested stayed after the board meeting that day, and
then from time to time, some people, members of the board usually,
who weren't available on that date turned up at some subsequent
meetings, and others remained absent, and so on. So it was a
somewhat amorphous group. But generally speaking, they were
members of the board of the foundation, plus a few others who were
called in.

Riess: Would there be minutes for those meetings?

Waters: Yes, some meetings have minutes; they refer not to the format
committee, our informal name, but to the Journal Revision
Committee. And there is a report dated September '75 from the
committee summarizing its work and intent.

Discussion was wide-ranging. I don't recall other
publications being brought in and shown as examples, but obviously
reference would have been made to them. One of the things that
constantly came up was the use of color printing. For the first
meetings, the early meetings—the first half of the year, 1975--it
was assumed that we wouldn't be using color printing. The earlier

73

publication had not used it regularly. It had used it on one or
two special occasions. But it generally wasn't used, because we
saw it as expensive and we had very little money to play with.

But then as we developed ideas about the kind of paper we
were going to use, the kind of type we wanted to use, and so on,
and the need for a more attractive layout in general rather than
leaving it to the printer to get the type on as few pages as
possible, which had been the style of the earlier publication, we
came to see that for a publication to make any kind of a mark by
1976, it had to have some color in it. You can't really talk
about plants and illustrate them with black and white pictures.

So, towards the end of "75 we had reached the position of
saying, "Well, we've got to have some color in it, but it will
have to be as little as we can get away with because we just don't
have the money to be lavish." Once that had happened, then I in
particular, I think, but most other members of the committee saw
that a slight increase in size over the earlier publication would
be necessary, or would be an advantage, rather. Because size does
have an effect. If you can present a picture large, in general,
it will tend to have more impact than if you see it small. By
making the thing slightly larger than the earlier journal, we were
able to use pictures, color pictures especially, more effectively.
So the size was increased. These were the kinds of things that we
were discussing.

Then, once Laurence Hyman was brought in--he came in towards
the end of those discussions as a designer—he was able to bring
particular sizes to our attention, because that then has to be
related to the size of printing presses, and how many multiples of
a page can be fitted onto his printing plates, which in general
are called forms and contain, generally speaking, in our
publication, eight pages on a form. If you want to print
economically, you use as much of that sheet of paper as you can,
rather than print up only part of it and have him cut some off,
which you still have to pay for. So that meant that there were
certain units of size that were feasible and others not so. So we
got down to those particulars.

But the particulars we didn't get down to until the very
last minute, of course, were how we were going to pay for it, and
how we were going to distribute it. We all knew, in the end we
all came to an agreement, about how to make the thing attractive.
That's comparatively easy. But selling it is not. [laughs] But
we paid very little attention to that. We were all gardeners — and
people like Marge, who had some background in editing and was an
enthusiastic and discriminating regular at our meetings.

I had checked and polished the technical reports of my group
members at Kodak, but had no real background in editing; I did
bring to our meetings some expertise in photography, which
essentially controls the printing process these days anyway.
Everything is done photographically. Well, digital work is coming
in now and replacing some of that, but certainly at the time it
was all done photographically. And I had enthusiasm. As
distribution manager for the foundation, I had been going to the
printing house, getting the magazines after they were printed, and
the smell of the ink sort of got into my nostrils. I found it
exciting; it was almost like a drug.

Riess: Were you already, do you think, being seen as future editor?

Waters: Well, I think I probably had a lot to say for myself at the

meetings, yes. It wasn't until the very end of '75 that Marge
approached me about taking it on. Down to that point, it had
never occurred to me. But I was at almost all the meetings, if
not all of them. And I was enthusiastic about the project,
there's no doubt about it.

Riess: Did you see it as a job for you?

Waters: No, I just saw it as an exciting thing to be doing, helping to
launch a new magazine. It was my own criticism of the previous
one that had sparked all this, so in a way, I felt I had some
responsibility to see that it worked.

Riess: So the format committee was an ad hoc arrangement.

And Other Editorial Committees

Waters: Yes. And the other committees you mentioned, I came face to face
with them only after the magazine was launched, because the
previous journal had had an editorial committee, and they were
people who met occasionally--! don't know how often—with the
editor, and they discussed sources of articles and so on. But
I've never been terribly good at committees, and I must admit that
when I became editor I kind of let the thing fall by the wayside.
I held a few meetings. I didn't feel that enough was being
achieved, and I kind of let it drop.

Riess: So they weren't overseeing the content in any way?
Waters: They weren't controlling things, no.

75

Riess:
Waters :

Riess:

Waters:

Riess:

Waters:

The names remained on the masthead—some of them still do.
I think Herbert Baker was still on as botanical advisor, but as
you know, he's almost completely inactive now.

Why do they keep those names on there?

Well, just out of courtesy. As people die, we delete the names,
and generally speaking, we haven't replaced them.

But Herbert Baker, and earlier, Mildred Mathias--that implies that
they perform a scientific check.

Oh, yes, and I did make use of them. When Herbert Baker was
active, and when Mildred was alive, I made use of them. I used to
call them from time to time and get advice and opinions, so they
were and are useful, but it was never a refereed journal in the
sense that the university understands it. Articles were not
submitted regularly for scrutiny. Only occasionally for advice
and straightening out confusion and so on.

I should think that in the beginning of your editorship of the
journal, that it would have been hugely reassuring to have a
committee to turn to. To take all this on--you could do it all?

[pause] I've never been asked this before. [laughs] I should
have to consider my answer carefully. Maybe I'm forgetting
things, and I'll have to ask the transcriber to leave a half a
page blank there while I think over carefully what might have been
going on.

Riess:

Maybe there aren't that many places where one would trip up.
obvious one would be incorrect botanical names.

An

Waters: This is perhaps the time to mention that, for many years during
which the journal was being published, and from the outset of
Pacific Horticulture, Elizabeth McClintock, who was at the
[California] Academy of Sciences—was able to check botanical
names on every issue. She did see every manuscript. She's still
doing it. Extraordinary dedication there. So that was our main
backup, as it were, for getting names right.

Occasionally, I would get opinions from Bob Ornduff on
aspects of botany. For example, he has a great expertise on South
African bulbs, which he has enthusiasm for. And a couple of
times, I've had notes from him subsequent to publication calling
my attention to certain orthographic lapses. [laughing] But my
rule then was to publish his letter so that people could make the
correction.

76
Limiting Factors for Pacific Horticulture

Riess: To follow this line of thinking, would an analysis of the magazine
show areas that were not really dealt with because of a central
lack of knowledge? This is terrible to be asking you this, but
one does steer a course.

Waters: Well, that's right.

The question to me comes down to, Are there limitations in
what the magazine was able to publish, or did publish, putting it
in its most general way. Well, yes, of course there were. The
most severe limitation I think arises from the fact that we were
never in a position to pay contributors. All the articles and all
the photographs and all the illustrations were donated. That is a
very severe limitation. I didn't feel that it was a limitation at
all early on, but gradually, it began to irritate me, because I
realized that a lot of capable writers whom I would like to have
asked for contributions weren't prepared to devote the time that
was needed to make a good job of it, do you see?

There were lots of people ready to send me manuscripts. In
fact, I suppose 50 percent of the manuscripts I got weren't
published, because I felt they were either too frivolous, weren't
the kind of thing—attempts at humor, which almost always fall
flat in writing—or they didn't display a sufficiently sound grasp
of the subject. So that, I think, was a principal limitation.

On the other hand, Pacific Horticulture I think did cast a
pretty wide net, and if you compare the range of material in it
with other publications — in the horticultural field, that is — I
think you'll find that it shows a greater range of subjects than
most of them, dealt with in greater depth than most other
magazines, in horticulture.

The other limitation, I suppose in a way, is the fact that
it was only a quarterly, and that means that in general, and
throughout the year, you don't get that many pages. So in the
end, 1 almost had to deliberately narrow the field, feeling that
as a publication for gardeners in the West, a gardening climate
for which there is very little material by and large in books or
magazines, that it was an act of profligacy to publish something
about gardening in a climate which was not Mediterranean.

So in the end, I started deliberately to refuse manuscripts,
although they were still coming, from England and from other
countries, which, although excellent, had little to do with
Western gardening. It is, after all, an extraordinary climate for

77

Riess:
Waters:

garc'eners, and only in the last few years has there been a society
with its own publication in the Mediterranean countries of Europe,
and they say the same thing: "There's so little available to us on
gardening in this climate." It's nearly all coming from northern
Europe and from climates comparable with that region.

For example, in the rest of North America, there's no
experience of this climate. I used to get phone calls from
writers in the East. One that comes to mind was from someone who
was talking about hardy geraniums, many of which are quite
satisfactory in Western gardens, but they also grow in the East.
They had really no idea that for gardeners on this West Coast
here, spring occurs in a manner of speaking in the fall. That's
when the rains begin, and if you want to get your geraniums in,
that's the time you should do it. I could almost hear them
gasping over the telephone. And yet, they were writing for a
national publication, which was going to be distributed in the
West.

This was a situation that we were fighting when we
established Pacific Horticulture. We just wanted to provide an
authentic voice in Western gardening, instead of leaving people at
the mercy of publications from the East. That's why in the end I
had to say, "Well, now, this is a magazine for Western gardeners."

I had initially seen it as a grand opportunity to, for
example, bridge the gap between landscape architects and
horticulturists. There was a kind of chasm there-
horticulturists despised landscape architects because they knew
insufficient about plants. And many landscape architects were
anxious not to be seen as gardeners with dirt in their
fingernails, you know? They tended to landscape everything with
concrete paving stones and stick in a few trees that everyone
knew. And I thought, Wouldn't it be grand to get these people to
see eye to eye, at least on a few points?

You did have landscape architects on your editorial board.

Oh, yes, that's right. And people like Russ Beatty, who was very
pleased to contribute. And indeed, he was one of the exceptions
among landscape architects: he really knew plants, and he wrote
very well. Some of the articles most frequently reprinted
elsewhere from Pacific Horticulture were by Russ Beatty.

But the majority of landscape architects, when they write--!
think it has to do with this anxiety to be seen as Designers with
a capital D--tend to talk in vague terms instead of getting down
to concrete ideas. But that idea of bridging the chasm wasn't a

78

terribly good idea, and in the end I abandoned it and said, "All
right, let's talk about gardening in the Mediterranean climate."

Riess: You mean you actually made a decision that it wouldn't be possible
to create a kind of hybrid journal of landscape and horticulture?

Waters: It was not an early decision—these ideas were going on while I

was editing the magazine. Just look at some of the early issues:
I've got whole articles about, for example, restoring historic
gardens. And of course, written by an Englishman, and mostly
about English gardens, illustrated with pictures of English
gardens. The first big center spread I ever did, with bleeds all
round, right across the middle, was of Scotney Castle in southern
England.1 [laughs]

In those early issues, I failed to recognize, sufficiently
recognize, the need for a magazine devoted entirely to gardening
in our summer-dry climate. Not that I felt there was no merit in
doing it; merely that the arithmetic of a quarterly publication
with, say, sixty to seventy pages, that we couldn't spare the
space for that other stuff.

Thoughts on Some Other Garden Journals

Riess: Did most of your readers, do you think, read other garden

journals, so they didn't need to have everything in one place?

Waters: Yes, and most of which have a larger circulation even in the West
than Pacific Horticulture.

Riess: What would be the most obvious ones?

Waters: Well, the long-established garden magazine Horticulture, published
in Boston- -most of the time, anyway. There was a period when it
went to New York, but it returned to Boston. And the journal of
the Royal Horticultural Society in England has a fairly wide
distribution here.

Riess: That's the one that's called The Garden!

Waters: It's now called The Garden, yes. Although at that time it was

still called the Journal [of the Royal Horticultural Society] . As

'Pacific Horticulture, October 1976.

79

a matter of fact, it went through a phase when they seriously
considered in the RHS cutting that back to a quarterly.

You know, the economic changes which suddenly make the
investments you've been keeping the organization going with,
suddenly look to the accountants to be almost worthless, do you
see? And so they start serious cutbacks. The RHS went through
that period in, I don't know, the late seventies, early eighties.
And of course, the cost of producing the journal came up for
consideration. I'm reliably told by members of that council that
Pacific Horticulture was waved at meetings of the RHS council as
an example of what they should be doing.

Riess: The Garden is so loaded with advertising, I don't see how they'd
have any financial problem.

Waters: In the years subsequently, the situation has changed completely.
The RHS is now an enormous business. It's totally changed its
character. It went through three main phases, I suppose, in this
period from the mid-seventies. It was still a journal. Then they
put a color cover on it, and the paper got a bit cheaper—it
started to deteriorate. They then put it in the hands of a
commercial publisher acting on behalf of the RHS. Then, very soon
after that, it became larger, standard magazine size. It was no
longer a little journal.

And the RHS also began to blossom. A strange thing happened
in gardening when discretionary income in some people's hands got
larger and larger and larger, and gardening became a way of
advertising this. It became—what do they call it?

Riess: Conspicuous consumption?

Waters: Yes, that's right, an aspect of conspicuous consumption. To many
people— the attractive garden stores became boutique places
selling expensive accessories and things of that kind. And it
became okay in Britain to join the Royal Horticultural Society,
but not to join the local daffodil society or chrysanthemum
society. So most of these specialist societies are starved for
members. The RHS has got thousands and thousands of members.

Riess: Is that because they give their members something?

Waters: And because it's an okay organization to join, it carries some

sort of cachet— the Royal Horticultural Society. I think that has
something to do with it.

80

Horticultural Stratifications, Fads

Riess: Oh, my goodness. Does that have parallels here?

Waters: It has parallels here, and there's a stratification which carries
on right through gardening. For example—and you can see traces
of this wherever you go—there is a certain social cachet attached
to each group of plants. [laughs] If you want to start at the
top, you'll have to consider those plants that have always had
some sort of special significance within the Royal Horticultural
Society: rhododendrons, the special woodland species, not what are
called the ironclad types that were bred by Corner Waterer and his
family--

Waters: --and species lilies, not the modern hybrids that are sold en
masse at the corner store.

Riess: These are the RHS hierarchies?

Waters: Well, no, it pervades the whole field, even once you've left the
umbrella of the RHS, the process continues.

For example, the Iris Society, when it was founded in
Britain in about 1922, had a number of titled people in its
membership. Irises were up there just a shade below rhododendrons
and lilies. Eventually, somewhere in the middle, you've got
roses .

Riess: This is so interesting!

Waters: It's fascinating. It came to a head in my mind recently with the
publication in Britain of a little book by a man with a very good
sense of humor. It's called Yew & Non-Yew: A Guide to
Horticultural Climbers [James Bartholomew, 1998] . You see?
[laughter] You know the play on words that's being used here.

Riess: Yes, upper and not-upper.

Waters: Exactly, yes--U and non-U. Well, this is a play on that, but it's
spelled Yew, which is of course the evergreen hedging plant. He
makes the connection rather neatly, because he points out right at
the beginning that yew gardeners always plant hedges of yew. They
do not plant privet. But the non-yew gardeners plant privet and
all kinds of other things which are totally unacceptable. He
develops that theme right through the whole area of gardening,

81

Riess:
Waters:

Riess:
Waters :

Riess:
Waters;
Riess:
Waters :

Riess :
Waters :

Riess:
Waters ;

including literature, by the way.

list of publications is Pacific Horticulture.

Kind of him to send you a copy of his book.

And at the top of his "yew"

[ laughs ]

The author didn't. A friend of mine in Britain sent me a copy.
When I decided that this was a hilarious subject for an editorial,
I looked around for a distributor in the U.S. and couldn't find
one. There was one in Canada, I believe, and I mentioned that.
But anyway, since then, a distributor in the U.S. has appeared.2

But he picks up that point, he becomes more specific, and
mentions, for example, that the--the--U plant now, is euphorbias,
and he develops an explanation for all that. But I'm talking
about a stratification based upon the memberships of the
specialist societies.

You said roses were in the middle.

And then after that, you start to descend to chrysanthemums, and
down here, possibly as far down as you can get, you come across
dahlias [ "day-lee-as" ] .

Day lilies?

Dahlias.

Oh, dahlias ["dah-lias"] .

Dahlias--you pronounce it correctly, but we British make a mess of
it and call them day-lee-as . But dah-lias is correct, yes.

These are important things to know.

[laughs] Yes, indeed. One could easily have put a foot wrong by
not knowing these things, it's true.

And it's one way that things are stratified. Then there are the
fads, the faddish plants. Would it be possible to follow fads in
twenty years of Pacific Horticultural

I think not, because our writers and readers aren't trendy, but
you would see something about it. For example, Bob Cowden, a
horticulturist and retired nurseryman who has written
occasionally, in a letter to the editor makes something of the
period--! guess it must have been in the fifties or thereabouts--

2Trafalgar [Press?].

82

when herbaceous plants were tossed out in favor of camellias, for
example, and other evergreen shrubs. He comments on this, because
he sees now--or saw then when he wrote—the camellias being dug up
and replaced with herbaceous plants again. He just thought that
was worth mentioning.

Riess: How does one know that one isn't right in the midst of a fad, and
you think that you've just discovered something?

Waters: I think if people — it's no longer in my editorship, and so you

must excuse me for commenting on it— but for example, there was an
article recently in Pacific Horticulture on coleus, you see.
These have been window sill plants for many, many years. And it
may be that this is not a fad in itself, but may be an indication
of a fad for filling one's garden with plants which have a
tropical look.

This could have been started in England by Christopher
Lloyd, who is a very influential writer on gardening in England,
and much admired over here. I noticed in some publications of
local clubs, one in the Northwest, for example, the idea of making
gardens with a tropical look seems to be something of a fad at
present .

But if I were still the editor and I had articles offered me
on bringing a tropical look into the garden, I would judge it on
the apparent depth of understanding of the plants being discussed,
whether it were faddish or not. If the author understood the
plants and was able to write about them in a useful and
informative way, then I would discount the faddishness of the idea
perhaps and publish it as a dissertation, so to speak, on plants
with a tropical look, and that would be that.

Assessing the Audience

Riess: There must have been many winds of change blowing past Pacific

Horticulture as you were editing it. Did the magazine change in
those twenty years?

Waters: Obviously it did, yes. For one thing, I hope I can say that I

became a better editor. That is to say, some of the early issues
now are— 1 am too aware of the mistakes I made. Inconsistency,
for example. Being consistent in the presentation of a
publication is terribly important, in my view.

Riess: Does this come down to issues of style?

83

Waters: Yes, in punctuation, and so on. So yes, the magazine did change.

But you really mean--I think you're probably seeing it as an
advocate.

Riess:
Waters:

Riess:
Waters:

Riess:

This goes to the question of who you were editing it for.

Yes, that's right. And we were editing it for people who were
deeply interested in gardening. We used to say that we took up
the subject of gardening where Sunset magazine left off. That
beginning gardeners were looking for "how-to" publications, and
Sunset and a great many other publications—weekly newspapers, for
example—carried columns which told people how to get to grips
with the ground.

But once you've done that and your interest is piqued and
you want to learn more, then the style that I tried to develop was
one which was not obviously instructive, but one in which a reader
would be interested in the subject matter and would learn by
inference. One doesn't have to describe the process of digging a
trench to put in plants or seedlings or whatever. An intelligent
reader will derive most of that information by inference. And in
any case, when they are ready to tackle botanical names to the
extent that they're used in Pacific Horticulture, they must have
acquired a certain amount of confidence, which will enable them to
experiment, if necessary.

There aren't many hard and fast rules in gardening. You can
break or ignore a lot of the published strictures and still get
away with it. So there's very little point in being too firm
about what should be done and what shouldn't be done.

Did you have sidebars?

That was a technique I began to employ later on. I used to call
them boxes, but a lot of magazines call them sidebars. Very often
they were used to give sources of material, and so on.

Your readers—because of the source of your subscriptions you knew
that your readers were members of horticultural societies.

Waters: Yes. And they are people who enjoy reading, too.

There are a lot of magazines— not necessarily horticultural,
gardening magazines, but magazines in general— that tend to have
accepted the idea that their subscribers don't really want to
read. So they've broken up their pages so as not to terrify them
with too many words. They use all kinds of subheads and type
changes and all that stuff to titillate them and excite them and

84

Riess:

Waters ;

Riess:

Waters :

make them want to go on. If that weren't done, they seem to feel
that people wouldn't confront a page of type.

I've never been in a position to adopt that kind of
technique anyway. Spot color and so on, it's expensive. You've
got to have money to toss around. Preferably, you've got to be
producing your publication on a web press, which maybe has five or
six stations. That becomes feasible only when your circulation
reaches a certain level. We never got past a sheet-fed press.
And as I recall it, it's still only a two-color press, so every
sheet has to go through the press twice. That may have changed--
the last time I went to the printer he was installing a new
machine, but I can't recall now whether it was a four-station
machine or a two-station.

What you're saying is that you didn't compromise the length of the
articles or the content.

No, that's right. Articles range from--I tended to shy away from
anything shorter than 1,000 words, or 1,500 words really, but they
ranged from 1,500 to 5,000 or 6,000. I didn't discourage people
from letting rip, so to speak, if they had something to say.

Let's polish off this question of the audience. People who needed
more, people who were not afraid of good writing. When you wrote
your editorials, who were you thinking about?

Ah, the editorials, yes. That was an attempt to introduce
something a little different into the magazine, that's true. I
also think variety is the essence of a magazine, and that people
are reading under very different situations. For example, many
people like to be reading at breakfast. It may be the newspaper,
and probably often is, but if they happen to have Pacific
Horticulture by them, they would want something that would last
about as long as their piece of toast, wouldn't they?

So I thought, Well, we've got Bob Raabe's short pieces,
rather technical, but not difficult to digest, by and large. But
why don't we devote page one to some aspect of gardening that is
right off the wall? We can give it a more personal tone and so
on. So I tended in the end to start writing things derived from
my own experience of gardening, and it didn't have to be too
serious .

That's how they developed. They were not so much seeing a
different audience as seeing the several needs of one audience.
The need for, on the one hand, an article which might take a whole
evening to get through, at the end of the day, but at other times
they might be looking for something shorter. And in the morning,

85

by and large, one's concentration probably is suffering a little,
[laughs] So that was how those editorials of mine came about. It
was part of a desire to maintain a variety of material in the
magazine.

Editorial Stance, and Letters to the Editor

Riess:
Waters :

Riess :
Waters:

Riess:
Waters :

Many of your editorials are quite playful. You're trying to
engage a group of people who can see the joke, where the joke is.

That's right, without obviously trying to be funny. That's where
disaster lies.

The occasional pun.

Oh, yes, that's right. And I'm often just waiting to see if

anyone has caught it.
they've caught it.

Now and again somebody lets me know that

That leads me to ask about letters to the editor, and how you
decide which to publish.

When one considers the total circulation of the magazine, then not
a lot of letters can be expected. On the other hand, there were a
gratifying number. Though if anyone went in for obvious praise of
the publication, I would usually delete that part of the letter,
because I didn't think it was proper to be blowing one's own
trumpet. But if they had something to say in general, almost
always it was published. There were very few letters that
weren't.

There was one which was downright critical, not of the
magazine as a whole but of something that I had written, where I
had taken up the question, not in an editorial—well, there were
two sections of editorials. There was the front one, and then
there was the column I labeled rather clumsily, "You may like to
know," which was generally factual and topical, but with a heavy
dose of my own opinion blended into it.

There were some statistics that used to come to me from
Sacramento, distributed to journalists, I suppose, all over the
state, having to do with the program for testing pesticides in
produce. I got a bit miffed, because the tone was outrageous very
often. It was quite clear that the man in charge of the testing
program had little regard, in fact I'd say outright contempt, for
conservationists who were anxious to see that these pesticide

86

residues were at the very minimum. These were comments dismissing
these people as extremists and so on. I thought, this man is a
government employee, he's not supposed to be using official
reports to express his opinion about conservationists.

So when I saw what struck me as being a mistaken analysis in
the statistics, I took the matter up, and I did my own
reexamination of the figures. I then took my notes up to a
mathematician on the campus and asked him whether he thought I was
correct, and in general he said, "Yes, that's okay." So I
published this criticism of the report and let the fellow know
that I didn't think that it was his place to express these
opinions anyway, but if he did, he should get his facts right, you
see.3 [laughing] I thought it intolerable that a bureaucrat
should misuse his position to denounce conservationists. And I
just wanted to let him know, and let readers know, that this is no
way for a bureaucrat to behave--! mean, a professional civil
servant should know better. After all, it tends to throw doubt on
the validity of his department's work.

Someone in San Francisco wrote scathingly about my comment.
I've forgotten now exactly what phrases he used, but by and large,
they were disapproving. I wrote back to him saying that I was
very happy to publish his letter, and that he should understand
that I reserved the right to add an editorial comment, and if that
was what he wished to be done with his letter, I'd be happy to go
ahead. He asked that I didn't publish it, so that one didn't get
published, and I was rather sorry.

Riess: Was he critical of your taking a stand?

Waters: As I recall it, there were two main points. One was that he felt
that my analysis was faulty, but he didn't specify, just described
it as inadequate or something. And the other was that he thought
that the column in which this appeared should have carried
somebody's name at the bottom, and that he concluded that it was
mine, but that it was not proper to publish anonymously. I didn't
disagree with him on that; I didn't feel that it was germane to
the main question. Privately, I agreed with him, but I didn't
want to take the matter up.

No, he didn't produce any figures to prove that I was wrong
or anything like that. He just rather, I think elegantly,
dismissed it as inadequate. Because it was elegant, I felt like
publishing it, but he didn't in the end want it to be published.

^Pacific Horticulture, Spring 1990, page 53.

87

Riess: I wondered if perhaps some readers indicated that they were not

interested in Pacific Horticulture becoming in any sense a journal
of advocacy.

Waters: No, that didn't come up. By and large, some things that I

included about conservation matters, and the use of pesticides and
so on, got approval in letters. No, the letter I've described was
the only instance of disapproval. But my comment in the first
place was going a bit far, because it had to do with pesticide
testing in produce throughout the state, and coming across the
border from Mexico. And that's not a horticultural matter, after
all.

Riess: You said Horticulture was another magazine your readers might

read. Did you look at Horticulture, when you were originally back
on the format committee, as a pretty good model?

Waters: I don't think we saw it as a model, but I'm sure we were all

familiar with it. There would have been other magazines that we
discussed, but I can't recall which ones they were.

Advertisements

Riess: The idea of articles about Scottish castle gardens, or the wonders
of Australia, one might wonder whether that was driven by all the
advertisements for tours that are at the end of the magazine.

Waters: No, nothing in Pacific Horticulture was driven by advertising.
Riess: I know, but I have to ask that.

Waters: I know you do, it's a natural thought, because magazines by and

large exist for that purpose. Someone described television as not
an entertainment punctuated with advertising, but an advertising
medium using entertainment to attract an audience. And the same
is true of magazines, by and large, now. I think Sunset,
generally speaking, expects something like 50 percent of its space
to be taken up with advertising. By and large, commercial
magazines stand or fall on whether they can attract enough
advertising to pay their costs.

And generally speaking, the economics works like this: that
advertising pays for all your production costs, all your salaries,
and yields your profit. Everything is paid for by advertising.
Subscription money is just used to generate more subscriptions.
Baldly speaking, that's the pattern of commercial magazines.

88

Waters: We were very aware right at the start that our audience would be
limited, and that we wouldn't attract sufficient advertising.
Indeed, by and large, gardening magazines as a whole have always
had great difficulty attracting sufficient advertising. It's a
strange phenomenon, given that there are so many people who
consider gardening to be their principal outdoor hobby, I think a
larger proportion of the population than for any other outdoor
hobby.

There is a special problem, and it is that the industry
catering to these gardeners is a localized nursery industry. They
don't go in for national advertising, they advertise in the local
newspaper. Now, the people who are making a big business out of
horticulture, like Monrovia Nursery, they're advertising in trade
papers, do you see? They want these local nurserymen to stock
their products, and so they go through the trade papers. That
leaves advertising for national gardening magazines a bit thin.
And when they do start to break even in the terms that I've
described, as Horticulture is just about doing, I'm told, what are
they doing it with? Absolut Vodka. Not with gardening things.
And Jaguar motor cars even, once or twice I've seen in there.

Riess: Did the format committee put any constraints or limits on

advertising, and did you talk about where it would be? Was it
always only going to be at the very end of the magazine?

Waters: Yes, we did see it as a reader's publication, and that, as defined
by Marge and myself, meant that we didn't allow advertising to
invade all the editorial pages. We kept it disciplined. In that
respect, we were very fortunate, because the first volunteer who
took on the job of handling the advertising—that meant keeping in
contact with our advertisers, and reminding them when their bills
were due and so on--was a woman from Marin called Pat West.

She was quite a competent draftswoman. It was her decision
to put the advertising in standard size boxes with rounded
corners. I've been grateful to her ever since, because I think
that that has given our advertising section a certain distinction
which even the advertisers find attractive, and certainly the
readers do. It sets it apart, and it enables us to put it at the
back.

Riess: And there's a kind of equal value to every ad.
Waters: That's right, yes.

89

And also, we exercise some discrimination, or I did, rather.
If the tone of an ad struck me as being misleading or unpleasant
in some way, we would just decline it. I can think of four ads
right off the bat that we just politely said we don't feel are
appropriate. One which made some appeal to gardeners to go to
their local nurseryman or something, and there was a figure in the
corner of the ad which was supposed to represent the local
nurseryman. It looked like a Chicago gangster. I thought, God,
that's dreadful!

Riess :
Waters;

Riess:
Waters:

Was it a nurseryman's association advertisement?

I don't remember now what it was, where it came from. I
can't recall. But I do recall this figure--! thought, I

just
just

don't want to see him in the magazine. I think advertising should
reflect the editorial content to some degree. There should be
some kind of compatibility.

Every now and again, gardeners are encouraged to buy these
little electronic devices that you jab into the soil to measure
its moisture content. I was always rather skeptical, but I'm
utterly convinced that they're useless. Someone sent an ad in for
one of those, and I said, "Don't let's accept it, because I'm sure
they're no bloody use whatever."

Now, that's extremely conscientious.

High-handed! [laughs] Conscientious, yes, that's right. That's
a better word.

Riess: Paternalistic or something like that.

Waters: Well, yes. I mean, to some extent, a magazine has to accept some
degree of responsibility for the advertisers. You can't disown it
entirely, can you? After all, they've paid you, so you've entered
into some kind of contract with these people. If somebody can
produce valid argument to say that this device is useless, then I
think one has a duty to say that.

It so happened that one of the first things that I
discovered when I took up laboratory work way, way, way back, at
Burroughs Wellcome, we were measuring the pH of fluids. It
required an extremely elaborate device. Everything that was alien
or foreign to the fluid being examined would affect it. It was
done with current between electrodes, as these devices are
supposed to do. So these devices inevitably would be measuring
not only the moisture content of the soil, whether you like it or
not, but the salt content of that moisture. So the device can't

90

possibly be accurate, because it's measuring more than one thing--
not only moisture, it's measuring salt and pH and so on.

Riess: Unless they know what they're doing.

Waters: But you can't calibrate such an instrument! They come up every
now and again, and they've always died, and almost every opinion
that I've ever read about them has confirmed my own judgment, that
they are useless.

[extending his hand and a finger] There's the best device
that's to be used. Scrabble the top of the soil for about half an
inch down, and you'll soon discover whether it needs moisture or
not!

Riess: If a writer said, "Test your soil," you would edit that right out?

Waters: Oh, lord, yes, if he suggested using one of these, yes, I would
probably write in a comment such as, "Use your index finger and
scrabble." Yes. I did a lot of that, I'm quite shameless about
that.

Riess: But you let your writers know.

Waters: Oh, they always saw what we finished with, and could make further
changes, yes.

Riess: Back to the advertising: Monrovia and Sunset, I don't know how

much they had to pay for those ads. Was that substantial support
for the magazine?

Waters: It was, yes. Sunset were very good for many years, and so was

Monrovia. It was a public relations operation for them partly, of
course. I don't think they were getting all that much out of it.
They would get a little, but by and large, it was just a gesture
towards the magazine.

Then, as always happens, of course, these companies change.
The man who was placing the ad for Monrovia called us and said how
sorry he was, but he was no longer in a position to influence the
matter, and it came to an end. And Sunset was sold, as you know.
So the Lanes, who were personal friends, and therefore again were
doing it as a gesture—they did a great many other things as well.
They gave us free ads in their publications from time to time. I
mean, an advertisement we couldn't possibly pay for, because their
prices are so high. They had a circulation of well over a million
at one point. There's no way that we could have paid.

91

Promotions. Subscriptions

Waters: There were other people who were helpful. Paul Hawken of Smith
and Hawken in the early days , he was a great admirer of the
magazine. And he—let's see, what did he do? I think he paid for
printing of a brochure, a color brochure that we were using for
direct mail subscriptions.

Riess: Was he on one of your boards?

Waters: No. Paul Hawken was in Palo Alto near the beginning. Then he
moved the store to Mill Valley, and I guess Marge Hayakawa
probably met him in Mill Valley. And she arranged a meeting with
him- -she and I went and had lunch with Paul Hawken. [pause]

The first contact goes back to Palo Alto with Paul Hawken.
He called me because I had done an article on digging, "The gentle
art of digging."4 It was illustrated by Mimi Osborne, who's been
a great help and support from the very beginning, or almost the
very beginning. She did some very nice little drawings of spades
and forks and things like that. He said he was just about to
produce his mail order catalogue for Smith and Hawken, and he
thought it would be nice if Mimi Osborne would do drawings for him
for his catalogue. So of course, I thought, Well, that's fine,
and so I put him in touch, and Mimi illustrated his first
catalogue, and I think the second.

Somewhere in there he wrote to me, very admiring of the
magazine, describing it as "Exceptional. . .in content, depth,
breadth, and intelligence." I used the endorsement in our flyer
distributed at flower shows. It's still there. We have a file of
other endorsements, and I just pull out whichever one seems most
appropriate and try to get a nice mix from the Northwest, from
California, and so on. Anyway, Paul Hawken 's was rather nicely
put.

So that's how it happened, and then at some point or other
Marge arranged this lunch, and we discussed ways in which he might
be helpful. One of the things he did, as I recall, was to pay
part of the cost of a direct mail promotion. And then secondly,
he started to put a little flier for Pacific Horticulture in all
his mail orders—he slipped this in without cost to us. A lot of
mail order companies now do that, and you get a whole sheaf of

'•Pacific Horticulture, Spring 1980.

92

these things coming out of your package if you order something,
but they are charging for them, usually. I think it's called
piggy-back mailing.

Riess: Do you have a way of knowing whether that yielded new subscribers?

Waters: Oh, yes. Almost all of it yielded something. Our first direct
mail promotion was using the Park Seed Company list which we
rented, and we got over 4 percent response from that. By mail
order standards, that was absolutely astounding.

Riess: You couldn't talk them into giving you their list?
Waters: No.

Waters: In addition to attending and staffing our Pacific Horticulture
display stand at flower shows, I gave talks to horticultural
societies and garden clubs as another way of promoting the
magazine. Members of the board also spread the word in that way.
My talks led to our program of tours, the first of which was to
Britain and was based on my lecture on the history of gardening in
Britain. Many people wished they could visit with me the gardens
shown in my slides. When I mentioned this to Susan Smith, a
member of the California Horticultural Society who was also a
travel agent, she offered to make the arrangements.

That was in 1978 and successful, not only in pleasing the
participants and raising money, but in promoting the magazine as
well. The tours became a regular part of the operation, and in
accompanying them to China, India, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia,
Greece, Turkey, Spain, and France, my store of photographs has
been increased, giving more opportunities for promotional talks.

But about 1994 I tired of giving talks. Part of the
weariness came from those who introduce speakers by assuring the
audience how much they are going to enjoy the program. Telling
the audience what their reaction to a speaker will be sounds
utterly condescending. It makes me squirm. Before my own talks I
gave the chairman or chairwoman a note asking that they not use
such phrases, but it was rarely enough to prevent them saying it.

93

Funding Through Loans and Grants

Riess: I should think, because you didn't pay your writers, that you had
a strong case for things coming to you free.

Waters: That's true. Yes, we have. Since we were established ourselves
as a nonprofit organization, it has enabled us to--not so much to
get freebies like that, but to get grants to pay for stuff, and
that's what we've done in the main.

Riess: To get grants?

Waters: Yes. The first—can we go right back to the format committee?

When we launched the magazine, we found that we needed more
money than was in the kitty. We were convinced that ultimately
this thing would take off and we would get some income, but the
foundation itself at that point had nothing, absolutely nothing,
except a list of 2,300 people who were members of the four
societies that made up the foundation. We were proposing to
produce a larger publication with more pages. The old journal had
an average of about forty-four pages. We were proposing one with
sixty-four. Larger, heavier paper, color printing.

So we got loans from some of our supporting societies. The
California Horticultural Society, which has always felt like the
beginning of all this, that it was their journal that essentially
began it, $5,000 they loaned us. The Southern California
Horticultural Institute, as it was then called—it's now called
Society— also came up with about $5,000. The Western
Horticultural Society, which was a significantly smaller
organization, came up with $2,500. So we finished up with
$12,500. Strybing Arboretum Society said that its obligations in
regard to staff and so on precluded the possibility of loaning us
anything; a few members sent private donations.

So that was the money we had when we launched the thing, and
it enabled us to produce the first issue, using Dharma Press. If
I can, I'll find you a copy of the budget. Harland Hand was
largely responsible for compiling an extremely ingenious budget
which showed that we were in no danger financially whatsoever,
[laughing]

I mentioned that the first bit of promotion that we got was
an editorial mention in Sunset. But after that we confronted the
fact that now we were on our own. What are we going to do? All
kinds of things were tried, and board members sat around tables
addressing, by hand, envelopes to memberships of local societies,

94

the daffodil society and whatever lists we could get hold of. But
none of these societies had their memberships computerized, so it
was all a question of addressing by hand.

The brochures that were used in these mailings were marked,
a little mark on the corner—yellow for daffodils and red for
roses and it was supposed to enable us to know where responses
came from. Of course, there was nobody to come back again
afterwards and analyze it all [laughter].

But by and large, this clearly wasn't the way to wealth and
riches — the response was minimal. And so we had to find a way of
working on a larger scale. At that point, I remembered reading
about the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, which was
administered in Scotland.

Riess: Some address like Cullen Lodge.

Waters: Yes, you know it. It's no longer there, of course. And if you've
applied recently, you have applied to San Francisco. They now
have two institutions: one is administered in Cambridge, England,
and the other in San Francisco. I understand that Stanley Smith
made his money over here on the West Coast.

The trust was set up originally to rescue Curtis 's Botanical
Magazine, a famous old thing that had been going for a couple
hundred years and was beginning to founder. George Taylor, who
was then the director of Kew Gardens, encouraged Stanley Smith to
cough up some money to enable Curtis "s magazine to continue. So
he set up this trust which was designed to help horticultural
enterprises, wherever and whatever their object. But its first
operation was to save a publication. There are so few foundations
that do that.

I thought, Well, if they've saved one, they can save
another. Let's get in touch with Sir George. So I wrote him a
letter. And it was all delightfully chatty and very informal. I
thought, What a relief! They don't want everything in triplicate.
In fact, he wrote back saying, "Yes, yes, I'll send you a check
for $5,000." And then another letter came immediately afterwards
saying, "Oh, by the way, I suppose you do have a nonprofit status?
Because if you haven't, it won't work." [laughing] It was an
afterthought. And I thought, Oh, this is delightful. Of course,
I wrote back and sent him a copy of our nonprofit status document,
and everything was fine.

So we spent that money on the first direct mail promotion
with the Park Seed Company's list which got us A percent response,
ard I thought, This is the way to do it. So the following year, I

95

went back to Sir George again, and he said, "This is rather
irregular, old chap, but okay, just this time, you can have
another $5,000. But don't ask next year," sort of thing. He
didn't put it quite like that, but it was fairly clear.

I think it must have been in between these two letters--! 'm
not sure exactly now about the dates — but one of our board
members, and one of our most enthusiastic supporters in the
Southern California Institute, was Elizabeth Marshall. She's
quite a name. She's dead now, I'm afraid, although I think her
husband George may still be living. He was a great supporter of
the Wilderness Society.5

Anyway, Elizabeth knew George Taylor personally, and at one
point she arranged for us to meet him in San Francisco. Because
then it was necessary for the director to maintain contact with
administrators [of the Stanley Smith Trust] in San Francisco.
Although all the applications went through him, this was
apparently where the money was, so he needed to keep tabs on it.

It was rather funny, because she said to me--and Olive, I
guess, and Marge I think were all there when we met him—she said,
"Now, his favorite Scotch is Grants. Make sure there's a bottle
on the side." [laughter] That's lovely, isn't it? So we made
sure there was a bottle of Grants Scotch whisky available within
his reach—and at some point or other, it must be concluded that
this helped, I don't know precisely to what extent. Anyway, there
were two grants of $5,000 each from the Stanley Smith Trust.

Then I just didn't have the brass face to apply again
immediately. And I heard in some manner of the Skaggs Foundation
[L. J. and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation]. Someone said that it was
supporting the restoration work in Westminster Abbey. I thought,
That's not gardening, but on the other hand, it does show a kind
of diversity of interest. So I sent an application there, and I
went up to meet them.

A whole group of us applicants were being routinely
interviewed. And it so happened that I had used as a cover a
photograph of a window showing Adam digging in the Garden. It
wasn't Westminster Abbey, it was actually Canterbury Cathedral,
but I thought, Well, just a few miles away. [laughter] It's all
stained glass, after all! It's all medieval stuff. (Canterbury,
I think, is reputed to have the largest area of medieval stained

5Robert Marshall was founder of the Wilderness Society. His brother
George Marshall's papers are part of the Sierra Club collection in The
Bancroft Library.

96

glass of any cathedral in Europe, but when I saw Chartres, I
wondered whether that's true. But anyway, that's what they say.)

Riess: So you took that along to the meeting.

Waters: Exactly, yes. You've seen right through me, haven't you? Anyway,
it worked.

Riess: And was that a continuing relationship?
Waters: No. We got two $5, OOOs from them too.

So there we were with $5,000 for each of four years, and we
used it on each occasion to build circulation and equip the
circulation office.

Waters: The principle being that if we're asking people to subscribe by

mail, to send us checks by mail, then it's appropriate to ask them
by mail, isn't it? There's a certain logic in the whole process.
And it seems to be the method that magazines, and increasingly
almost every retailer, is using.

We never did get the A percent that we got from the first
mailing. I don't know whether it was a fluke or the fact that, as
a lot of merchandisers say, if you can say something is new, then
you've got the most sellable commodity there.

Riess: Did you use the inducement of charter subscriber?

Waters: We didn't use that, we weren't sophisticated enough for that, but
we were able to say it was new, and maybe that's the reason it
worked. For that first mailing we chose Park, because their
catalogue was offering the greatest diversity of plants, seeds and
plants—well, seeds mostly, plants was another division of the
company. And we've used their list frequently since.

Friends of Pacific Horticulture

Riess: Beyond that, you didn't continue getting money through grants, but
you've had the Friends of Pacific Horticulture.

Waters: Oh, that's right, that came afterwards.
Riess: Was that very soon afterwards?

97

Waters: Yes, fairly soon.

After those grants we were looking around for other sources.
And in fact, I was writing a dozen applications a year and getting
nowhere, because there aren't all that many organizations who will
support a publication. Most of them aren't interested in
horticulture and gardening to begin with, and those few that may
show some interest certainly aren't interested in publications.
So we had two strikes against us.

Riess: Did you go to garden club lists, not only for members but for
money?

Waters: I might be able to find somewhere in my files some of these

applications, copies of them. At the moment, I can remember only
that in the end I was getting very, very tired of this fairly
laborious business.

Riess: You didn't have someone who was your grant writer or fundraiser.

Waters: No, we didn't. We did, incidentally, hire a consultant at one

point somewhere in there, a woman in Oakland. I think it was she
who actually made the initial contact with the Skaggs people.
Prior to that her efforts had not been successful either. But she
did polish up our applications a bit and show us exactly what
needed doing and so on.

Riess: Does the foundation board make itself responsible for major gifts?
Waters: Our board?
Riess: Yes.

Waters: Oh, no. Never has. I know it's regarded as part and parcel of
being a board member in many organizations, but our board has
always been made up of gardeners and nurserymen. When
comparatively recently it was suggested that they should make
themselves responsible for supplying funds, there was limited
enthusiasm and small response. It came mainly from Marge,
Elizabeth Marshall, and Georgie Van de Kamp.

Anyway, we heard of a trust down in Los Angeles, I think
it's called the Norman Trust. Not a very big organization, but it
was interested in gardening--! think we got a sum from them. So
Marge and I called on them. We went down there at some time, and
I remember meeting the man, and he crystallized this question of
the Friends by saying, "Do you ask your subscribers for money?"
And Marge said, "Yes."

98

He said, "Well, it's not very comprehensive, because I'm a
subscriber and I've never been asked prior to this."

At that point, Marge decided that it was time to launch the
Friends. We got out a letter and laid things out pretty
straightforwardly, that here we were with a publication to be
proud of, and you as a subscriber presumably see some merit in it,
but we can't attract the advertising that other magazines attract
to keep it going, and we don't want to put the subscription price
out of reach. So if you would like to see it continue and
prosper, why don't you send us a little extra?

The result was absolutely astounding. The first appeal
yielded $47,000. Isn't that incredible? It was the most
rewarding thing imaginable. And these people had no obligation,
they paid their subscription money, but we had, I think, I don't
know, several hundred people respond, with sums from twenty-five
dollars up.

Marjorie Schmidt, who was a local woman—have you ever
encountered her?

Riess: I don't know her.

Waters: She wrote a book on native plants, she was an enthusiast for

native plants.6 She sent a check for $5,000 personally. I think
Ruth Bancroft was among those early donors too, and she's been
sending a check pretty regularly ever since, quite a generous one.
But yes, it was a very rewarding thing.

Riess: What year was that?

Waters: That would have been about '82 or '83.

Riess: Is that institutionalized now?

Waters: That's institutionalized now, and is a regular appeal. It runs
around, now, somewhere on the order of $50,000 to $60,000.

We tried to augment our fundraising recently, the idea being
to establish some kind of a regular income from an endowment. It
certainly hasn't been an easy thing to get going. Partially, I
think, because organizations with a bit of real estate do better.
You can bring people up to, say, a garden, show them around to see
what is needed.

^Growing California Native Plants, Marjorie G. Schmidt, University of
California Press, 1980.

99

I remember watching the operation with Mrs. Van de Ramp, who
was a board member. In fact, it was because of what I saw down at
the Descanso Gardens--Georgie Van de Kamp, you know, the mother of
the onetime California state attorney? She was raising money for
a building at Descanso Gardens. In fact, the hall that was
subsequently built- -very handsome thing in the craftsman style,
Greene and Greene style, you know—is named for her, because she
raised about a million dollars.

I happened to be down there in the office when she was
working, and she was on the telephone with some prospective donor.
She was handling him with velvet gloves and a most persuasive
tone, inviting him to see the garden and so on. I'm sure it must
have worked.

It's always been a mystery to both of us, neither can
remember how she and I first made contact. But at some point she
asked me to do a talk at some kind of symposium down there at
Descanso, and I gave a talk on garden photography.

Subsequently, we became friends, and I invited her onto the
board, hoping that she would be able to repeat her success at
Descanso on behalf of Pacific Horticulture. And she has been
helpful, but the endowment fund—it kind of gets going and then it
falters again, largely because of the need for a volunteer who is
fully committed. Someone's got to head it up who knows what
they're doing and is fully committed, and Georgie has her irons in
so many fires.

Marge Hayakawa's Place in the Picture

Waters: However, again, Marge--! didn't tell you about Marge's

contribution all along here. I think I've rather neglected her,
not intentionally, I can assure you, because she looked over my
shoulder in the first issues and kindly pointed out my
shortcomings, and this was enormously helpful.

Riess: She'd had more professional experience?

Waters: Oh, yes. She majored in English literature, with a minor in

botany, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. There she met
Don Hayakawa and worked with him on a magazine called The Rocking
Horse. Later while living in Chicago she edited Poetry magazine,

Olive and George
Waters.

G.W. notes: "On
my retirement
in 1997 as
editor of
Pacific

Horticulture a
presentation
was arranged by
the board at
the annual
garden party.
This photograph
of Olive and me
was taken on
that occasion
by Bill Moore,
once a board
member who also
served nobly as
its president. "

Lawrence Hyman, Owen Pearce, Marge Hayakawa, and George Waters at Dharma
Press, Emeryville, checking proofs of the first issue of Pacific
Horticulture, December 1975.

Photograph by Olive Rice Waters

100

Riess :
Waters :

Riess :
Waters:

Riess:

Waters :

and here, in the Bay Area, Fremontia, for the California Native
Plant Society.7

Anyway, she was helpful in that respect. But she was
devoted enough, after about a year or so--I remember she made a
gift to the foundation of stock from Procter & Gamble, and the
understanding was that it would be sold to yield some money to pay
the editor. I was at the meeting in which she said this was to
happen, and she looked across at me and said, "George, you're
getting thin." [laughter] Because I was neglecting the garden
work that I was doing in order to devote my time to the magazine.

And still not paid.

That's right, until she gave that money.

And once- -even though it wasn't a great salary, it was
better than nothing—once the board had budgeted for an editor's
payment, it couldn't be lopped off the following year with, Well,
Marge's money is all used up. So it's remained on the budget ever
since. I guess Marge was astute enough to realize that once it
was there, some way would have to be found to keep it there.

And then as the circulation increased slowly, the board
built it to a point where one could actually--

Get fat?

[laughs] Not get fat, but actually not get thin-thin. [laughter]
But anyway, that was all part of Marge's great contribution to
Pacific Horticulture. And when the endowment fund came along, she
made another substantial contribution to that as well to get it
going.

In your obituary for Marge Hayakawa you say, "During the search
for another printer, differences with the editor resulted in the
resignation of the board president."8 What is this all about?

I knew I'd regret this [oral history] eventually,
what, switch that off. [tape interruption]

I'll tell you

'Information from Alan R. Hayakawa and Wynne Hayakawa. [For further
information on Marge Hayakawa 's early life see S.I. Hayakawa and Margedant
Peters Hayakawa, From Semantics to the U.S. Senate, ETC., Etc., Regional
Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.]

8Pacific Horticulture, Summer 1998.

101

This is not the place for a detailed explanation anyway, is
it? It's just trying to put Marge in the picture of the magazine
as a whole. But what happened, for the sake of the machine [the
tape recorder] , is that I was the editor when we found we had to
move away from Dharma Press and find another one. While I was
looking for a new printer, with an issue ready to go to the press,
the president—not Dick Hildreth now, but a subsequent president-
asked me to get quotations, which I was seeking, six of them, and
bring them to a meeting of the board.

This seemed a bit pointless to me, because the only thing
the board could do, I could do, which was to choose the cheapest
one. We just hadn't got the money to go to anything but the
cheapest printer, so long as he was capable of the job. And that
I could ascertain by visiting the press and seeing what they were
doing.

Since I didn't
which seemed to me
that I was going to
the issue underway,
The outcome of that
president, and that
general acceptance,
the board had, and
Whereas other peopl
fine supporter too,

want the issue to be delayed by meetings,

to be unnecessary, I told her [the president]
make the choice and go to the printer and get
rather than to delay it by attending meetings,
disagreement was the resignation of the

's when Marge Hayakawa became president, by
She was obviously the most dedicated person

she was near at hand, being in Mill Valley.

e, like Betty Marshall, who of course was a
was down in Los Angeles.

So that was the way it happened.

Objectives, and Who's In Charge?

Riess: And that kind of power—not exactly power struggle, but making

clear who's doing what, did that kind of thing come up again over
the years?

Waters: No. At least not overtly. Again, I'm not mentioning names, but
there was a board member--he was accompanying us on one of our
tours, and he somehow was so carried away as to say to me, in a
group of other tour members, that he thought the board was kow
towing to me. In other words, leaving it to me, I suppose. It
seemed an extraordinary thing to say.

Riess: Well, maybe leaving it to you is appropriate. But kow-towing?

102

Waters: I don't know why he used that term. I think perhaps--it was at
one of those little gatherings one has just before a formal
dinner, and I think maybe the aperitif was speaking. I don't
know. But it bothered me because he was a member of the board,
and I saw there some opposition. Not that I am opposed to
opposition--! enjoy debate, if it's informed debate. But there
seemed to me to be some tone of resentment in the use of that
language. Don't you think?

Riess: Yes.

Waters: So I saw that as a kind of warning, really.

Riess: Did you have a relationship with the board where you came before
them to talk about the magazine—were you on the agenda?

Waters: Oh, yes. I attended every board meeting. I may have missed when
one of our tours clashed with the date. But board meetings were
held three times a year, and in some years four times a year, and
I was generally there, and always presented at least a summary of
my activities.

Sometimes I embarked upon technical explanations-- [laughs]
you know how I am inclined to do that — and to explain to the board
what happened to the galleys when they'd been edited, and how the
whole thing was transformed into a layout, which in those days was
a paste-up of boards and so on, which were photographed. And I
explained all this to them, because very often these terms cropped
up in my conversation, and I thought perhaps it was a good idea to
let them know what it was all about .

So yes, I gave the board every opportunity, and anyone on
the board could quiz me. There was nothing underhand about it. I
took it that if the board was inclined to leave things to me, that
I was doing okay, and that seemed to be the way the evidence went
anyway. Circulation was increasing after all.

We had an objective which seemed to me to be a reasonable
figure: a circulation of 20,000. I can't explain why I chose that
number, but it seemed to me to be not unreasonable to think that
20,000 subscribers could be found throughout the West, and the
scattering throughout the world that we have.

And there was also the fact that at 20,000 I had calculated
that it would be economic to use a web press, which would give us
flexibility in layout and in the placing of color pages and so on.
Because when you put a sheet through a sheet-fed press and then
have to put it through a second time to complete the operation,
and sheet-fed presses require more manual labor too, then it

103

becomes rather expensive to add color pages. But if it's on a web
press, then it doesn't really make a great deal of difference how
many color pages you add or where they are in the magazine. That
kind of flexibility appealed to me.

So, I thought, Well, if we can reach 20,000, then we can
move to a web press. But we never quite got there. So we stayed
with the sheet-fed press. And that's not a bad thing in some
ways.

Riess: And still that's the case?

Waters: Oh, yes. And there's no doubt about it, too, that web presses,
being somewhat faster, it's easier to print a lot of inferior
magazines if something goes wrong, whereas with a sheet-fed press,
if your operator is attentive he can spot his errors and stop the
machine more or less instantly.

Riess: After Dharma, the printer you went to was?

Waters: Suburban Press in Hayward.

Riess: Did you talk to the UC printing office?

Waters: I don't think so, no. For a quote, you mean?

Riess: Yes.

Waters: No, I don't think it occurred to me.

There was a period when Marge and I talked to the man who
was director of the press at one time. Went to live down in the
desert.

Riess: Oh, August Fruge.
Waters: Fruge, that's right.

Riess: He and his wife, Susan, were involved with the California Native
Plant Society.

Waters: Yes. Marge met them that way, and she again, because of her

interest in literature, probably had an affinity. I think- -well,
we were exploring the possibilities--! think soon after it was
launched, and wondering what would happen to me.

For many years, even though I was getting a small salary
from it, I wondered, What am I dedicating myself to here? Is this
thing going to survive? In other words, there was a great deal of

104

Riess :
Waters :

uncertainty about it, and I think that became obvious to Marge,
and she discussed with August Fruge the possibility that Pacific
Horticulture might be produced under the auspices of the UC Press.

Obviously he wasn't in a position to commit the press to
anything at all, but his answer was encouraging. Marge was able
to tell me this, and this gave me sort of a measure of reassurance
that, by devoting myself to this magazine I wasn't throwing away
the remaining productive years of my life. After all, I had to
look to the time when I wasn't able to work any more, or wasn't
willing to work any more.

You had to create a retirement.

I had to make sure that I got some retirement income and so on.
Marge was an extremely, as I say, dedicated and conscientious
person. She had encouraged me into this in the first place, and I
suppose she felt that she should do whatever she could to reassure
me.

Discussions in the Overheated Salon

Riess: Please explain a reference in your 1998 Marge Hayakawa obituary in
Pacific Horticulture to meetings at her home of garden designers
and horticulturists "with opinions firmly held, but not always
compatible. .. [that ] provided enjoyment for all, and the editor
with more stimulus, perhaps, than guidance. .. [an] overheated
salon. . . "

Waters: I think we did touch on this earlier, but just to recap: I've

never been good on committees. I've found that the few editorial
committee meetings that we had didn't seem to me to be
accomplishing much. So gradually, I kind of let them drop.

Now, what happened was that soon after the launching of the
magazine, we had a few issues out, we were thrashing around
essentially, not only looking for money but just trying to decide
whether we were on the right track, and Marge conceived the idea
of inviting to her house in Mill Valley all these people, like
Lester [Hawkins] and Russ Beatty and [Victor] Reiter and the rest
of them, just for a kind of brainstorming session, I suppose,
about the prospects for the magazine and the directions it should
take.

The reason why I described these as overheated was that
there were people like Victor Reiter who was very strongly of the

105

opinion--! think the phrase he used, and was adopted by a lot of
others was, "The plant's the thing." In other words, that all
that mattered was growing plants. And in fact, the California
Horticultural Society began that way, do you see. I think that
before they formed the society, the initial meeting in the
restaurant in San Francisco followed a freeze, a big freeze in
1932, and the idea was to bring these people together and discuss
what had happened and which plants had been lost and which had
survived and so on, and everyone would learn from this.

So essentially, the society emerged from this. They tended
to disregard landscape architects, because of a long-held feeling
that landscape architects didn't really know about plants. Now,
here we were, trying to push what had been the California
Horticultural Society magazine towards a broader appreciation of
gardening, not just emphasizing plants.

You remember, I mentioned that I was hoping to cast a wide
net, to try to bridge that chasm between the landscape architect
and the plantsperson. There were landscape architects there like
Russ Beatty, and myself trying to demonstrate through the magazine
that not all the landscape architects are ignorant of plants.
Russ Beatty himself, for example, was quite a knowledgeable
plantsperson. But nonetheless, there was a resistance to the idea
of acknowledging that gardens could be made by anyone but people
who knew plants inside out. So that made meetings somewhat
excitable.

Lester Hawkins, of course, was a person who just enjoyed
debating and talking. He could talk ad infinitum on almost any
topic you'd care to mention. He was an extremely thoughtful and
able man, but sometimes indiscreet on the topics he raised in
certain audiences.

Riess: Like what?

Waters: Betty and Fitz Rollins had a party, a wedding anniversary

celebration I believe. At the center of the crowded room was
Lester, surrounded by a small group, delivering an animated
lecture on the evils of financiers and of capitalism in general.
Many of those in the group derived their generous share of life's
comforts from investment in capitalism's financial markets.

On another occasion Lester visited me at home. Our
conversation, at first stimulating and enjoyable, degenerated into
a monologue by Lester that went on for so long that I could
scarcely endure the boredom.

106

On the other hand Lester's manuscripts were a pleasure to
read, and I looked forward to the discussions that followed his
receipt of my suggested amendments to them. They were invariably
conducted on the telephone, which tended to create a slight sense
of urgency that concentrated thinking and encouraged concision in
expression. But each of my suggested changes was carefully
weighed and debated with courtesy and the utmost respect, with one
or the other eventually conceding the point. Whatever the
outcome, I was always elated by those discussions.

Riess: How was Lester Hawkins trained?

Waters: He was a professional journalist. And Marshall's [Marshall

Ollbrich] degree was in philosophy. So they fed one another, very
successfully—intellectually, that is. But they left San
Francisco, maybe in the fifties or sixties, and got this piece of
land in Occidental. Their idea was to be self-sufficient. You
know the idea, five acres and a cow?

Anyway, somehow they became interested in gardening, so the
place ceased to be a self-sufficient farm and became an ornamental
garden. Then, to make a living, they started selling plants, so
it kind of gradually transformed itself. Lester would go out and
do design work. He even made jungles for film sets, things like
that. A really extraordinary, capable man. He designed plantings
for one or two housing developments, a place called Oak Forest
that was quite famous. (It was discussed in the magazine.9) He
built up quite a following; they both did. As I said, it became a
mecca, Western Hills Nursery, for plantspeople of all kinds.

So when you got these people together, they all had plenty
to say, and they didn't always agree. That was how Marge's
meetings came to be and how I came to mention them. They were
stimulating, and they enabled me to meet with people who would be
able to write, or help me in other ways, people like Lester and
Marshall and their friends.

Riess: Now, it sounds like Lester actually did bridge the chasm.

Waters: Yes, himself. And there has been a change, too. The syllabus in
the landscape design department is much broader, so that most
landscape architects nowadays are coming along with a much wider
understanding .

'Pacific Horticulture, Winter 1985, p. 47.

107

But the chasm still exists to a large extent because clients
of landscape architects in general tend not to be plantspeople.
Otherwise why would they bring in a landscape architect? And the
commercial jobs they do in general have to be low maintenance. So
again, that tends to inhibit use of anything but the toughest
plants that are available.

So you still have the people who make their own gardens.
Peter Newton said,10 for example, there's no such thing as garden
maintenance. Do you see? If you talk in those terms, you're not
talking about gardening any more, you're talking about
landscaping. So there are those people who cater to the
requirements of non-gardeners who need to have a garden, and there
are the gardeners. There's still that chasm to some extent.

Riess: Did you try to reconcile it, to articulate it, in your own
editorials in the magazine?

Waters: Did I discuss it? I think only obliquely. For example, the

subject comes up in almost every magazine at some time or other,
although many of them have found ways of avoiding the question-
Sunset, for example, never discusses a plant that isn't
commercially available. They see no merit in it. And most of
their readers would accept that it's senseless to discuss a plant
that isn't commercially available.

We do discuss plants that aren't commercially available, and
in my defense, I said, "Well, many readers feel that seeking out
these unusual plants is part of the joy of gardening."11
Nowadays, they're greatly helped by lists of specialized nurseries
now available from bookstores and botanic garden bookshops.
They're tracking them down—plant hunting, and that's exciting.
And think of the glory when you've actually found it!

So that was an oblique treatment of the subject. But no, I
don't think I ever discussed it frontally.

l°Pacific Horticulture, Summer 1992, p. 40.
^Pacific Horticulture, Summer 1977, p. 1.

108

V THE EDITOR AT WORK

[Interview A: August 12, 1998] ##

Nora Harlow's Editorial Contributions

Riess: What support did you have in actually doing the job? What help
with the complexities of bringing out an award-winning magazine?

Waters: It's the coming together, I think, of several factors when I was

at age fifty. Marge Hayakawa decided, on her own judgment, that I
was the person to take on the job, that in doing that she probably
recognized, as that teacher had thirty-seven years earlier, that
there was some facility with the language. I had also a great
interest in gardening and a background in photography that would
be useful. They all came together at that point, and that was an
extraordinary coincidence, I suppose. That was significant.

Riess: And the magazine is the reflection of its editor.
Waters: In a number of ways, yes, that's right.

But Nora Harlow played an important part, too. Here again,
Marge Hayakawa comes into the picture, because Nora at the time
was helping with Fremontia, and she was interested in Pacific
Horticulture. Fremontia wasn't using color printing, and though
Nora had considerable experience as an editor, doing freelance
work--as it happened, she told me at one point, most of it had to
with the California penal system, but that was just a coincidence,
I don't know how she got caught up with that. But she was dealing
with huge screeds from various institutions up and down the state.

But she had no experience with color printing, and Marge,
who was editing Fremontia, introduced her to me, and the
arrangement was that she would help with the editing and I would
show her all I could of what was being done in color printing in
the magazine. We were gradually over the years able to increase
the amount of color that we printed, because our funds were

109

Riess:
Waters :

Riess:

Waters :

improving. So whereas we started with eight pages and a color
cover, we gradually stepped it up to first sixteen and then
sometimes almost as many as thirty pages.

Had you indicated that you needed some help at that point?

Yes. My difficulty was that things like punctuation and
consistency in editing were not strong points with me. I was able
to understand what people were trying to say, and in some cases
express it more simply and clearly. And I was able to make
contributions to the magazine myself on a fairly regular basis.
But Nora brought a kind of ruthlessness to the process of dealing
with punctuation and consistency, and that was great, and we got
on very well together. We were a good team.

How about dealing with the writers?
with the people?

Who was the person who dealt

Me, in the main. I made the contacts and solicited the articles,
and brought pressure on them to meet deadlines and so on. But I
was always able to depend upon Nora.

At the time that Nora came on board—that was must have been
about 1980 or very early eighties anyway--! had no computer. So
that the manuscripts were going to the typesetter, which was
Medallion Graphics at that time. It was a very good man--Harrell,
Dave Harrell. This was when typesetting had advanced to the point
where an optical system of typesetting using photographic paper
was employed.

It was an incredible machine. He let me look inside it one
day and it fascinated me. All the characters of a particular
typeface were photographically reproduced on a glass disk which
was spinning at high speed. The keyboard selected one of those
characters, and the beam of light was projected through the disk
at the instant that it was required. It was enlarged according to
the point size needed, optically, with an adjustable lens and
projected onto the paper. You can imagine, ingenious as this was,
it required incredible precision, and the machine had to be
maintained in a humidity- and temperature-controlled room, because
it was very susceptible to any change of those things.

Riess: What was the machine's name?

Waters: I wish I could remember.1 We can probably reach Dave--I'm sure
he's still in the Bay Area.

'Mergenthaler V.I. P. (Variable Input Phototypesetter)

110

It was fascinating, but breakdowns were fairly frequent.
But Dave was a good man, and he was also enormously helpful. He
was also an organist. I suppose there's a connection. Keyboards,

Riess: Was it his invention, the machine?
Waters: Oh, no. It was a commercial apparatus.

Then the digital system came in and this was much more
dependable. So he, I think with great relief, replaced the
machine. Although it fascinated me, I must say. That kind of
apparatus was so ingenious, if impractical.

Anyway, after Nora came along, I was able to give Dave
manuscripts that were much cleaner and easier to deal with,
because Nora typed at quite high speed and accurately. She was
very good.

The Question of Succession

Waters: But then, as I approached age seventy, the board had the idea that
if I should fall ill, or meet with an accident, that there would
be no one to take over. So at their urging I persuaded Nora to
come on board and accept some kind of honorarium, with the idea
that she would be there as someone to take over for me, and by
implication, ultimately when I gave up the job, she would be the
obvious person to take over--a successor.

That idea intrigued her enormously, so that was the way we
worked together more frequently, because she started writing
pieces for the magazine. She did that very well too. I took her
on one or two photographic expeditions so as to show her what I
was doing and how I went about it. In other words, I made it as
easy as possible for her to take over, when the time arose.

Riess: But you say only with an honorarium, so it wasn't full-time.

Waters: Oh, no, it was not a full-time job. She was still doing her
freelance work.

As it happened, just to kind of round off that story, when
the time came and I did offer her the job, she had become
interested in a job with EBMUD, and she had personal reasons for
preferring that. So in the end we advertised the editor's job,
and got somebody else to take over. I was sorry about it, but I
respected her reasons. That was that.

Ill

Riess: So, you had Nora as assistant editor, and Elizabeth McClintock's
title was associate editor?

Waters: Yes, the title was something I gave her soon after I took over.

Riess: What I am working up to is, who checked on you? How did you, when
you were starting out, writing your own articles in the beginning,
before you developed a voice or whatever, how did you develop your
confidence about where you were taking the magazine? What gave
you that sense? How did you use your editorial board? Which
people would you have turned to? Who read over your shoulder?
I've asked that question before in other ways — I'm interested in
it.

Waters: Yes, yes, and you're not satisfied with my answer, apparently,
[laughter] Well, let me see. Owen, when he was living, was
reading manuscripts. I occasionally sent them to Bob Ornduff.
Elizabeth regularly. And then Nora, of course, was reading them.

Riess: That's a lot, actually.

Waters: Only a fraction of the reading and rereading that was done at the
New Yorker. Was it you who was telling me that they were reading
Mehta's Shawn's New Yorker?2 I've just got partway through it;
it's an extraordinary story.

Anyway, yes, I got some feedback from time to time. And I
suppose, in a way, the whole board was in a position to redirect
my efforts if they felt inclined, but apparently they didn't.

Riess: And in writing your editorials, did you use the editorial "we"?

Waters: I don't think that I did, no. I struggled with that notion, I
seem to recall that I did, and early on decided that it was
inappropriate. Editors tend to do it, speaking on behalf of a
newspaper, say, and there may be a whole group of people involved
there. I didn't see anything wrong with the personal voice, and
so I think I resisted the temptation.

If one person's name appears at the bottom of a page, it's
somewhat incongruous, isn't it, to say "we"? I used to put my
initials at the bottom.

2Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing, by
Ved Mehta, Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY, 1998.

112

The Answer to the Question

Riess :

Waters :

Riess:

Waters :

Riess :
Waters :

Maybe we could finish the question of succession. Were there many
applicants? Can we talk about how it is that it fell to Dick
Turner?

We set up a system whereby the written applications were
circulated to a selection committee, half a dozen or so—myself
and the president of the foundation, and maybe four other members
of the board—and we rated them according to the extent to which
they appeared to fulfill our requirements for horticultural and
botanical knowledge, editorial experience, experience working
within a nonprofit organization, and so on. And when all those
marks were totalled up, those that came in the highest bracket
were invited to interview. There were about thirty applicants,
and I think six or eight came for interview.

They divided up in an extraordinary way, in that the people
with the greatest editorial experience happened to be among the
women applicants, but those with the greatest plant knowledge were
among the male applicants. But there it is, that's just the way
it was. So the board had to decide where they would place
priority. In the end, they placed priority on botanical
background because of the importance of the contacts that they
had, as well as the knowledge that was required. They felt that
they would have to provide strong botanical support to the others,
and that didn't seem practical.

Though there had been a tradition of having botanical editors. I
don't know whether they had ever really been used.

Not on a daily basis for, as it were, reworking manuscripts,
occasional botanical advice.

Just

So that was how the selection was made. [pauses] Yes, I
think that, in the circumstances, they were fortunate in that the
person selected happened to be in the Bay Area and available.

How about long-term commitment to the job? Was that brought up?

I don't remember it being discussed as a factor in selection, no.
Turner was clearly determined to remain in this locality, so far
as we could judge, although no obligation was placed on him to do
that. I don't know whether that's legal even, is it?

113

On a Lighter Editorial Note

Riess: In terms of developing an editorial voice, we have talked about
the fact that you chose to amuse at a certain level.

Waters: I felt there was nothing wrong with a light tone. And you'll find
that once or twice, I did encourage people to use a light tone. I
tried to get one at least- -Pat Talbert, who was living in Oakland,
I think she still is, wrote one or two pieces which kind of
reflected the neuroses of a young new gardener's coming to the
game, so I encouraged her. [see further discussion on p. 157]

As a result of Pat Talbert 's first article, I was led to an
illustrator. This young woman, Karen Kees, a subscriber living in
San Diego, got in touch with Pat, and it turned out that Karen was
an accomplished illustrator of magazine articles. So it was
through my contact with Pat Talbert that I got in touch with Karen
Kees, and she agreed to illustrate several of Pat Talbert 's
articles .

Riess:

Waters :

Karen did a splendid job of bringing together illustrations
of people and gardens in a way that Pacific Horticulture had never
done before. That collaboration persisted for a few years, and
then Pat Talbert 's interest went in other directions — she adopted
a child and started writing for parenting magazines instead.
Karen also got involved in I think a local radio station or
television station. So she went in other directions as well.3
But it was a most enjoyable collaboration at the time.

Did it appear in a section of the magazine,
established subjects appeared?

in the way that other

No, it wasn't sufficiently frequent for that. Maybe it happened
once or twice in a year. So it was just occasional. When that
came to an end, as all good things do, sometimes too quickly, I
thought, Well, where else do I go for this leavening, as it were,
of the matter? Gardeners do tend to take themselves far too
seriously. I suppose devotees to almost any activity, including
sports do, don't they?

3 [from Interview 5] I visited Karen Kees on one occasion when I was
in San Diego. She showed me some of her other work. They were
illustrations for a very different magazine, a very different magazine,
[laughing] They were delightful, but they were--I think she was
illustrating a magazine article on the erotic dreams of women. Quite
beautiful and fascinating, but they wouldn't have done in Pacific
Horticulture, of course. [laughter]

114

So it needed something else. And I don't know that I
deliberately set out to do it, it just seemed appropriate somehow
to write about gooseberries and fools and things of that sort,
[laughs] I just dropped into the place that they had occupied,
really.

The Position and Intention of Book Reviews

Riess: It didn't take a deep study of the magazine to realize that there
was a formula layout. I think towards the end of our conversation
last time, we were almost getting to that. The great importance
given to book reviews, and particularly their placement in the
magazine .

Waters: Yes. Well, that was more a practical issue than anything else,
[laughs] Certainly since the founder of the original Journal of
the California Horticultural Society, Sydney Mitchell, was a
librarian, it was almost inevitable that book reviews were a
regular feature from the very beginning.

What happened was that the color was most simply and
economically placed at the center of the magazine. The original
eight pages was one side of a signature, which is sixteen pages,
and that was the cheapest way to print a little bit of color. And
that folds up and goes neatly in the center, because at the back
end, you have the advertising. So that leaves you with a front
end of a great many black and white pages to fill up, and that's
how the books most often—not always, but most often—fell at the
front of the magazine. Also, when one was short of black and
white matter, since books were flooding from the publishers, books
on gardening, in increasing numbers, it was quite often almost
inevitable and sometimes necessary to ensure that book reviews
filled two, four, or even six or more pages.

Riess: Did you keep a bank of reviews?

Waters:

Riess:

Waters:

Very often there were several waiting book reviews stacking up,
and they were either used in larger or smaller numbers according
to how many black and white pages we had to fill.

Was your intention in reviewing a book to bring a good book to the
attention of the public, or to steer the public around bad books?

Both. There have been some horrendously bad books on gardening,
and we haven't hesitated to condemn them. On the other hand, as
the number of books increased, there seemed very little point in

115

Riess:

Waters :

Riess:

Waters:

giving too much attention to the very worst of them, so gradually,
we backed off from that.

On the other hand, even some of the good books had aspects
which deserved adverse comment. Most frequently it was that they
were almost totally ignoring the climate in the West, so that was
most often the criticism. Even some splendid encyclopedias, for
example, which the American Horticultural Society borrowed, as it
were, from the Royal Horticultural Society—that being the best
word to put to that—were even more egregious in that respect than
books published in this country, because the British were even
further away.

So although they were in some cases beautiful encyclopedias
and remarkably comprehensive in their lists of plants, they
totally neglected the fact that in the West we're dealing in some
cases with four months of total drought. What use are pretty
pictures of a few quaint watering cans as irrigation devices on
the West Coast? [laughter] I mean, it was just ludicrous. That
was actually happening, and one had to warn people about that kind
of thing.

But, of course, we always have the good old Western
Gardening Book, the Sunset publication, to fall back on, so
invariably, as a proviso, one could say, "This book is useful so
long as you also have the Western Gardening Book to make good the
deficiencies."

Yes. I recently bought a little book put out by the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden people on butterfly gardens, and it included the
caveat that on the West Coast you had to supplement it with
Western Gardening. It was a mistake to have bothered.

Especially as there are quite good books on butterfly gardening
published, one written by a guy on the West Coast named Jerry
Sedenko.4 No, the books are there. Of course, the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden handbooks have had a wide circulation all over.
Here they're carried more prominently than Pacific Horticulture in
Strybing Arboretum kiosk, for reasons which I will never
understand, but there we are. [laughter]

Did book reviews come to you in the same way the articles did,
often volunteered?

Well, most of the books came to me, and since we were building a
reputation for our reviews, publishers were often very anxious to

The Butterfly Garden, Villard Books, New York, 1991.

116

send the books . And I would send them out to people I thought
were most appropriate, if they had some special knowledge. It
depended on what the subject matter was and who might be available
to do it.

It's a fairly demanding task. One of the most frequently
neglected aspects of book reviewing is reading the book itself in
the first place. And I found that it daunted many of the people I
sent books to, and I never got the reviews back; they kept the
book. So it was a hazardous business. To make sure that books
were reviewed, I very often did it myself.

Riess: And isn't there a certain predilection in reviewing to be highly
critical, so that the first thing you want to do is find the
problems and construct your review around the problems?

Waters: Yes. It's particularly difficult with gardening books, because
there isn't much you can say about the prose in many cases, is
there?

Riess: Unless it's wonderful.

Waters: Unless it's exceptionally good, yes. But so many of the books
consist of just catalogues of plants. The other thing is that
criticism needs to be handled lightly.

it

Riess: From the point of view of the author, you want to be sensitive.

Waters: Yes, but also readers. You've only got to find a few blunders,
and list them, to put people completely off the book, especially
if you labor the point. So, when I had people reviewing books, I
tried to suggest how they might handle that criticism in such a
way as to not give it excessive emphasis. In other words, keep
the thing in perspective.

Almost anyone who writes a book will make a mistake here and
there. For example, once or twice I suggested that one could
summarize the defects in a book at the end by suggesting that
"...in a subsequent edition, which I feel is almost inevitable for
a book of this quality, these things might be straightened out."
That kind of light touch enables one to point out the need for
revision without hammering the damn thing out of existence,
because it can happen.

117

Timber Press

Riess: I have a letter from Bob Conklin at Timber Press.
Waters: Oh, you know him, do you?

Riess: I have met him. Timber Press would be one of the presses that
would have been sending books to you on a regular basis?

Waters: Yes.

Riess: In this letter he talks about meeting you. Do you remember?

Waters: Yes, he was down here. I think he was surveying the countryside,
so to speak, in respect to publishing on the West Coast.

Riess: You took him to Chez Panisse, he said.
Waters: That's right, yes. It's some years ago now.

I think that I was fairly frank about what I saw then as a
need for stricter editing. I think I was frank about that, and I
think he accepted it as a fair criticism. He told me about his
plans to add editors to the staff.

Richard Abell, who founded the press, also came to see me
when he was beginning, and so did the author of his first
successful book, which was J. D. Vertrees' book on Japanese
maples.5 Vertrees was up in Oregon, the typesetting for the book
was being done in Santa Barbara, and Vertrees was dashing
backwards and forwards between Oregon and Santa Barbara, checking
galleys. And at the time, it seemed odd to me, because you don't
want the author checking his galleys. It wants a fresh eye,
doesn't it?

Riess: Yes, it certainly does.

Waters: The author made the mistakes. Somebody else has to find them.

I'm not quite sure why Vertrees called on me, but I'm fond
of Japanese maples, and so we probably talked about those, and
about proofreading, I expect. And subsequently, a number of the
books that Timber Press got out showed a want of editing. I guess
Pacific Horticulture pointed this out--I know we did once or
twice.

^Japanese Maples, Timber Press, 1978.

118

So probably, almost inevitably, I must have discussed this
with Conklin, and as I said, he assured me that he was determined
to improve editing in the press. And he has, there's no doubt
about it. They have more editors, and their standards are better.

Niche Magazines, and the Journal's Niche

Riess: And Timber Press also considered publishing a garden magazine?6

Waters: Yes, when they contemplated this magazine, that would only have
been about a year or two back, Conklin 's daughter came down and
talked to me about it. (Again we were in Chez Panisse--it ' s a
good lunch place.) I was a little surprised, because one doesn't
launch magazines lightly. That much I could say! [laughter]

I probably pointed out to her that Pacific Horticulture had
begun almost thoughtlessly. I mean, we did no survey of the
field, the need for it and so on, we just saw it as important that
the climate conditions on the West Coast weren't being served by
other publications, mainly because they were in the East, that's
all. It was as simple as that. And therefore, people must want
such a magazine. [laughs] And I think the rest of us saw it in
those very, very simple terms.

But it is a fact that for some reason or other, despite the
popularity of gardening, when people become somewhat competent in
gardening, they stop reading for some reason or other. So if you
are trying to cater for people who have gone beyond the
rudimentary aspects of gardening, you're speaking to a shrinking
market.

I think that the RHS has discovered that too. The old RHS
journal with smaller format, before it became usual magazine size,
which it is now, tends to have a similar tone. That's why Conklin
reached not for the RHS journal in looking for his comparisons,
but to the Plantsman, which was launched, I think, in response to
criticism from older members, the real enthusiasts of the Royal
Horticultural Society, when their regular journal became

'Conklin to Riess, 7/28/98: "I suppose the most flattering thing I can
say in conclusion is that as we at Timber Press have contemplated from time
to time the idea of starting a journal of our own, the publication that
comes most readily to mind as a model for the kind of thing we might like
to do is Pacific Horticulture."

119

"popular," as they say.7 Because the discussions of plants became
less deep, less profound. And the Plants/nan meets that need, but
it has always been on the fringe of viability.

Riess: Would you say that Pacific Horticulture has always been on the
fringe of viability?

Waters: Well, no, because we've been quite frank about our need for

donations in addition to subscriptions. As the RHS journal itself
said about Pacific Horticulture on one occasion, it has much in
common with public broadcasting over here. It says frankly to the
public, "We can't keep this going without extra help, so please
send." And that's what we did. Without that, it probably
wouldn't survive.

Riess: What you say is very interesting. In an ever more sophisticated

market, beyond a certain circulation you probably have reached the
maximum number of people who need the information that you offer.
Is the niche for Pacific Horticulture such that there will only be
20,000 people?

Waters: Well, it's hard to know. I think that-- [pause] It might be

possible—a cleverer editor than I was might be able to present
that information more attractively. That is feasible, I suppose.

Riess: So that it becomes a must-read.
Waters: Yes. That's right.

Improvements; Prose, Pictures, Presses. Pleasure

Waters: How might that be done? Well, my own efforts went towards

organizing the material, for example, in an article, so that it
flowed more naturally. Trying to make sentences more simple, so
that they more quickly and easily conveyed their meaning. Well,
this is just improving the writing.

7Conklin to Riess, 7/28/98: "PH is unique among garden journals, both
because of George's high level commitment to quality and because of its
regional focus. While there are a few other publications that are somewhat
similar (the American Gardener, published by the American Horticultural
Society, and the New Plantsman, published by the Royal Horticultural
Society in England, come to mind) none has either the "feel" or the
regional orientation of PH."

120

And then along with that, to try to improve the pictures.
And then gradually, trying to use them more imaginatively. That
came rather late in the game. In fact, it only came once the
whole process of production went digital—we stopped pasting up
boards and constructed the whole thing on the computer. This was
something that Sharyn and Walt Gayton helped us into.

The Gaytons had been with us almost from the outset. In
fact, Olive, who had been editing a publication for the local iris
society, was using them to typeset that publication, I think even
before we launched Pacific Horticulture. So it goes way back.
They were then known as Evening Dawn Graphics, and they were known
as Evening Dawn because they did almost all their work at night,
when the world was quiet and they could concentrate. But they
dropped that name later on and just became Gayton--.

Riess: Gayton Design.
Waters: Yes.

I think I mentioned in our earlier talk Pat West, who was
one of our volunteers, and who set up the arrangement of
advertising in the magazine with uniform borders. When she could
no longer continue, we took that work to Gaytons too, so then they
began doing the advertising for us.

Then, after we lost Dave Harrell, of Medallion Graphics—he
got a job with UC Press and closed down his business— we took more
work to Gaytons. And also I mentioned Laurence Hyman who had set
up the original design of the magazine, he launched his own
publishing house, Woodford Press. He now has an office in one of
those grand buildings on Market Street in San Francisco— he ' s
really gone up in the publishing world.

So that all tended to move us towards Gaytons. What we took
them in the end was essentially the design that Laurence had
established for us, and they agreed to continue more or less along
the same lines.

But then, pasting up boards, which we continued to do long
after almost everybody else had gone to computers, eventually
became impossible, because people no longer had the machines to
set type in those long galleys . Gaytons now had the computers
that would enable them to do it, so we went digital with them.

I fought it for a long time. I needed assurance that our
quality would not suffer. But it did provide the opportunity to
more easily, for example, use photographs as insets within other
photographs and so on, without having to cut little bits out and

121

paste them in, which is very laborious,
computer quite quickly.

You can do it on the

And at that point, I tried to use pictures in more
imaginative ways and to use them, as it were, to draw people in to
the articles.

Riess: Earlier, you said to me something about training people, something
like that, to stick with the printed material, not to rely on
pictures.

Waters: "Training" wasn't my word, but still, carry on!
Riess: Do you know what I was referring to?

Waters: Yes, I know what you mean. I think there's something in my

affection for words that amounts to a kind of defiance that says,
All other magazines are going to flashy pictures on every page,
but we're not. We're going to have at least one double-page
spread in every issue with words from edge to edge. [laughter]
And I maintained that.

There was a certain practicality in it too, of course,
because I still had lots of black and white pages to fill. I
couldn't put color on every page if I wanted to, because the money
wasn't there to do it. So yes, this is perhaps also a
justification for a situation that I couldn't change anyway. But
nonetheless, I do love those pages with words from edge to edge,
and I don't feel the need to defend myself in that respect.

But I do realize that you can't go on fighting a losing
battle. And people now are so used to color in every aspect of
their lives, and the standard of photography and picture
reproduction on the printed page has reached a very high level of
quality, so there is also a pleasure in using that material well
in a magazine, as well as words. So why not have some pages all
words and other pages beautifully done with pictures? That seems
a reasonable compromise. So I tried to make use of color pictures
as well as 1 could.

For example, in my own photography very often I use what's
known as a medium format camera instead of a 35 mm. , which is
almost universal everywhere else.

Riess: What format?

Waters: It's 120 roll film, which is known variously as 2 1/4 square or 60
mm. But it does give you a tremendous area of film to deal with.

122

Riess: We introduced this particular discussion by talking about whether
20,000 is the circulation niche. You were speculating about how
Pacific Horticulture could grow.

Waters: That's right, yes. And that was the way I was trying to do it.
Riess: You're still on the editorial board?

Waters: I have a title, Editor Emeritus. But I don't interfere. If the
editor calls me, I talk over his problems with him.

Riess: You said that you asked your ex-editor Owen Pearce to read some of
your pieces. Are you being asked to review in that same way?

Waters: Not on a regular basis, no.

Publishing Horticultural and Garden Books

Riess: Whether Timber Press starts a magazine or not, I can't think that
there is profit in it. Is there much profit in publishing?

Waters: I guess that they must be making a success of it up there, because
their staff—they were celebrating, what was it, twenty years or
more? I'm not sure now. Anyway, I got a circular there with a
free T-shirt in it that says "Timber Press 20 Years" or something
like that. And they've now got a staff of a dozen or more people.
So they must be doing well.

I think that's because the mechanics of producing books are
now so automated. I remember early on, I did an editorial about
garden book publishing, and it brought a letter from a guy in San
Francisco who had been an editor in a book publishing house. He
applauded what I was saying about, for example, the fact that
since gardening books, along with cookery books, had become such a
hot item in the publishing world, everyone was trying to climb on
board. People who had never published a gardening book in their
life before decided that they couldn't afford to leave this
bonanza untouched.

And whereas at one time, for example, in Britain—well,
Collingridge and Country Life were the two big publishers of
gardening books, and they kept editors on their staff who were
capable of assessing the merit of a manuscript, because they were
specialists. One or two others published guidebooks, for example,
and others published architectural books, and that enabled them to
keep their editors honed, as it were, and able to say, "Well, this

123

msnuscript isn't worth a lot, we shouldn't touch it," or "Yes,
this is first-class stuff, let's do it."

Now, almost everyone in Britain who has a publishing house
publishes gardening books at some time or other. The question of
maintaining specialized editors no longer arises, because they do
so many kinds of books .

And this guy wrote to me saying yes, he had been editing and
he agreed entirely. The publisher he had worked for had employed
accessions editors, readers, and copy editors, but now one guy was
expected to do the lot, and what took three months now had to be
done in three weeks. There was virtually no serious editing being
done, and the reason was that accountants saw that since
mechanization had so reduced the cost of producing books, the big
cost factor now was editing, so we had to get that down just as
we'd got all the mechanical aspects down. The only way to do that
was to crunch the time available and the number of people
involved, and that was how the process had gone.

I felt that my criticism was justified,
how we came to be talking about books!

And I don ' t know

Riess: Maybe the reason I think there must not be much money in it is
because so many flower books, for example, are remaindered.
Stacks of books that were $39, for $5.98. And there's not very
much substance to them.

Waters: That's right.

Riess: You probably didn't deal with such books in your reviews?

Waters: No, they were just froth. We would tend to ignore them. But once
a publisher has a production line going, I suppose, if you've got
all these people employed, you have to keep them busy, don't you?
So even if the margin on a book is very small, it's better than
not producing anything at all. So they have probably got the
economics worked out. They print, say, 5,000 copies of a book,
they're probably remaindering it at a price which is still
covering their actual production costs. So they haven't lost
anything .

Riess: How did you do with the Pacific Horticulture Book of Western
Gardening?

Waters: Our book? Well, that was started on two counts. One was that we
were coming up to our tenth year of publication, and it seemed to
me that if we could have a book with the magazine's name on it in
bookstores, since very few bookstores carried the magazine itself,

124

I thought, Well, this is a promotion device. We can celebrate our
tenth year with a book—an anthology—and at the same time get
into bookstores and bring the magazine to people's attention.

And for that reason, I thought it would be better if we
could find a publisher who had access to bookstores. Timber Press
didn't at the time. I think Conklin has tried to get into the
bookstores now, more recently, but at that time, they didn't have
the access.

Riess: But you had considered them?

Waters: Well, yes, they were worth considering, but they would be dealing
with mail order, and the magazine itself was already dealing in
mail order, so it didn't seem that we would gain much publicity
that way.

At the time that this was being considered, I had enrolled
in the professional publishing course down at Stanford, which they
do every year. One of the lecturers was David Godine. I talked
to him about it, and he said, "Oh, I'm a subscriber to Pacific
Horticulture and I like the idea. Why not just let me publish
it?" He had an arrangement with, I think it was Abrams, to feed
his books into their distribution system. That seemed a good
idea, so that was the way we set it up.

It didn't actually come out on our tenth anniversary,
because there were one or two snags we met on the way. For
example, he had envisaged just taking the magazine negatives that
our printer kept for us and using them as they were to make new
plates. I felt that our magazine typeface, Palatino, was too
light for a book. Magazines are regarded as somewhat more
ephemeral than books, and therefore a lighter typeface seems
appropriate, whereas I felt a book should have something with a
little more substance in it, like Baskerville, which looks as
though it's intended to remain there.

In the end, David Godine agreed we'd reset the whole thing.
This gave us the opportunity also to tidy up the editing. Over
the years my editing had changed, I hope for the better, as I
learned the job. So we were able to be more consistent throughout
the book. But by the time we'd sorted it all out, our tenth
anniversary had gone by. Nonetheless, we went ahead and got the
book out .

Godine distributed it through bookstores, and we advertised
it in the magazine. I don't know what it has actually done--I
think it must have done something, but you know, it's not
measurable, and even if it were measurable ae wouldn't have the

125

facilities to measure it. So we have to take it on trust that it
has done the magazine some good to have the book out there.

Riess: Did you have to get permission from your authors to reproduce
their articles?

Waters: I don't know whether we had to get permission, but we did write to
all the authors. And the suppliers of photographs and drawings,
because we reprinted some of them, too. In one or two cases, we
took new photographs. Two or three authors we weren't able to
reach; their letters came back "no known address." So I just
filed them to show that we have at least tried. But all agreed
except for those two or three.

Lester Hawkins and the Mediterranean Garden

Riess: Lester Hawkins certainly turns up frequently in that book.

Waters: Yes. Nine of his pieces are in it. I felt that he'd been such a
fine contributor to Pacific Horticulture, not only in that he met
deadlines, which very few other people do, but that he was writing
so vigorously and so originally about gardening in the West, that
it would be a good thing to have his stuff in some more permanent
form. That was a factor, I think, in doing the book.

I was confirmed in this view later on when Helaine Kaplan
Prentice, a landscape architect and author of a book on California
gardens,8 got in touch with me with the idea of arranging to
reprint Lester's stuff. When I said that most of it was being
prepared for our book, she turned to other projects. But
obviously, she had a similar opinion of Lester's writing.

Riess: What is his importance in Western gardening? Does he represent
the beginning of a school that currently has manifest itself?

Waters: There was certainly a recognition long before Lester began writing
on gardening that this climate required that gardening be
approached in a different way; he wasn't entirely original. But I
think that Lester's articles in Pacific Horticulture presented the
argument for gardening with Mediterranean climate plants much more
forcefully. And he was able to demonstrate how plants that

The Gardens of Southern California, Chronicle Books, 1990.

126

originate in Mediterranean regions all over the world could be
brought together to make not only entirely satisfactory gardens,
but also pleasing, as pleasing as those most often copied from
northern Europe and which are so inappropriate here.

And then, in addition to that, of course, the need to revise
our gardening practices was made even more urgent by the
occurrence of tremendous droughts, which we began to speak of in
Pacific Horticulture less and less as droughts, because this
implies a sudden occurrence of an unusual kind, whereas in actual
fact, we were dealing with a climate in which water was
permanently in short supply. The use of the word "drought" was
misleading. So gradually in the magazine we stopped using that
word, because all these things were tending to contribute to a
wrong conception of what we are dealing with. We are dealing with
an arid climate; even though one tends to think of that as being
predominantly a southern California phenomenon, it's also true up
here for most of the year.

Riess: That put you in the position of bringing the bad news, when

perhaps often people really want to see the green English gardens
and perennial borders.

Waters: Well, that's right. I entirely agree with you. You can't really
afford to be constantly thumping that tub, you just put people
off. So obviously, we didn't turn the magazine entirely over to
that idea, but these thoughts had to be constantly reiterated in
different ways. And, as far as possible, in beguiling ways, and
Lester succeeded in that.

The greatest difficulty that we had to overcome was the
presentation of these gardens, not only in words but in pictures
too. If they can be made so attractive, then let us see them
illustrated. And that is where the problem is acute. There are
still too few that are sufficiently photogenic.

There are several reasons for the scarcity of those
pictures. First of all, almost invariably these gardens try to
reproduce in some way or another naturalistic landscapes, which
don't photograph too well. Even in England, where the
naturalistic landscape was so dominant in the middle of the 18th
century—the Capability Brown landscapes—they don't photograph
too well either. There are just a few scenes that you can get,
usually where in the middle distance he had a stream with the
hills behind, and almost invariably a structure like a bridge or a
mausoleum or something near the water. You could photograph that
and get a good scene. But a lot of the rest of it was just
shallow grassy hills and clumps of trees. Very difficult to make
an arresting picture out of.

Riess:

127

Well, what the gardening books coming from England show you
now isn't a Capability Brown landscape. It's a definitely
artificial one, much more photogenic, because usually an
architectural feature is placed at the focal point of the garden.
And all the rest is kind of dressing around it. Or it's some
ancient Cotswold cottage with buttery yellow stone and tile roof,
which looks so superb—again the garden becomes a kind of frame
for that house. And all this is so easy for the photographer,
it's a pushover.

But when you then start advocating a landscape of
Mediterranean plants, some of the finest features are not
photographable. For example, the aromas that these plants give
off, which are heavenly in a garden. You can't photograph them.
So you have what seems a shapeless jumble of grayish foliage, and
the photographers throw up their hands in despair, even though the
garden is a delight to wander in. They can't do anything with it.
So that's one problem.

And the other is, of course, that so far there are too few
of them. Photographers looking for conventional gardens have
hundreds of places they can find their pictures of brilliant
tulips against grassy greens and so on. But there are very few
places yet that have made a really first-class job of using
Mediterranean plants. They do exist, but we need a lot more of
them before showing them on a regular basis in magazines.

If Lester Hawkins was kind of father of the movement, he's long-
gone.

Waters: Oh, yes. It's a very slow process. And we're fighting centuries
of tradition, and emotional depths which these gardens have
reached in people who in the main originated in the East or in
Europe. And a tremendous amount of existing literature, with more
being produced each year. Compare this with the little bit that's
published here and in other Mediterranean climate countries.

The balance is gradually improving. There is now a
Mediterranean Garden Society which was established in Greece four
or five years ago. But, when we published Lester's articles, we
illustrated them with his photographs from the countries he
visited—in Greece, in fact, and in South Africa, Australia. And
his photographs were mostly of plants in the wild.

Riess: Handsome flaxes and so on.

'Died January 22, 1985. See obituary, Pacific Horticulture, Summer

1985.

128

Waters: Yes. The plants themselves are superb. You can get close-ups--

you can photograph them. But you can't find the gardens yet in

sufficient number in which these plants have been exclusively and
successfully used.

George's Interviews with Garden Designers

Riess: One of the emphases in the magazine is Strybing Arboretum which
has a new entry garden. Is that a Mediterranean garden?

Waters: Oh, you're talking about Roger Raiche. And you were asking [in a
letter sent by Riess to Waters) also about the gardens that 1 was
doing in those interview articles.

Riess: Yes. Are these people the offspring of Lester Hawkins?
Waters: No, I don't think that there is necessarily a connection.

No, these people are just exploring all of the new plants
that are available--! say new, I mean they're obviously not new
plants, but they are recently introduced into horticulture here.
And they're taking a rather theatrical view of gardens, as places
to have a bit of fun.

In the main- -the series I did in Pacific Horticulture I
think started with Marcia Donahue.10 I'm not sure exactly where
that began. And then there was one I did with Peter Newton.11

Riess: I don't know that name.

Waters: Peter Newton? He's up in the Napa Valley, has a winery up there,
and he's a keen gardener. He's an English fellow. He has a very
large garden up there.

And then I spoke with Michael Bates,12 who had done some work
for Peter Newton in his garden, and who is a designer in his own
right, living in Sonoma. His own garden is somewhat of an English
garden, since he's also an Englishman, and we concentrated on that
during our conversation. But Michael has designed some unusual

10Pacific Horticulture, Winter 1989.
"Pacific Horticulture, Summer 1992.
"Pacific Horticulture, Winter 1993.

129

gardens, in one of which there is some remarkable restoration and
conservation of native trees and wildf lowers.

In the main I was looking for people who had something to
say about gardening, together with something that I could
photograph. So I wasn't looking for any particular theme, just
someone who seemed to have an unusual angle on gardens and was
able to say it well. In the main, the so-called interviews were
conducted on paper. I'm no good at taking notes when I'm talking
to anybody. I tried one of these things [tape recorder] once, and
I couldn't transcribe a word from what I had done. [laughs]

Riess: You mean you weren't there with a tape recorder?

Waters: Oh, I visited them, and I talked, and got a sense of the garden
and what their point of view was, and then I sent them written
questions and invited them to jot down their notes, their answers.
And then I would enlarge upon what they'd said, and ask a few more
questions and send it back again.

Riess: Of course, that works.

Waters: It works. It has some merit, which implies a significant demerit
here. [laughter] Which I won't bother to enlarge upon. And that
is that the interviewee can think about the answers more
carefully, so that when they've eventually not only written it
down and sent it to me, but got it back from me, edited, they can
reconsider.

Riess: Well, and you know you can reconsider too.

Waters: [laughs] But who keeps the tape?

Riess: You can ask that the tape be destroyed, if you really wish.

Waters: Oh, is that right?

Riess: Yes, but the tape is moot. The thing is getting people in the
process of thinking about something.

Waters: Well, I appreciate the fact that somebody else has accepted the
job of transcribing it.

No, there are advantages and disadvantages [to using the
tape recorder], and—well, I wouldn't have missed this for the
world. It's so rare, isn't it, that one gets an opportunity to
talk about himself to someone who's actually interested in
staying?

130

Riess: Indeed. So, in doing articles you've been doing for Pacific

Horticulture, you're trying to bring to the public some new ideas,
but you don't think you are reporting on a direction in which
garden design is going?

Waters: No, no. I think that all we're doing essentially is saying that
here are people who have some notions about gardening that you
might not have considered. That's really all, it doesn't amount
to any more than that .

Riess: But in the interviews you present them as clever gardeners and
thinking people.

Waters: Yes, that's right. By sometimes throwing out ideas, as you do,

which attempt to challenge what they're saying so as to stimulate
them. For example, I seem to remember that I made some comment
about drainage problems that Peter Newton was having in his
garden, and so on.

In the case of Bob Clark,13 I suggested some ridiculous
notion of a garden of tears. He seemed to be trying to make
gardening fun. I picked on the theatrical aspect of that and
suggested that the reverse might also be true, that not only could
you make people laugh, but what a challenge it would be if you
could actually reduce them to tears during a garden visit. You
know, it was nonsense, but it seemed to me to be worth throwing
out as an idea to see what came of it. He had some ideas about
how it might be achieved.

And anyway, why not? Certainly in the 18th century, this
period that we were talking about, there were gardens that
deliberately tried to stimulate emotional responses. So there is
a precedent. And those emotional responses included humor. They
had devices that played pranks on the visitors by dripping water
on them.

There was a famous weeping willow that Joseph Paxton, I
think it was, constructed at Chatsworth that has a secret valve
the owner could turn on as his visitors passed under the tree. It
was actually a bronze tree full of pipes that poured water down.
I don't think that was the only one; several places in Europe had
surprises of one kind or another for visitors.

Riess: When you began as editor there weren't interviews in this same
sense that you've been doing interviews.

^Pacific Horticulture, Winter 1997.

131

Waters: It goes back to--oh, I don't know, the early nineties, I guess.

The last one was with Bob Clark, and that appeared I think in one
of Dick Turner's first issues. But it was all conceived and
prepared while I was editor. Just that it didn't get printed
until he took over. I think that was it.

Riess: I was thinking maybe it represents another direction in gardens,
that when you interview someone in this way, it is more about the
ego, or the artist, some general change in that direction.

Waters: I see, yes. Well, in the case of Peter Newton, the garden does

certainly contain some original ideas. It's a series of gardens,
really, Newton's place. One of them his wife designed- -she is
Chinese in origin—a marvelously conceived example of a Chinese
garden, on one side of the house. And further down the hill is a
whole string of gardens, each one different.

That was somewhat original. But on the other hand, it's
outside most people's scope because of the vast amount of money
that was involved in making that place. So after that I was quite
glad to find someone who was working on a smaller scale. I met
Michael Bates over lunch with Peter Newton.

I suppose what it amounts to is this: that if you find
someone who has something to say, the probability is that they're
exploring somewhat new ideas and doing something original. Isn't
that probable? Maybe that's how it happened.

Riess: It is, it is. [tape interruption]

Waters: [responding to a further question about the function of interviews
in Pacific Horticulture] There has been all along a difficulty in
getting articles about gardens. Now, magazines in a position to
pay are at an advantage, because they can take someone who is
established as a good writer. Wayne Winterrowd, for example, was
writing for Horticulture in Boston. Not recently, but he was a
few years back. Good writer. They commissioned him, say, to do
an article on a particular garden. That's fine. We weren't in
that position.

And writing well about gardens isn't easy. So I was starved
for this kind of stuff. I couldn't employ people and tell them to
go and write an article for me. So in a way, the interviews
developed as a method of getting good articles about gardens into
Pacific Horticulture. And that meant essentially reflecting, yes,
a person, the gardener, as well as the garden. I think therefore
we gained a double advantage that way—an extra advantage, I
should say- -in that we got something of the ideas of the gardeners
themselves as well as a description of the garden.

132

That was the springboard, as it were, from which it all
came. I was desperate. Gardens that are open to the public are
easier to cover; they always have someone, perhaps a volunteer,
who is doing public relations for them. For the publicity, they
turn out an article of sorts. But it tends to be somewhat
recognizable as a public relations exercise.

I wanted something livelier, and about private gardens. So
this just seemed one way of achieving it. I know that if I had
gone into those gardens myself, I would have had difficulty
producing a good article about them. It's tough going, I mean to
write with some originality. You can list all the plants, but
what idea does that give a reader of the garden? Nothing at all.
It's just a list, just a catalogue.

One has to get somehow a sense in original terms of what the
garden is like to be in. Photographs help a little in that
respect, but in the end, you have to evoke the garden in some way,
in a way that hasn't been done before. I mean not in phrases like
"undulating lawns." We've all heard of undulating lawns. I don't
want to hear about undulating lawns! [laughter] I want to get
some feeling that I'm in that garden. That takes rare skills.

Riess: Well, that's very interesting, that's a really good answer. And
it's a practical answer that goes to what you were dealing with
there at the magazine.

And to repeat a question from earlier, do you think the
magazine has been following trends in gardening?

Waters: Not consciously, no. Just as I say: when you find somebody who is
enthusiastic—Roger Raiche, for example, is absolutely dedicated
to plants and gardens. As a matter of fact, Roger Raiche was a
very quiet and shy young man- -he was working at the [UC] Botanical
Garden, as you know, for many years. And I think he might be
going back for a few hours a week. He's a tremendous asset to the
Botanical Garden because of his devotion to plants and gardens.
Enormously conscientious worker.

But he suddenly opened up, and I remember going to a talk
that he gave to the California Horticultural Society a couple of
years ago. I thought, Roger Raiche? Shy, stammering? It was a
revelation. The man was brilliant. I mean, enthusiasm just
radiated all over, and he sort of blanketed the audience with it.
It was incredible. And I thought, This is a different Roger
Raiche, and so it proved to be.

133

Naturally, I thought, Well, now, here's someone I would like
to see in Pacific Horticulture . u Some of that enthusiasm will
emerge in some way. And I hope it did.

Riess: Oh, it did.

Waters: I seem to remember that when I was looking at it, that I had to

tone it down a little bit, because it was almost too colorful for
words. But that was the idea.

Well, that was basically it. Here was someone with ideas,
someone who had thought about gardens, in a constructive way.
Therefore, it must be of some benefit to others to read about it,
I would have thought. There was nothing more than that.

it

Waters: In the Bay Area there is a trend towards—well, among certain
enthusiasts, anyway- -towards this use of gardens to create
theatrical scenes to suggest ideas and so on. And as I've said,
it's not completely new—the history of gardens shows such things
cropping up from time to time. Topiary, for example, was, and is,
a definite theatrical aspect of gardening. Different materials
and other ways are used in achieving the effect, but it's an
artistic avenue that almost anybody with a garden can pursue.
Even the man in England who fills his garden with plastic
flowers15 or painted plaster gnomes16 can be said to have done
something similar.

Waters: This theatrical style in gardening does seem to be a widespread
trend. At the Hampton Court Show and at the famous Chelsea Show
one seldom sees gardens with traditional sculpture—Cupids,
unicorns, lightly clad nymphs— instead there are strangely shaped
pieces of metal, dragons in terra cotta, swan shaped vases in
multi-colored and sometimes poorly executed terrazzo, and clusters
of objects vaguely resembling hot dogs impaled on striped poles.
It is described as contemporary design,17 but often the bright

"Pacific Horticulture, Fall 1997.

15Jane Owen and Eric Crichton, Eccentric Gardens, Villard Books, 1991.

"Candida Lycett Green and Andrew Lawson, Brilliant Gardens, Chatto &
Windus, 1989.

17rhe Garden, Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, July 1998,
p. 519.

134

colors are distracting and the shapes somewhat at odds with the
tranquility expected in a garden. On the other hand such ornament
can be contrived from found material, and then it enables those of
limited means to include something eye-catching that gives zest
and variety to a small space.

Riess: The magazine could be a showcase for people who are garden
designers, who are in the business.

Waters: To some extent Pacific Horticulture has been a showcase for garden
designers. Harland Hand described his garden in the first issue18
and from another standpoint in a subsequent one." And in various
ways design has been a theme in many issues. Remember my
mentioning the ambition of bridging the chasm between gardeners--
the plant enthusiasts — and designers in its pages? That ambition
was difficult to realize through trained landscape architects
because their writing was often larded with terms (synergism,
antithetical) and phrases from their academic training that tend
to obscure their meaning for ordinary gardeners. In the same way,
botanists use Latin terms that are unfamiliar to the general
public. Not that all gardeners are unaware of their meaning; only
that in reading and everyday conversation they latch on more
readily to familiar words, and lose concentration quickly with
esoteric language. Russ Beatty and Ron Lutsko, both academically
trained landscape architects, expressed themselves well in Pacific
Horticulture, but I needed more articles than they could provide.

With greater interest in gardening there emerged a number of
garden designers who knew plants and in some cases had design
training, but were not qualified landscape architects. These
people were able to make a living designing gardens, usually by
working on the site and making the garden as they might if they
were the owner, and not necessarily from drawings. In Harland 's
case commissions came from those who admired his own garden, and
there are others, extremely capable gardeners, who took up design
work after helping friends and neighbors in their gardens. These
people see gardens in terms more concrete than most trained
landscape architects and they express themselves in ways more
easily understood by ordinary gardeners.

'"Pacific horticulture, January 1976.
"Pacific Horticulture, Spring 1978.

135

In the main it is these designers with whom I had the
"conversations" written up in Pacific Horticulture. Had I seen
the possibilities of the series sooner it might have begun earlier
and run longer, but previous issues of the magazine are not
without design interest. Elizabeth Wilkinson provided a series
illustrating several design features: paths, arbors and trellises,
fountains, Japanese bridges and such like.20 And David Mason21 had
a two-part article on the history and design of water gardens in
1994. In the fall of the same year Michael McKeag22 described the
design and construction of his garden of native plants, including
a stream and a pool. Of course, a knowledge of history is
important to designers, and the magazine has had many
contributions touching on aspects of the history of gardening and
garden design. But I hope that my successor as editor will be
able to keep the magazine open to the work of young designers.

Fair Treatment of Plant Groups, Payment to Authors

Riess: With the various plant groups, rhododendrons, roses, and so on,
did you attempt to make sure that if you had something about
rhododendrons, you also had something about roses, and about
hostas--how much did you care to keep pleasing the various
sectors, the enthusiasts?

Waters: It was difficult to include everything I should have. For

example, there are areas that I deliberately pursued, and in some
cases never did quite get what I wanted. I was able to find a
couple of people to write on ferns, one in the Northwest and one
in Los Angeles. Bromelliads I managed to get represented. Bamboo
more than once. There were a couple of articles on palms, but
never did I get comprehensive treatment of them, although it is an
important group. I worked on a person in Oakland who was well
informed and I think would have done well, but then unfortunately
died before he could begin. Irises, because of my contacts, we've
treated more than once. Rhododendrons, okay. Camellias, too.

Fuchsias — that ' s a strange thing. Victor Reiter in his day
was a first-class man on fuchsias. He bred them, and his

20Pacific Horticulture, Winter 1984, Summer 1985, Summer 1986, Spring
1987, Fall 1987, Fall 1993.

21Pacific Horticulture, Spring and Summer 1994.
"Pacific Horticulture, Fall 1994.

136

reputation survives in the fuchsia world because of it. But he
had dealt with them extensively in the old journal, so he never
really wanted to attempt it again, even though we were now in a
position to illustrate them in color. I was offered a manuscript
by someone in southern California on fuchsias, but it didn't seem
adequate, and so I declined it.

Riess: If you are only going to have one such article for quite a long
time, then that requires that it be really quite scholarly?

Waters: Well, thoroughgoing rather than scholarly. Yes, there has to be
something on the history and the development and so on, and about
the plants as they exist in the wild. And what has been done to
make them garden-worthy. Well, that's problematic, and requires
considerable effort on the part of the author, and comparatively
few people are prepared to do that. Sometimes if I was able, I
would graft in a section or two to help to fill out an article
that was otherwise satisfactory.

But that's why, in more recent years, the foundation has
been building an endowment, the object being to establish a fund
that would yield adequately to pay authors.

Riess: To pay certain authors or all authors?

Waters: Well, that's a good question. I felt that it should pay all of

them, and pay them equally. I know that a number of publications
have two scales of pay, one for the established writers that they
want to retain and one for the others. But I felt that we should
budget for a reasonable payment that would not be insulting, and
that should be offered to everybody.

It's a slow process—endowment funds aren't easy to build
up. But it's happening. Marge launched the fund, and as she did
so often with Pacific Horticulture, got it going with a
substantial gift, and it's since been—there have been, let's say,
accretions. [laughs]

Riess: There was the article in Summer 1995 by Graham Stuart Thomas. Why
would he write free for you?

Waters: Well, I knew him in the Garden History Society in England, and so
he was a good friend and ready to oblige.

And in fact, when it came to the twentieth anniversary
issue, a great many of my friends in Britain responded with
articles, which I asked them to angle towards the Western U.S.,
and they did it more or less successfully. That included not only
friends in England, but some of my best friends in the U.S., for

137

example, Allen Lacy on the East Coast, Pamela Harper, Kevin
Connelly, Carol Greentree. You know, the people who had been
stalwarts right from the very beginning, I thought it was
appropriate to include them all, as far as possible.

That was another device to give me something to write home
about, so to speak. Get the word out to everyone that Pacific
Horticulture was still here and offering something out of the
ordinary. Apparently, statistically, only 5 percent of magazines
launched actually survive beyond five years, something like that,
a very small number.

Marcia Donohue's Garden, and Other Berkeley Gardens

Riess: Pacific Horticulture for me is more of a coffee table magazine. I
have to deal with the fact that my garden is just so many square
feet, basically a rug in the foreground of my neighbors' gardens.

Waters: There's a start for a magazine article, isn't it? [laughter] "My
garden rug." You're really, I suppose, defining very small city
gardens.

But you might think about Marcia Donohue's garden. Her idea
was, This is my canvas. And what am I going to do with it? She,
of course, approached it in an ebullient fashion, just took her
bowling balls and her coils of wire and statues — she ' s sculpted a
lot of the stuff herself, of course. But also she went down to
the bayside and brought back, I suppose, stuff that people had
dumped there, old bricks and broken tombstones and things like
that. She just made the garden out of anything that took her
fancy. And since she had a great fancy for plants, then a great
variety of them as well.

In the end, what she did was to concentrate peoples'
attention within the garden, thereby making meaningless what was
beyond it. Nobody pays attention to what was beyond the fence.
You can't, there's so much within the garden demanding your
attention. You can't even get to looking at the houses on either
side, because the next step you take, something new emerges. She
captures the visitor, as it were, and forces them to view just
that section that she has made.

You can do something like it without that ebullience, for
example, with hedges. You consume some of your territory with
hedges, it's true, but then within those hedges there is the
possibility of a garden of miniature plants. Find all the

138

smallest jewels. It would require studying the plants fairly
well, because most of those small plants have rather special
requirements. A lot of them are from high Alpine areas or from
deserts, but not all of them are impossible to grow.

Those demands, the requirements of the site, the
restrictions that it places on you, mean that you've got to work
that much harder. It's rather like the miniature portrait of the
kind fashionable in Elizabethan times. I mean, imagine the person
having to work with a one-hair brush to put in the detail! That's
the kind of thing that tends to happen in gardening in those
circumstances. But what you create is the more astonishing
because of it. I think it can be done.

I have for a long while nursed the idea—and I've started
taking a few photographs—of Berkeley front gardens. Inspired by
that old Scottish folk song, "People Who Have Gardens." Do you
know it? It's a little song sung by the working lad or woman who
passes gardens on the way to work and back every day. It
expresses gratitude for the people who made them because of the
pleasure they give. And I thought the gratitude well earned.

I haven't concentrated on the project sufficiently to force
myself to get all the photographs I would need, but there are some
lovely things, particularly at the time when wisteria comes into
flower. There's one, I haven't a photograph of it, and I don't
think the plant is there now, but in that section of Marin just
above The Alameda, there was a large house with a porch which had
white wisteria on it with very long racemes of flowers. It was
just like a waterfall in flower.

George Waters finishing a bicycle race, probably
1945.

G.W. notes: "Although never a winner of bicycle
races, as a young man I enjoyed the social life
and hard riding that my racing club (the Bath
Road Club) provided. The dark clothing and
Shakespearean tights were a hangover from
Victorian rules requiring competitors to be
inconspicuously clothed, and covered from neck
to ankle. By the 1940s the garb had become
decidedly conspicuous. This picture at the
conclusion of a 50-mile time-trial was taken in
Pangbourne Lane, near Reading, by Vic Furnari."

139

VI THE EDITOR ANSWERS VARIOUS QUESTIONS

[Interview 5: September 17, 1998] ##

Bicycling, After the War, and a Lost Film

Waters: [continuing a conversation begun off tape about bicycling] I

didn't tell you about my bicycle? I used to race, but I didn't
win anything. I wasn't very good. But that was part of the
social activity of bicycling, because the people who did race
needed supporters, during long distance races, for example, to
hand out drinks and things like that.

In those days, bicycle racing was all amateur. There was no
significant professional activity in Britain at all. Now and
again, a British club rider would go over and compete in France,
in the Tour de France, but they very rarely got anywhere, because
they just hadn't the rigorous training and experience in mountains
for it.

I had been through France and a little of Italy way, way
back on a bicycle. I told you about that, didn't I? 1947?

Riess: Italy on a bicycle?

Waters: France and then northern Italy, a little bit of northern Italy.

Riess: I doubt you did. I'd have pursued it with a vengeance. And I
would have asked you what you were particularly looking at.

Waters: Nothing in particular. I was just such a keen bicyclist.

Riess: Did you see a lot of devastation from the war? It must have been
a rather extraordinary time to be biking around Italy.

Waters: Most significant was the number of widows trying to make a living
renting out rooms. But on the other hand, places like Cannes, one
could hardly see any sign of it. There wasn't much damage in the

140

Riess:
Waters :
Riess:
Waters :

south of France, which is where I spent most of the time, I
suppose.

Later, when I was still working at Kodak, I made a movie of
bike racing. We had access to some Kodachrome film, and we
borrowed three 16 mm. movie cameras, the wind-up kind, you know,
mechanical. We, myself and two colleagues, distributed ourselves
around the hundred-mile course. It was on public roads. And
because it was on public roads, it had to be held very early in
the morning. At three o'clock we drove out to the area just
beyond Reading where the race began about five o'clock in the
morning.

It was called a time trial, because on public roads in those
days, you did not hold mass start races. Every rider was
dispatched on the second—at one-minute intervals. They were
instructed that even if they pass one another, they should not
crowd, one should not take shelter behind another. They would go
straight past. So it was essentially each man riding against
himself.

Anyway, we photographed this, and I remember editing the
thing in a rather amateurish way and putting titles in and little
bits of descriptive text, spliced into the film. And I showed it
to some members of the club. And then it vanished. That whole
effort vanished, about twenty minutes of color film. No copy was
made.

So I wrote to people in the club today, not only about the
film, because I wanted to find out where it was, but mentioning
other members of the club at that time, quite famous people.
There's no recollection, no memory. Virtually no response. I did
get a letter back once or twice, and I pursued it with the few
leads that I got, but most of the people I mentioned are totally
unknown now. Even their names aren't remembered.

It does seem like a likely kind of history to do.
Oh, yes. The club was founded in 1886.
What was the name of your particular club?

That club was called the Bath Road Club. It took its name from
the main road between London and Bath, on which its races were
generally held. A great many of its members were record-breakers.
Indeed, the club badge was the Union Jack. It represented Britain
in international events. So it was quite a remarkable club.

141

Waters: I traveled everywhere by bicycle, and all my leisure time was

spent cycling. For accommodations I used facilities provided by
the Youth Hostels Association. The association made use of any
building that it could acquire, and some of them were historic and
beautifully located: ancient castles, old mills, remote cabins,
anything with a dry roof that could be converted to provide
kitchen, common room, and dormitories, so long as it helped young
people reach places of interest and beauty.

Many of the memories I have of this period are of journeys
made alone. There is greater sense of escape, and wilderness
leaves deeper impressions of awe when one is alone; companions
sometimes detract from those sensations. Using Youth Hostels it
was possible to travel alone, and in the evenings to enjoy good
fellowship and conversation among travelers from all walks of
life, and from many parts of the world- -perhaps find a companion
for a few miles along the road in the morning if a conversation
asked to be continued.

The Youth Hostel in Winchester, an ancient water mill, was a
favorite for weekends during those years of wartime rationing.
The hostel was managed by two elderly refugees from Europe. These
kind and resourceful ladies were wizards at augmenting meager
allowances of scarce food with more easily obtained ingredients
and spices. Their table at dinner was invariably dominated by a
huge and seemingly bottomless iron pot of delicious stew. And we
hungry youngsters left our benefactors in no doubt of our
appreciation. When urgent duties precluded an overnight stay at
the hostel some cycled up from Southampton just to dip into that
iron pot.

My YHA membership cards, rubber-stamped at each hostel,
listed many others visited in England, Scotland, and Wales. Alas,
my little wad of cards, lost long ago during frequent changes of
address, is no longer at hand to remind me of the place names.
One remote hostel at Ponterwyd, in Wales, remains in mind for the
stark simplicity of the accommodation and the passion of political
argument around the table. Despite arriving through teeming rain
in blackest night over rocky tracks, the debate kept us from our
beds until two in the morning.

In this way I explored much of the country, sometimes riding
at night to enjoy the "bleeding eve on the road to Wales,"1 and
hear the chorus at dawn. Now, many years and many more miles
away, the scent of a lighted kerosene lamp and of smoke from
burning wood has me once again on a country road descending

'A. E. Housman.

142

quietly into any of a hundred sheltered villages where windows are
beginning to glow through the dusk and chimneys send wisps of
smoke into the cool evening air.

Obstacles to Preserving Archives

Waters: But I mention the bicycle race movie because it led me to realize
how hopeless that situation of keeping records is. Even the
American Iris Society, in which Olive is very active--
incidentally, if you want to get in touch with her, you should
just give her a call and make some arrangement --it has established
a library which is a sort of archive quite recently in Silverton,
but it has no professional archivist. And since they're nearly
all volunteers, if the person who has initiated the establishment
of this dies, then they'll be floundering around looking for
somebody else.

Or maybe a volunteer will be found, who volunteers simply
because nobody else came forward and will have no idea what to do
with the stuff. So even where there is someone nominally
responsible, there isn't always the ability or resources to make
sure that it continues.

Riess: Not even at the national level.

Waters: That's right, it's the national society. The library was mooted
and somebody came forward and said that yes, we have the
opportunity to establish it somewhere in Tennessee. And the whole
bundle of stuff was moved to Tennessee. When it got there, they
found that all the promises were empty, and there was in fact no
facility provided. So it stayed there for a little while just in
cartons or whatever, and eventually it was shipped to Silverton in
Oregon, and the city of Silverton, because of the presence there
of a very famous nursery, which owns many acres of land, the city
of Silverton made available some part of a building for them. But
that's all. I believe somebody goes there from time to time.

But you see the difficulties they're up against. Again,
there's a great deal of horticultural history associated with the
society. But really no resources for maintaining an archive.

People have said to me, "Well, lord, you have a wonderful
library of horticultural books, George. What are you going to do
with it?" I've just said, "Well, I shall offer it, if it survives
me, but only to a library that has a professional librarian."

143

Histories of Nurseries, and Passing Trends

Riess: I was looking at Graham Thomas's perennial garden book. In it he
says that he hopes garden historians will do a full history of
nurseries before all the records disappear. I wonder if that was
something Pacific Horticulture tried to do. And what do you think
about the importance of documenting the history of the nurseries?

Waters: Oh, I would say that in Britain there's probably a fair amount of
literature there. For example, in the publications of the Royal
Horticultural Society, certain people such as Arthur Hellyer, I
remember, wrote a number of articles on small specialist nurseries
in Britain.

Riess: Perhaps he's talking about what a study of nurseries would tell
you about horticultural trends, or some such.

Waters: I would say it's more likely to occur in small, individual efforts
such as Arthur Hellyer 's and those of others like him. For
example, a member of the Garden History Society, John Harvey, has
investigated the stock—you know, the plants that were available
in certain nurseries through trade lists from the 17th century
onwards.2 Here in the Bay Area, a man called Butterf ield--long
dead now, I never met him- -he wrote regularly in the California
Horticultural Journal, recording the dates in which certain plants
were available in nurseries in this area. And Elizabeth
McClintock quoted him frequently in her articles in Pacific
Horticulture .

So there are these records, but I don't think there's a
comprehensive record, because it would require a mammoth effort
with tremendous financing, wouldn't it?

Riess: Did you think of the history of individual nurseries as a subject
to pursue on a regular basis in Pacific Horticulture?

Waters: Yes, and it happened from time to time. Marshall Ollbrich, for

example, did an article on Ed Carman. I'm sure you've encountered
that one. And Charles Burr, who was a nurseryman himself, he I
think became a writer on horticultural subjects, and contributed
things on the Walter Clarke Nursery, Leonard Coates Nurseries, and
Henry Hyde.

And Carl Purdy, in northern California, was mentioned
approvingly in an article by Elizabeth Lawrence in Spring 1978.

2John Harvey, Early Gardening Catalogues, Phillimore, 1972.

144

Then, in an excellent article on calochortuses in Spring 1981,
Farwig and Girard severely criticized Purdy for the extent to
which he dug up native bulbs in California and shipped them off to
Europe in vast quantities. It provoked a letter from Purdy 's
grandson in Fall 1981, and the correspondence concluded with
Farwig 's reply in Winter 1981.

Riess: What about Theodore Payne?

Waters: Payne was somewhat more inclined to collect seeds and make them
available in California, but Purdy is said to have shipped bulbs,
not seed, to Europe in vast quantities. Lester Rowntree also
collected seeds for sale, and was often mentioned in Pacific
Horticulture, particularly by Virginia Lopez Begg in the Summer
'94 issue.

Farwig claimed that a number of mail-order houses
distributing across this country were offering bulbs provided by
Purdy to people who had no conception of the climatic needs of
calochortuses. So in most cases, they were just being cast to the
winds. They wouldn't be cultivated. Of course, that happens a
lot in gardening anyway, but Purdy 's destruction of wildf lower
habitat, in Farwig 's view, was unforgivable.

Riess: I think it sounds like an interesting study. I'm assuming that

perennial plants go the way of apple varieties, where it gets down
to a few favorites and you have a search to find anything
different. Of course then you have people who are specialists in
the rare and antique apples.

Waters: Yes, that's true to some extent, but there are also fashions in

gardening. For example, perennial plants are enjoying an enormous
vogue now, whereas twenty to thirty or more years ago, and
certainly in the fifties, the vogue was for evergreen shrubs-
camellias, rhododendrons and things like that. So there are not
only waves of fashion, but cycles too.

Riess: Then you hope to have devoted nurserymen who keep a stock of
perennials — like Ed Carman or somebody like that.

Waters: Yes, that's right. And when the popularity of certain kinds of

plants declines, then there are nurserymen like Ed and others who
manage to keep things going. Or the case which Gertrude Jekyll
made about old-fashioned plants was that they were preserved in
the gardens of unsophisticated gardeners, the people who didn't
garden self-consciously. [laughs]

Riess: Out around the outhouse.

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Waters: That's right. And she was able to recover some of these.

Because of the enormous popularity recently of roses,
especially the old-fashioned kinds, there is now a Heritage Rose
Society that devotes itself to finding these old roses. And they
find them in churchyards and so on. In fact, their exploits in
discovering them have been the subject of books written just on
that: going out and finding these old roses. It's quite
fascinating.

Riess: And that's fun, that kind of search.
Waters: Oh, yes.

More on Archives, Editors, and Bike Racing

Riess: To go back to what you were saying about the archives of the Iris
Society, if a group had a journal, doesn't the archival material
gather around the fact that there is a journal? The journal is
the magnet for all of the history of the organization.

Waters: Only partially. They [the Iris Society] do publish the minutes,

but usually in six point type, because apparently, they're seen as
a necessity but nobody really wants to read them. So they're kind
of pushed to the back.

That again depends upon the editor. Societies tend to have
their ups and downs too. There have been—in my own experience
with the American Iris Society, and the British Iris Society too-
good editors and not-so-good editors. Some editors realize the
significance of getting people to write about certain things, to
make sure that they are recorded—they have posterity in mind, in
other words, so they devote part of the publication to that.
There are other editors who don't see the significance of that at
all and just publish, knock into shape, so to speak, whatever
comes their way. They don't deliberately set out to ensure that
the publication takes a certain stand or contains certain kinds of
material.

So there are these ups and downs all the while. And then
again, of course, what an editor can bring about depends to some
extent on what kinds of membership his society has. For example,
I was looking through old copies of the magazine that my cycling
club [the Bath Road Club] published, and I suddenly realized there
that the same thing was happening: that there were certain periods
in which the editor saw to it that the oldest members of the club

146

wrote about their own early experiences, and so the magazine
suddenly takes on a certain tone. And then at other times, the
thing becomes positively frivolous in the kind of stuff that it
publishes.

There was a man who was editor most of the time that I was
active in the club, who wrote himself some extraordinarily fine
accounts of the races that the club was organizing. Even though
each rider was riding individually, he managed to make it sound
like the riders were neck and neck, whereas in fact, of course
they weren't, they were well spaced out. And especially the
account of the event- -the one that we photographed, as a matter of
fact — in which the first hundred miles in less than four hours was
accomplished. That was quite an achievement, and from his
description of it, one can almost see these riders in the last
miles available to them in order to reduce the time that they're
recording, and how the winner managed to bring about his triumph
in almost the last ten miles of the event. It was really quite
extraordinary .

That gives you some idea of how dependent these
organizations are on the particular people they attract. I
imagine that cycling has taken on a totally different complexion
since that time, largely because of the enormous popularity of the
motorcar. There were virtually no cars on the roads at the time
that I'm speaking of, because of rationing of gasoline and postwar
shortage of vehicles.

So people would take the machines on which they were going
to race, they would equip them with road wheels, as they called
them—the everyday wheels— they would carry their racing wheels,
which were specially lightweight and equipped with paper-thin
tires. They were hung on metal brackets on the front of the
machine, either side of the front wheel. There 'd be a tent
strapped on the back of the bicycle on a carrier that was removed
for the race, and they would camp near the starting place.

In the early morning they'd creep out, pump up a paraffin
stove, boil themselves a cup of tea, eat a sandwich, strip their
bicycle, get into their racing clothes, compete in the race, and
then do the whole thing in reverse.

Now they come to the race in cars with their racing bicycle
fastened to the top, already gleaming and perfectly oiled and so
on. And after the race, instead of going for a ride with their
colleagues, they want to put the bicycle back on the car and go
home, or to watch television. I don't know what they do, but they
certainly don't cruise around the countryside as we did with our

147

racing wheels still there, and the perspiration encrusted on our
bodies. Although they must ride for training at some time.

So these volunteer organizations are blown by the winds of
fortune, whatever way the membership takes them.

The Royal Potential of Horticultural Societies

Riess: The organizations that make up the Pacific Horticultural

Foundation, did you have to be present for their meetings, as
editor of Pacific Horticultural

Waters: Well, the board is made up of representatives of those societies.
I attended also some of their local meetings from time to time. I
didn't do it on a regular basis.

I probably attended meetings of the California Horticultural
Society most often, because it was the organization that I had
first joined. I attended meetings of the societies in southern
California and in the Northwest only rarely, because they were
distant, and it seemed to me there needed to be some special
reason for doing so. So I relied on meeting their representatives
on the board from time to time.

It's interesting to note that when the California
Horticultural Society was founded, the people who set it up--
Victor Reiter, for example, was one of them, and he gave me some
idea about this — the idea I think in their mind was that it would
eventually become, as it were, the equivalent of the Royal
Horticultural Society in California.

I'm not quite sure how realistic they thought that was.
Riess: That meant a sense of high purpose?

Waters: That's probably the best way of interpreting that idea, yes. But
the whole history of gardening and horticulture in Britain is so
extraordinary that the idea that one might in some way repeat it
in California seemed to me improbable. But perhaps that's not
what they had in mind.

Riess: When you gathered this from Victor Reiter, you thought it
improbable?

Waters: I was somewhat surprised, yes, but perhaps that was because I was
interpreting the idea too literally. The people interested in

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gardening who founded the RHS included some of the wealthiest
industrialists, people such as John Wedgwood of the famous pottery
family, who is regarded as the founder, and his friends, Sir
Joseph Banks and other titled people. The connection ran through
the landowners and aristocracy in the country, people who set the
fashion, and who were imitated by the envious, and eventually by
the country at large. They said essentially, Gardening is the
thing, and everybody who possibly could did it. That's why
gardening has this reputation even now in Britain.

But here, although Jefferson and others had estates and made
gardens, there never has been titled aristocracy and their
trendsetting example.

Riess: Even the Garden Club of America?

Waters: It has certainly contributed to gardening's popularity, but the
difficulty here, of course, is that being such a vast territory,
it's almost impossible to establish a manner of gardening that is
applicable to the whole country.

It just isn't feasible to write as Thomas Andrew Knight
(1759-1838) did in the early days of the RHS, on fruit,
recommending the varieties that do best. Of course, his
recommendations wouldn't apply necessarily in Scotland, but would
apply over a sufficiently large area of the country for Mr. Knight
to become widely read and influential. Knight was a wealthy
landowner and experimentalist in horticultural and agricultural
crops, and in animal husbandry. He was the second president of
the RHS.

Riess: There is an effort at Strybing to have social San Francisco as
patrons, kind of blessing the garden shows.

Waters: Well, the garden shows you're speaking of, the San Francisco
Landscape Design shows at Fort Mason, were once sponsored by
Friends of San Francisco Parks and Recreation. The shows are now
run commercially, with the Friends benefitting financially from
the opening gala party.

Riess: I sense that they, the Strybing Arboretum Society and the Friends
of Recreation and Parks, aspire to bring in names, more so than
Cal Hort.

Waters: Oh, yes. There's a very good reason for that too, of course.

I'm not quite sure how they title these things, but as the
city support for parks and the arboretum has tended to be
withdrawn, the Strybing Arboretum Society and the Friends of

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Riess :

Recreation and Parks have been obliged to woo moneyed people in
order to raise funds to meet their objectives and obligations.

What I'm getting at is that the people who founded the RHS
were taking the initiative. They weren't wooed by a group who
were saying, "We've got to keep this arboretum going come hell or
high water, and only with your help can we do it." That's a
totally different situation. These people come and do good work,
and are somewhat flattered to be invited to sit on such a board.

I think some of the people who come to the board of the
Pacific Horticultural Foundation are also flattered. I don't
know. But certainly the board of the Pacific Horticultural
Foundation has never been, except in a few rare instances, of
great financial help to it. But that's the motive for the
Strybing Society to recruit the well-to-do, because they may make
large donations, and somehow they've got to find the money.
Horticulture is labor-intensive, you just can't maintain an
arboretum without hiring staff and paying them reasonably well so
that they will stay with you. So that's an expensive operation.

So, there is perhaps more cachet in belonging to one group than
another? But when I occasionally attend California Horticultural
Society events, it seems like there is a hierarchy there of
insider information.

Speaking for the Greenhorns ##

Waters: [responding to Riess 's remarks off-tape about feeling peripheral
at CHS meetings] California Horticultural Society—that ' s a group
where earnest gardeners discuss gardening earnestly. Is that what
you mean?

Riess: Well, yes, it's like joining an exercise class that everyone else
has been in for a long time.

Waters: In many cases, of course, they are professional gardeners,

nurserymen, and people who work, for example, as horticulturists
in the arboretum.

Riess: I feel the suffering fools gladly thing.

Waters: Ah, I see, yes. That would make people who were not so well

versed in the game feel self-conscious, wouldn't it? And if they
were also not only self-conscious but also sensitive, then they
wouldn't be able to endure it for long. That's true.

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Riess :

Waters :

Riess:
Waters:

Riess:

Waters:

I don't know how you get around that. It's true of almost
anybody going into any organization, isn't it? "I'm a greenhorn,
what do I do?" I know that Olive is extremely good in
organizations when she senses this is happening in speaking to
newcomers, and she believes as soon as it's possible, to actually
offer them a job to do. I think that's the way. But a majority
of organizations don't do it. I think probably it's even worse in
Britain than it is in the U.S., because of British reticence.

Did I mention an incident in connection with an iris show I
was helping with once? The show had been set out in the hall, the
doors were open, the public were invited in. And then lo and
behold, the public did come in. A young couple no one had ever
seen before started wandering around, gazing at the irises, wide-
eyed in amazement.

And a small group, including the society president and
myself, muttered to themselves, "Look, there "re some visitors."
And someone said, "Should we talk to them?" The president said,
"Oh, no, no. If they want to know anything, they'll ask."
[laughter] And they went on chatting among themselves. And of
course, the visitors walked out and didn't say a damn thing. They
wouldn't have asked, because they felt too shy.

I think that in this country, in America, most people have
come to realize that if there is any initiative to be taken, it
should be taken by the people whose event it is, not by the
visitor. But at least it had yet to seep through in Britain at
that time.

Yes, it's much like a church—certainly it is the responsibility
of the church to shake the hand of the newcomer.

Yes, that's right. And sometimes they have a hospitality
committee whose job it is to welcome these people. But in
Britain, if you mention the words "hospitality committee," there
would be guffaws, I'm sure. [laughter]

Well, and we can laugh, but!

But you're right, it is needed. In my experience, even with
someone dedicated to the task, it's seldom sufficient. A lot of
people get away, as it were—slip between the cracks, is the
phrase—who might become good members, but there it is.

Yes, well.

"Nowt queerer than folks," is the old saying, isn't it?

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Riess:
Waters:

What did you say?

The old Yorkshire saying is "Nowt queerer than folks "--you can't
cope with all the varieties of people that there are.

Practical Writing Tips

Riess:

Waters ;
Riess :

Waters :

You sent me a collection of copies of letters you wrote nursing
along would-be writers. I'd like to use some of these in the oral
history as appendices. Do you think that would be awkward?

Oh, no. I guess it's all right.

They are interesting because they answer the question of how you
did it, how you acted as an editor.

But what I have not asked was what you relied upon in the
beginning, like usage manuals or any sort of how-to models?

Well, certainly the editing for me was difficult. That's one
reason why, for example, Nora came on board, and I think we did
discuss her. She was a great help.

Writing and editing aren't the same thing, of course.
Editing, what you're largely concerned about is being consistent,
making sure, for example, punctuation is used in the same way
throughout the publication. Otherwise, people get confused. And
writing, of course, is a matter of ideas, and as far as possible,
originality.

I think I mentioned that getting involved in debates earlier
on—that means to say street-corner discussions very often,
arguments of a political kind or a sociological kind- -that there
must have been a process of training going on. As you know, I
didn't get that kind of thing out of a university. I'm not quite
sure whether that was an advantage or not, but I do regret it,
frankly. Because from what I know of university life, there's an
enormous amount of debate goes on, mostly outside the classroom or
lecture hall. But it must be an enormously stimulating
environment. So for better or worse, I got that on the street, so
to speak.

I suspect that's what's showing up in my writing—mental
agility, perhaps. A lot of the reading I tried to do to equip
myself for those debates early on forced me to think very
seriously. I was dealing with ideas which were often difficult to

152

comprehend. For example, Karl Marx is not an easy man to read,
but I did feel that I had to read it and try to understand it.
Mostly I was influenced by William Morris—especially his News
from Nowhere and Dream of John Ball. But also by Sidney and
Beatrice Webb, George Orwell, Bernard Shaw, and others.

And I was also, I think at the same time, trying to
understand why it was that some people's writing was easier than
that of others to read. That they expressed themselves, generally
speaking, more lucidly. So that was perhaps a part of the
process .

Riess: One of the manners in which you speak, I don't know what it comes
from and I don't know whether it applies to you as a writer or an
editor, is that you often cast something as a question, or you
often say something followed by, Don't you think? That's not an
American thing to do. I wonder how that applies here. I assume
it's genuine, that it's a respect for the other person's opinion?

Waters: I do think that I listen to the people I am talking with. I'm not
just leading off, I'm trying to understand their point of view,
and if necessary to point my contribution to the discussion in
their direction.

Riess: That's a good debating technique, or at least a way of controlling
both sides of the issue?

Waters: Well, what I mean is that in answering, that I am actually

responding to the point they made, when I say "point it in their
direction." I'm not ignoring it. This is an attempt to explain
what I mean. And I think the process of listening to your
companion is part of being respectful. It's the greatest respect.

Riess: I'm wondering how this would help you as an editor, and perhaps
even as a reader. You are more engaged in what they're actually
trying to say rather than having it match your preconception of
what they should be saying.

Waters: Of what I've supposed they've said.

I advise people that they should read good authors in order
to become good writers. If they want to improve, that's the way
to do it. And that they should read with one eye on what is being
said and the other one on how it's being said, as it were. As
though the eyes could do two jobs at once. But that was just a
figure of speech to convey that one should read critically.

153

Waters: I also often mention Quiller-Couch on the art of writing. He

usually signed himself "Q," and said in Victorian language what
Strunk & White said in our day. "Q" advised us to think of the
reader, not just with the head, but with the heart as well. He
means that the writer should try to feel every difficulty a reader
might feel in understanding. After all, the writer is familiar
with the ideas expressed, but readers may be coming to them for
the first time.

George Orwell helps with the mechanics of this process in
the essay "Politics and the English Language." He urges writers
to ask after each sentence, does it say exactly what I intend;
and, can it be expressed in fewer words?

Waters: And then the other kind of advice is here [referring to letters].
I came across a page where I'm advising somebody against the
didactic tone, which people are inclined to adopt when writing
about gardening: "Do this, do that, and do the other," which I
thought was horrible. [laughs] This was a time when the
botanical garden at the University of British Columbia, their
friends group, came aboard Pacific Horticulture. They used to
publish a fine newsletter called Davidsonia, and they decided that
it would be more effective and economical to drop that and
distribute Pacific Horticulture to their members instead.

[refers to a letter] I began by thanking the prospective
contributor of an article that had formerly been published in
Davidsonia and suggesting that the subject, which was the use of
unusual plants in hanging baskets, would be welcome in Pacific
Horticulture .

But I venture to suggest that changes in treatment will
make the article more suitable for our readers. The
didactic tone should be removed as far as possible.
For example, the seventh paragraph on page 72 of
Davidsonia could be rewritten in some such way as this:
'Plants with leaves that have bold and clearly defined
patterns of variegation look cleaner and crisper from a
distance than those with vague and soft changes in
color.1 You thus avoid telling readers what they
should choose.

And on page 74, it should be sufficient to explain the
dangers from drying winds without saying, "A windy site
should be avoided.1 Your readers are flattered when,
within reason, you take for granted their ability to

154

Riess:

Waters :

see simple solutions once you have laid out the
problem. "

I invariably felt that there are certain tones in writing
that readers are flattered by, and part of that is the assumption
that they don't have to have things rammed down their throat.

While it's not relevant here, there was one particular man
in Britain who wanted desperately to write for me. He was
employed at Kew as a horticulturist. He came to California, and I
spent a whole day taking him around to botanic gardens and places
like that, and all the time we were in the car, he was quizzing me
closely about what he should do to write for Pacific Horticulture.

Eventually, he sent me some manuscripts, and they were so
detailed in their explanation of even the most mundane events that
it was utterly tedious. I wrote back to him, pointing out that he
could leave much more to the reader's imagination, and would get
their sympathy by virtue of the fact that you were allowing their
imagination to work for you, and flattering the reader by implying
that they had an imagination, and that this excruciating detail
could largely be ignored. I never heard from him again.

[resumes reading]

In going over your article, you will also find places
where the didactic style lengthens sentences
unnecessarily and gives them a tone unattractive to
sophisticated readers. Phrases like, 'It should be
kept in mind that,1 and 'Various factors should be
taken into consideration.1 These add nothing to your
message and are best avoided.

And so on and so forth.

It was a necessary part of the process because few
professional writers were available to a publication that didn't
pay. And in any case, most of these are people engaged in
gardening, and they do have something to say. It was largely a
matter of getting them to say it in a way that people would want
to read. That was a tough process.

It can be hard to be critical in a good way, I think, and not
stoop to sarcasm.

Teachers tend to do it, don't they? University professors, I
think, are often criticized for that kind of thing, because
they've got an audience as well as a victim.

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Riess:

Waters ;

Riess:
Waters :

Riess:
Waters :

Did you find yourself writing and rewriting your letters to your
authors?

I used to think very carefully about them, and yes, I tried to be
scrupulous. I think that you can forgive a lot that is carelessly
spoken, but once it's put down on paper it should be as close to
the actual fact as possible. "Is this precisely what I want to
say?"

Yes, I find myself slipping into carelessness occasionally,
and only by going back and saying, Is this it?--at the time of
first writing it isn't obvious, that carelessness. You think
you're being quick and smart.

Yes, the quick and smart thing. I think that's very much it.

Yes, and only by going back to it is it recognizable. Even just
an hour later, you've calmed down a little, and the excitement of
creation—and there is some excitement even in a letter like this,
there's a certain excitement attached to it. That excitement
perhaps blinds you to these things, but after an hour or so-
longer is better, but you often haven't got longer, you've got to
get the damn thing off—you can spot those things and get rid of
them.

That's why I find the computer transformed my writing. It's
so easy to delete and replace things. It's much more difficult
with a piece of paper, because the writing is such a scribble.

It didn't transform how you wrote, but it's the ease?

That's right. Well, I think it transformed the way, also, to some
extent. Because it was easier, I was more inclined to do it. So
it did help, yes. I suspect that a lot of my old original
handwritten letters would make me cringe if I saw them again, but
fortunately, they're gone. [laughing]

Decisions in Making Up an Issue of the Journal

Riess: I looked at the index to Pacific Horticulture yesterday to see who
your main contributors were over the years. You were writing a
lot of the pieces.

Waters: Elizabeth too.

Riess: Yes, but you, far and away the mos:, and not just editorial pieces,

156

Waters: Articles as well, yes. That's right.

Riess: Did you keep a backlog of articles in the event the issue would be
short?

Waters: I tried to. My problem was always that when I saw something good
coming along, even if it had just arrived, I would think, God, I
must use that right away! And displace things which I felt were
less good. So eventually, the backlog tended to consist of things
which I had set aside. [laughter] So it was kind of an awful
situation to arise, but I couldn't help it.

Riess: That could be awkward for an author who expected to see his piece.

Waters: Well, yes, one had to develop a protocol for dealing with these
things, and not to promise authors that their articles would
appear in certain issues. I very quickly disabused myself of
that. It was dangerous. Because even at the very last moment,
and for reasons that had nothing to do with quality, space would
not be there. If certain pictures were to be used, and they would
take up a certain amount of space and couldn't be made smaller
without losing impact or whatever, then something had to go.

And then it was decided — the decision was made purely on the
basis of how much excess text had to be removed. For example, if
we needed one page, then a one-page article would go, regardless
of what it was, because there was no other way of putting the
magazine together. There were so many things that affected it.
If somebody was ready to cough up $500 for advertising space, then
we were never so flush that we could resist that, and we would
throw out an article if necessary to make room for it.

There were all kinds of considerations, and it wasn't just a
matter of quality of writing.

Riess: Was there a seasonalness to the articles, a timeliness that you
had to pay attention to?

Waters: Not very much, frankly. I mean, we just didn't have the

flexibility to be entirely seasonal. I suppose in a way I would
have had to plan ahead much more than I did. I see that the new
editor is tending to devote issues to certain themes, rather than
to the seasons. People often commented on the fact that there
seemed to be a certain appropriateness in the articles assembled
in Pacific Horticulture. And I was often given credit for that.

Riess: Appropriateness in that they tied together—they made a package?
Waters: Yes, that's right.

157

Riess: But you think that's unconscious?

Waters: Not entirely, but certainly it was nothing that I felt that I was
in very great control of. If I was able to do it from time to
time, it was a happy accident, so to speak. But as to making
things seasonal, it would imply having an autumn issue--.

Riess: They're called "fall," "winter," "spring," and "summer."

Waters: That's right. That's only to stop them all crunching up together
and coming out all in the beginning of the year. [laughter]
"Now, this one will have to be later." I mean, we couldn't pay
the printer otherwise.

So no, a deliberately fall issue would have articles about
planting bulbs and things like that, and that wasn't our style
anyway. But if I did have an article on bulbs, which were to be
planted in the fall, then I would try to get it into a fall issue,
that's true, yes. But occasionally, it didn't work.

Personality, and Pat Talbert ' s Pieces

Waters: I felt that a small magazine like Pacific Horticulture requires a
certain personality, and I felt that it was the editor's job to
provide that, because he, after all, was on the payroll, and he
was the only one there who could give it any consistency of tone.
I felt that we were not in the situation of a big publication, the
staff of which tends to be somewhat anonymous. And that's, of
course, corporate policy, because they know they're going to lose
people from time to time. But we don't have that. The editor is
all we have, so we've got to sort of hang him out to show him, and
let people see that what's in here is his fault—or, if you like
it, well, then some credit is due.

I don't think a small magazine can survive very long without
some kind of personality or character. So that was one of the
reasons. And in fact, over the years, I did deliberately set out
to write more and more, for that reason. I felt that people were
likely to stay with this thing because of some character they see
and enjoy in it.

Riess: You wouldn't print something that you weren't engaged by, just
assuming that other people would find it interesting?

Waters: I found that some of the things that I did not like myself too
much did appeal to the readers. So I was always—yes, I was

158

Riess:

Waters;

Riess:
Waters:
Riess :

Waters :

Riess :
Waters

Riess:

inclined to welcome the things that I enjoyed, and largely that
was it, but occasionally I had to pinch myself and say, "George,
perhaps the readers would like this." So there was a kind of
dichotomy there.

And what would be the difference?
category of article?

What is this kind of middle

Well, one of the things that I was won round to came from Pat
Talbert, in Oakland, who was writing way back. When she first
sent me something, I was a little dismayed. And in the end,
however, I did see something in what she was doing.

She was writing as a raw beginner. "Easily Grown in Any
Soil," I think was the title of her first piece. You know, the
phrase you see on the back of seed packets all the time: "Easily
Grown in Any Soil." She started from that point, and I thought,
Well, this is about as far from Pacific Horticulture as you can
get. But on the other hand, I had to admit that there was truth
there and charm in her expression of it. But her style was a bit
off the wall—is that the phrase?

Yes.

"Anything goes."

Yes, but that's often used positively, actually, "off the wall,"
to mean creative and original.

Well, that's true, but this bordered on the ungrammatical,
incomplete sentences and things like that, which a lot of modern
writers seem to find acceptable, but I could never swallow.

When it means an incomplete thought, yes.

That's what I felt it was, yes. Or perhaps just the overuse of
periods. [laughing] Sort of scattering them about like pepper on
the page.

Anyway, in the end we got this thing in a shape that Pat and
I agreed on, and published it, and it created quite a stir. I got
a lot of good response to it, readers commented favorably on it.
And she wrote several articles. There was always an element of
misgiving in me, but I had to acknowledge that she had talent.

How you decided whether or not to publish those pieces brings up
my feeling of in-groupiness in horticultural groups. The question
is whether the journal wants to educate a new population, as for
instance Sunset magazine does, or not.

159

Waters;

Waters :

Riess:

Waters :

Riess:

Waters;

Well, you're right,
journal.

ii

It's why so many people tend to call it a

It ' s been something of a struggle to try to present the thing as a
magazine rather than as a journal, and as something that almost
anyone would enjoy, rather than a scholarly thing that is simply
there to record the thoughts of the great.

I suppose one of its difficulties is that it's got a foot in
both camps, and whilst you're trying to place on record some of
the horticultural wisdom of professionals, you can't easily create
from that a magazine that is going to have wide popularity,
because so far as I can see, the magazines that are most popular
are the ones tending to appeal to nonreaders . You know, Let's
make things short and sweet and get to the point, and move on to
something else. Whereas, if you're going to dig deeply into
horticulture, then you've got to work at it a bit, haven't you?

Yes, you're right, it does talk to that. I was striving for
a balance that would have something in each issue for both kinds
of readers: weighty stuff for those in need of it, and something
lighter that provides easy reading. After all, the distinction
isn't always between one kind of reader and another, but also
between the moods and needs of one reader at different times. I
was in the end, I think, grateful to Pat Talbert for providing
some of that balance. But she moved on to something else.

I wonder how many of your readers keep back issues.

Well, someone who is moving house, probably going into a
retirement community, called, and only yesterday delivered to my
front door a complete run from Number One onward. So they had
obviously kept them. They were going to a smaller place and have
no space for them any more, but didn't want to see them go to the
scrap heap.

Your doing an index—there was some demand for that?3

Oh, yes. We occasionally get requests for back issues from people
who want to have a complete run. Not always libraries, sometimes
private readers. Someone who had a fire in their house and lost a
lot of copies wrote almost tearfully to say, "I've got to replace

^Pacific Horticulture Index, 1976-1995, compiled by Joan Citron and
Joan DeFato, Published by the Pacific Horticultural Foundation.

160

these somehow, please let me know." And >o on. It happens from
time to time. So a good number of people keep them, yes.

During a gardening life, interests change. They find
suddenly that they've become enthusiastic about plants that at one
time they never knew about at all, and so they want to go back to
see what the publication has said about those plants. Because
unlike many other gardening magazines, we don't start again going
over basic subjects every four years. It may be that they've got
to go right back to the beginning, the earliest issues of Pacific
Horticulture,

Some of the best stuff that was written on bamboos was in
the second or third issue in Pacific Horticulture. There have
been subsequent articles on bamboos, but of a totally different
kind. The first one discussed them almost ecologically, about the
tendency for bamboos of a certain species to flower all at once
around the world. It's a strange phenomenon. That was gone into
in the early articles, but only mentioned subsequently in passing.
But over the years, those three or four articles would represent
quite a substantial body of material on bamboos. I think that's
probably why people save them.

The Armchair Gardener

Riess: There is so much published garden writing. I wonder, can one get
as much pleasure reading about gardening as doing it? For
instance, the book I am reading by Allen Lacy on gardening and the
senses, and Katharine White's classic writing about the pleasure
of reading garden catalogues.'1

Waters: Yes, I think gardening has attracted some very good writers, in
this country especially, recently. From Eleanor Perenyi and
Katharine White--.

Riess: Eleanor Perenyi? I don't know her.

Waters: I know of only one book by her, it's called Green Thoughts: A

Writer in the Garden.5 She has written on other subjects and is a

""Inviting Garden: Gardening for the Senses, Mind, and Spirit, by Allen
Lacy, Henry Holt, 1998; Onward and Upward in the Garden, by Katharine S.
White, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979.

5Random House, 1981.

161

much-traveled and highly opinionated gardener. But aren't the
writers on gardening we enjoy most invariably opinionated?

And of course, before them there was Elizabeth Lawrence,
down in North Carolina, an extraordinary writer. Some of her
writing was reprinted recently. Allen Lacy got a university press
there to reprint a collection of her newsletter contributions,
which he edited for them.6 Among those chapters from Elizabeth
Lawrence is some of the most moving writing about gardening I've
ever read.

Literature on gardens in Britain in the 18th century
includes some really weighty arguments. They were debating, vis
a-vis the garden, the very nature of beauty itself: sublime versus
the beautiful, definition of taste. The writing is wordy, of
course, because that was the style of the time, but it really is
marvelous stuff. Humphry Repton, Richard Payne-Knight, William
Gilpin, Uvedale Price were some of the main contributors.

Riess: When did you become acquainted with that writing?

Waters: When I became interested in the Garden History Society. I was
marginally aware of it before, but once I was involved with the
society I organized a slide lecture which we mailed around the
country to people who used them in lectures to help publicize the
society. I just had to get steeped in the literature at that
point.

Riess: Now that you have stepped down from editing Pacific Horticulture
you must have more time for reading whatever you want. What are
you reading these days?

Waters: Oh, after so much obligatory reading about gardening, I'm going
through a period of literary gluttony, of reading most anything
and everything that catches my fancy. And my fancy runs from Dick
Francis' mysteries to Eric Auerbach's philosophy, via Frederick
Hackwood's history of brewing beer.7 And there's Stallworthy, the
editor of a book of love poetry.

'Gardening for Love, The Market Bulletins, by Elizabeth Lawrence,
edited by Allen Lacy, Duke University Press, 1987.

7Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature, Princeton University Press, 1968. Dick Francis, Come to Grief,
Putnam, 1995. Frederick Hackwood, Inns, Ales, and Drinking Customs in Old
England, Studio Editions, 1985. A Book of Love Poetry, edited by Jon
Stallworthy, Oxford University Press, 1974.

162

Riess: An anthology?

Waters: An anthology, yes. An extraordinary collection from Catullus to
Cummings. I have been trying to compile from memory a list of
recent books that I have read, and I'll send you a page from that
list. You'll get some idea from it.8

Riess: Are you getting ready to write something?

Waters: No, not really. I don't know whether I've got the staying power
for a book. I just don't think I have.

Riess: Would it appeal to you to put together all of your articles from
Pacific Horticulture!

Waters: Well, it was suggested to me, as a matter of fact. One of the

people who suggested it gave me the name of a woman who is acting
as an agent for garden writers, such as Allen Lacy. I sent her a
few pages, and I haven't heard a word since, so I kind of have a
feeling that it probably wouldn't go down. There isn't enough
substance there.

Riess: I know that one of your other interests is chamber music and

choral literature. Do you think it is possible to get the kind of
enjoyment reading about music as actually making music and going
to performances? Like with the garden reading.

Waters: I've enjoyed some biographies. Berlioz, for example, was a superb
writer as well as being a composer. His memoirs are quite
wonderful reading. He writes as a music critic, I suppose, but
his stories about trying to get performances of his own work in
Europe at the time that he was writing are absolutely hilarious,
sometimes excruciatingly painful. And there was a wonderful
biography of Edward Elgar which I read recently.

On the other hand, one of my favorite singers, Janet Baker,
wrote an autobiographical memoir, I suppose you'd call it, Full
Circle, and I was disappointed in that. I would have liked a
broader view of the music world. And likewise, I was disappointed
with Daniel Barenboim's memoir, too. It was terribly stiff and
uninf ormative . 9

8See Appendices.

The Memoirs of Berlioz, David Cairns, Trans., Panther, 1970. Jerrold
Northrop Moore, Edward Elgar: A Creative Life, Oxford University Press,
1984. Janet Baker, Full Circle, A Journal, Julia MacRae, 1982. Daniel
Barenboim: A Life in Music, edited by Michael Lewin, Scribner's, 1992.

163

Riess: So it in no way gives you the pleasure that music gives you.
Waters: Oh, no, no.

Riess: Whereas reading about gardening, you can really get your hands
into it.

Waters: Well, I'm so much on the fringes of music—a professional musician
might pick up some of the other literature, I mean the more
esoteric stuff maybe. I imagine a real musician would pick up a
technical book on composition and get a hell of a kick out of it.
In the same way, a well written book on gardens or gardening can
carry me away.

A Note on a Trend

Waters: You made a point earlier that I'd like to pick up. Talking about
the interviews I did with gardeners, Marcia Donohue, for example,
and several others, in Pacific Horticulture. You remarked on the
nature of their gardens, the fact that they were almost theatrical
in their decoration. And you pressed me on whether this
represented a style in gardening, and by implication, whether
Pacific Horticulture was pushing this as a style. I guess I was
evasive, because I certainly wasn't pushing anything, and I wasn't
quite sure now why I picked on those people. I think that I chose
them simply because in meeting them I found they had something to
say.

But since then, and looking at reports in the RHS journal, a
magazine called The Garden, I find similar tendencies in many of
the garden displays at Chelsea Show these days. They also contain
all kinds of weird and wonderful things that I'm sure were never
present at the shows when I began going to them in the fifties.
So possibly there is a style of gardening evolving, particularly
in small gardens.

Small gardens do present special problems that you don't
have in a large one. A garden you can walk about in provides such
a variety of plants and changes of vista by turning the path this
way and that. But if you have a very small yard, then how are you
going to get the interest into it? And one way, of course, is to
include outrageous things, unexpected things.

One of my interviews—with a man in Oakland— he had
decorated the roof line of his garden shed with mannequin legs.
You know, the things used in store window display? (Perhaps they

164

don't show up in the photographs used with the article.) And they
occur elsewhere in the garden. Legs are almost a theme. I don't
think that I've seen anything quite like that in the pictures of
Chelsea Show recently, but quite close, quite close. Quite
outrageous things.

Chelsea in the fifties and sixties was plants, generally
speaking. There were displays from people who were offering
garden chairs, for example. Sometimes they were canvas garden
chairs with striped material which was almost gaudy, but the show
on the whole was sedate, and the emphasis was on plants.

But nowadays, it's quite different. The gardens on display
in the early Chelseas were almost always rock gardens on what was
known as the bank, which was invariably assigned to rock gardens,
and they were beautifully realistic scenes, except that you knew
that the plants in them were garden plants, they weren't wild
plants. But the rock work was a lesson in geology: the laminae
were perfectly arranged to look as though they occurred there
naturally, not placed on the bank overnight. But I think those
displays, the rock garden displays, are almost entirely gone from
the show.

And in the rest of the displays, the plants would be the
thing, and there were superb collections of rarities--in many
cases rarities. But nowadays, the photographs show display
gardens similar to some of those I photographed for Pacific
Horticulture, with odd things sticking up here and there. So
clearly, there is a trend, and I suspect it has to do with the
freedom that people are feeling in creating gardens for themselves
in small spaces, and the need to make them exciting, without the
opportunity of directing people through acres of landscape.

George and Olive Waters ' Garden in Berkeley

Riess: What about your own garden?

Waters: I'm afraid there isn't really much to say there. My attention was
so taken up with the magazine that the garden was somewhat
neglected. In fact, the fire mar shall came around on one occasion
and said, "You know, you really have to cut those weeds down.
They represent a hazard." [laughs]

Riess: Have you lived on Napa Avenue since you first arrived in Berkeley?
Waters: Yes.

165

Riess: Did Olive have a garden there already?

Waters: Yes, that's right, it's the same garden, the same piece of land,
anyway. It has changed. It kind of sloped off, and there was at
one point a bank that had some rocky steps, which were somewhat
hazardous I suspect. Difficult to negotiate. So we got in a
contractor who made three terraces out of it, so that we had three
levels instead of an indefinite slope going this way or that.

There was a concrete pool, the inevitable kidney-shaped
pool, from a previous owner, which was leaking, and nothing could
be done to stop it leaking, so that was taken away. A simple
design was adopted that is vaguely reminiscent of a traditional
Persian garden with Mediterranean plants: paths crossed at the
center, and the center devoted to a--well, if it had been more of
a Mughal garden, it would have been an eight-sided pool, and this
might have become an eight-sided pool one day, but Pacific
Horticulture got in the way.

Riess: A Mughal garden?

Waters: Yes, according to Sylvia Crowe and Sheila Haywood, in The Gardens
of Mughal India,10 the octagon reconciles the material (square)
with the spiritual (circle) aspects of life, and the shape is used
in garden pools and other aspects of design.

So this was almost a barely recognizable gesture towards the
Middle Eastern origins of Western gardening. But because of the
existence of a sort of garage building, and various other oddities
in the way, one had to make compromises. So one of the paths is
not at right angles to the others.

Riess: After you got that structure organized, what did you plant?

Waters: Olive's passion for irises means that most of the planting space
became devoted to bearded irises. But there are a few other
things there.

There is a dissected leaf Japanese maple, which sits on the
middle terrace and has made a cascade of foliage down to the lower
one, which is quite a triumph. And beneath that, a little
variegated leaf begonia in the shade of it, which normally is
grown in a pot indoors, but flourishes outdoors and makes quite a
marvelous ground cover.

10Thames and Hudson, 1972.

166

And against the wall of the garage- -which is no ' -nger a
garage, it's just a place where the gardening tools are kept-
there 's lapageria rosea, the climbing bellf lower from Chile. It
has those wonderful waxy tubular flowers. It almost feels like
you're rubbing polyethylene—they're so thick and waxy, it's quite
unreal. If you rub two flowers together, they actually squeak,
[laughs] That gives you some idea of the substance and texture of
them.

And what else is there? Oh, there's an arbor which is
almost completely smothered with "New Dawn" rose.

Riess: Is the whole thing under redwood trees?

Waters: Well, there are a couple of them—they are neighbors' redwood
trees. Being such a small city garden, you can't escape the
effect of neighbors. These were almost certainly just chance
seedlings which took over, and when they reached a point of some
size, as they did in the seventies — and that was a period when
trees were being hugged by almost everybody, if you remember, so
nobody would dream of cutting them down— by the time people
thought they were getting too large, they were almost too big to
cut down. It would cost thousands of dollars to take them out.
They have become much larger, and now cast such a shadow on the
garden that it's sometimes difficult to get irises even to come to
flower any more. So it's quite serious.

Riess: And where are the weeds?

Waters: Oh, they've gone now. The fire marshall's words had a salutary
effect. I used a technique which a number of people have found
successful whereby you cover all the bare ground with three or
four layers of newspaper, and keep it in place by covering it with
wood chip mulch.

II

Waters: Which has the effect of making the newspaper ground cover less
unsightly.

Riess: Then the newspaper-
Waters: --rots away. But by that time, most of the weeds have been
smothered, so the garden is under control again.

Riess: One thing about Cal Hort meetings is all the fine plants that are
offered. People must like to press plants upon you.

167

Waters: One brings them home now and again. I get much more fun in
raising plants from seed, so I amuse myself that way.

Riess: Do you have a cold frame and all that sort of thing?

Waters: No, no, I just protect them from too much rain, things like that.
But no, I've raised irises, pulsatillas and alliums and all kinds
of odd things from seed. They don't always flourish, but it's fun
just getting them into flower. Nowadays I'm raising Japanese
maples from seed, just in hope of finding something out of the
ordinary.

Riess: Do you use your garden as an outdoor studio for your photography?

Waters: Oh, well, incidentally. I don't plant it especially for that. I
have photographed things that have then been used in Pacific
Horticulture, yes. But no, not deliberately. Some people have
made gardens of acres for that purpose, and no doubt made a good
living out of it.

Riess: When you were talking about smaller gardens, you referred to

"yard" rather than garden. Do you have a feeling about the word
"yard"?

Waters: [laughs] Now, that's an Americanism, isn't it?
Riess: Yes.

Waters: I think that the word "yard" took off in America because of some
sort of egalitarian instinct which discourages the use of high-
sounding words like "gardens", don't you think?

Riess: Yes, back yard, front yard--yes, that's right.

Waters: Of course, it was also a farming term, a legitimate farming term,
to describe a part of the territory adjoining the house usually,
where the tools were kept and maybe a few vegetables were grown.
A rather loose term. But yes, I find myself doing it because it's
in such common use .

Riess: Would it have been used in the magazine, the word "yard"?

Waters: I wonder if it ever has? I would have looked earnestly if I had
seen it. I would have been forced to ask why the word "yard" was
being used rather than "garden", and whether a distinction could
be established which would justify using "yard" instead of
"garden". But I don't think I've ever been confronted with that.

168

The Difference a Good Photograph Makes

Riess: When you took on the editorship, what were the standards of

photography in the magazine under Owen? Black and white mostly?

Waters: Yes, it was mostly black and white. Owen was a good photographer.
Riess: And the photography was part of his job as editor?

Waters: As editor, yes. The pages were smaller then, and all pictures

tended to fit within one page. The photography was never quite as
significant, by virtue of the fact that the printing process
wasn't exploited as fully as it now is.

For example, I tended to push my printer to use the finest
dot screen possible in order to get the best detail in pictures.
It's much easier for the printer with a coarse-dot screen, because
with the finer screens there's always a possibility that the ink
will merge them and make a blotchy effect.

And each picture, as I say, was fitted into one page. In
Pacific Horticulture we sometimes pulled them across two pages. I
don't think that in the old journal, it ever was attempted. With
the switch, the pictures became more significant, and probably
more numerous, because we had more pages, and they were larger
pages, and some pictures were in color. So photography became
more significant with the new layout. I don't think Owen was
forced to think about illustrations quite as much.

Riess: In the old layout, it's more like you know there's a picture there
but it's not the first thing you look at.

Waters: Doesn't catch the attention, that's right. One of the reasons for
the change to larger pages, in the end, was to make use of color.
Larger pictures have impact, of course.

Riess: How was it handled with any given article? Some of your authors
must have sent photographs along with their articles.

Waters: Yes.

Riess: Was that a sensitive thing? Did you have to re-photograph?

Waters: Oh, yes, and again, as with the text, I sometimes wrote

photographic critiques as well, pointing out why pictures were not
satisfactory, encouraging them in some cases to try again, and
sometimes they did. And sometimes there was an improvement. And

169

of course, inevitably my advice was, first of all, Use a tripod,
for god's sake! Use a tripod to make use of smaller apertures.

Riess: Would it make the difference in an article being accepted?

Waters: Oh, sometimes, yes, if good photographs weren't available. As a
matter of fact, I got around to sending a manuscript back only
recently that had got lodged in my files from a while ago. I had
felt that the subject was good and the treatment not too bad, but
we just had to have better pictures to illustrate it, and those
pictures never did turn up. I think partly because what was being
described was not widely practiced: the idea of growing climbers
up into trees, making use of a tree that may once have served a
purpose, but now needed a new role in the garden.

In Britain, you can find gardens where superb things have
been done with great Himalayan roses which vault into trees up to
a hundred feet high. So to try to illustrate the subject with a
little twist of ivy just beginning to embrace the branch of a
tree—you couldn't take it seriously, could you?

Riess: No, you couldn't. And ivy—please!

Waters: That's right. So yes, articles sometimes were rejected because
pictures weren't available.

Riess: Did you have some kind of a photo bank? Photographs from people
like me, who might send them off to the editor saying, "Here, you
can have this, use it any time at all."

Waters: Oh, that did happen, but it's problematic. First of all, I was
invariably starting with a manuscript, and then looked for
pictures to illustrate it.

During the search I sometimes contacted those who had
offered pictures and said, "Here, I have a manuscript, I want a
picture of this plant and that." But then they couldn't oblige,
because that didn't happen to be the picture they had taken. And
if I encouraged them to go out and get it, it was rarely possible.
They just weren't prepared to go to those lengths, sometimes
because they didn't have the botanical knowledge to recognize the
plant I wanted, do you see.

The one person who did help, Saxon Holt, and who is now
quite well established in the horticultural field, came to me and
said, "Look, George, I've been doing commercial photography for
advertising"--people want their products photographed to go into
advertisements and so on, he had a studio in San Francisco--and he
said, "I'd much rather do garden photography."

170

Having warned him there wasn't much money in it, and
certainly not in Pacific Horticulture, he said, "Well, never mind.
I can see that the only way I can make the change is first of all
to get my stuff published." And I could see that he was a
competent photographer. He said, "I'll do whatever you want. I
admire the magazine. I'll go anywhere and take any pictures you
want . "

So that's what he did. He knew I wasn't going to pay him,
but at least he got published, he was getting experience, he was
finding out what was needed, and he did some splendid work. There
was an article on insectivorous plants once that he illustrated.
He went to a nursery where they raised insectivorous plants and
took some superb pictures.11 In fact, he used them in his
portfolio subsequently, because we printed them so well. And that
was another reason why photographers would like to come into
Pacific Horticulture: most other magazines use poorer paper, and
pictures don't look so good. But on good coated paper, they tend
to sparkle.

So he served us well and we served him well, because now
he's doing assignments for Sunset and Horticulture magazine, and
several books. He's published all over the place.

Filing Systems, and More on Photographing

Riess: I'm interested in your filing systems, especially for photographs.
Tell about the ingenious ways you have that allow you to lay your
hands on things when you want to?

Waters: [laughs] It is difficult. Saxon Holt, for example, now has an
assistant to look after that side for him. She has instructions
to send me whatever I want without question, and without billing.

But it is a problem, and I've talked to lots of other
photographers. They have great difficulty. Because in a garden
picture, there will be so many elements, but usually, in any
filing system, you can list a few but you can't list them all. It
would take forever. So there is no entirely satisfactory system.
Some get over it by just taking up with an agency, and the agency
takes on the problem, but takes 50 percent of the proceeds too.

"In, "Plants that Eat People," by Bob Hornback, Pacific Horticulture,
Winter 1994, p. 29.

171

But that's better than having your pictures lost in a file at
home, isn't it?

So far as the negatives are concerned, and the two-and-a-
quarter transparencies, I file those in envelopes by date, and
under the date I have the subject matter. So that relies very
heavily on memory, of course. Sometimes I can go so far as, Well,
that was late eighties, maybe '88 or '89, and go fairly quickly to
it. If I can only roughly say, Well, it was some time in the
eighties, then it takes longer, of course, because I have to go
through more envelopes.

Riess: So you haven't done the crossfiling.

Waters: No, but as far as the 35 mm. slides are concerned, and these are

more numerous, I have begun in the last two years to take them out
of their boxes, which are simply marked with date and subject
matter, in the cartons in which they come back from the processing
house, and sort them under subject headings of Plants, Landscapes,
People, and the landscapes including water, for example, and those
which contain significant lawn, and those which have historical
value, and so on. And cross-reference them that way. But it's a
long, tedious process, and I give a few hours to it every week.

Riess: Is this a kind of archive that's being handled well? Does the
Helen Crocker Russell Library keep an image bank, do you think?

Waters: I'm not sure. They do have some slides, and I have used them, but
their pictures are used in projectors a lot. And that, of course,
has a dreadful bleaching effect on slides. When they've been used
several times in a powerful projector, they fade very rapidly.
That makes them almost unusable for a good publisher who will be
very critical. So that's a bit difficult.

There are two horticultural archives that I know of. The
Smithsonian has set up a collection on historic gardens, and I
imagine that that would probably be a good place to send my garden
pictures ultimately. They've approached me several times. The
Garden Club of America is trying to coordinate this and direct the
stuff towards the Smithsonian. I think they may have inaugurated
the collection in the first place, I'm not sure.

But when they approached me and I pointed out that most of
my American garden pictures were on two-and-a-quarter square film,
and duplicating them was fairly costly--! actually got the best
quote I could for them from a firm in New York whose duplicating
work has been highly praised professionally as being the best in
the country- -they lost interest. I certainly couldn't part with

172

the originals, so that was that,
would be the place to send them.

But in the end, I suppose that

And then there's the Hunt Institute for Botanical
Documentation, at Carnegie Mellon University. I've been sending
them black-and-white prints from any portraits of
horticulturalists, botanists, landscape architects I happen to
encounter who will stand still for me for a minute.

Riess: Do you always have black-and-white film with you?

Waters: Yes. I have about five cameras of one kind or another, and one of
them is always loaded with black-and-white. With the two-and-a-
quarter camera I can switch film magazines from black-and-white to
color in moments.

Riess: Do you do your own lab work?

Waters: No. I have done from time to time, but not routinely.

Riess: Art nature photographers are so in love with the out-of- focus, the
sharp edge against the fuzzy background.

Waters: I think that has its place, doesn't it? I mean, for a portrait,

for example, it has its place. The problem sometimes I find is in
fact getting the background sufficiently out of focus. Because if
the fuzzy bit of background is just possibly recognizable, it will
take people's attention, [laughing) because the viewer immediately
wants to know what it is!

Riess: Anyway, there's art photography, and then there's Pacific
Horticulture photography.

Waters: I tried to maintain technical standards. I was, and still am,
very insistent on it myself, for my own work. And that doesn't
preclude the possibility of preferring good composition to bad.
Even technically good pictures can still be well composed. So
artistic standards aren't neglected necessarily.

Occasionally, I have printed pictures which have purely
artistic merit. I remember one close-up of a flower in which the
dewdrops were more prominent than the flower itself, simply
because I thought it was just a superb picture. It's not
characteristic really of the magazine at all. But an editor has
to have a few perks. [laughs]

173

Inside the Front Cover

Riess: Another tangent, why did you make the authors'
of contents genderless?

names in the table

Waters: That's right, I went to initials. Why did I?

I did it originally because that page, inside the front
cover where the masthead is--I thought the rest of the magazine
was very nicely designed, but that page was a mess. It was
crowded with all kinds of things. It remained a jumble for all
those years because I didn't want to adopt the style of so many
magazines whereby the masthead was moved onto one of the text
pages. I thought, We can't spare it. We're not printing enough
pages as it is, and to print more pages and use them up for that
just struck me as being a horrible proposition.

So all the miscellaneous information was crowded on the
inside front cover, along with the contents list, and sometimes by
giving the full names instead of just the initials, a contents
entry took an extra line and made it even more crowded. I
thought, We'll just put the initials here and save space that way.
Some authors only gave me their initials anyway. I thought, Well,
why don't we treat them all alike?

Riess:
Waters :
Riess :
Waters :

And one or two readers did protest, but--.
But you had a description of contributors in the back?
In the back, yes.
Always? You've always done that?

No, no, that came along later. What happened was that, adopting
from the old magazine, we used to have a byline with the name of
the author, and their town, the locality. After a while, that
made the magazine look far too parochial, because most of our
contributors were coming from the Bay Area, and we were trying to
sell this thing in Los Angeles and up in Seattle and so on. So I
thought, Well, we'll get rid of that byline and just have the
name.

Not that we were hiding their location, because it very
often occurred in the article anyway, but I saw no reason to make
an issue of it. The fact that they come from Orinda, say, is that

174

Riess :
Waters:

all that significant? It's what they have to say about the garden
that's significant.

And then because there was interest in who these people
were, we adopted the contributors column at the back, where they
could see exactly who it was they were reading. So that's how it
all evolved. And the use of initials in the contents column was
largely a matter of trying to reduce the crowding on that page.

When we got an award from the Association of Botanical
Gardens and Arboreta way back, the judges' comments were
overwhelming--! mean, I blushed to my very boots with the praise
that they lavished on the magazine—and the only point of
criticism was the inside cover. They said, "Marvelous, wonderful,
splendid, perfect, but oh my god, that inside cover!" And I
thought, What can I do?

One of Laurence Hyman's ideas was to use a screen, a 30
percent screen against the information on the left-hand side of
the inside cover, which we used for a number of years. Well, that
merely added to the feeling of crowding and eventually I dropped
it in favor of a single line down the page between the two
columns. I felt that helped a little.

But no, it was a pain for me to the very end. I never found
a solution to that problem, because those people--! mean, the
societies and their representatives on the board and so on deserve
some acknowledgement, they had to be there. By attrition, I got
rid of the names in the editorial advisory board. As they died
off, I just didn't replace them. It was all just an attempt to
somehow reduce the amount of type on the page.

That's interesting. So it was not a gender thing.

No, no, no. Anyway, it's genderless by virtue of necessity, and
that's a good thing, isn't it?

A Medal the Size of a Dinner Plate, 1990

Riess: Yes. The award from the American Association of Botanic Gardens
and Arboreta, is that an annual award?

Waters: They give a series of awards to their member societies. And a
certain kind of publication is chosen each year for the award.
For example, it might be a guidebook to an arboretum. It might be
an educational piece, or a newsletter, and so on.

175

The only occasion on which I've been aware that the award
was to go to a magazine [category] --we entered, but I suspect that
it was probably the only magazine that was entered anyway. I
can't think of any other member society of the AABGA that
publishes a magazine. So I don't know what the opposition was,
what the competition was. It was probably negligible, I would
say.

Riess: The Garden Club of America Sarah Francis Chapman Medal, was that
very significant?

Waters: Well, the Garden Club of America, oh yes, whatever they do is

significant. They know how to put things on. They know how to
stage an event.

The Pasadena Garden Club is a member organization of the
GCA, and they nominated Pacific Horticulture for the award.

Riess: Was there a financial award too?

Waters: Oh, no, it was just a citation and a medal, huge-- [gesturing]

about this size, like a dinner plate, huge. But they know how to
present an award so that the thing has meaning- -the setting, the
crystal chandeliers, the audience of thousands stretching as far
as the eye can see, in a hall in the Waldorf-Astoria.

Did you have to make a bit of a speech?

Oh, yes, good lord, yes.

What did you talk about?

Oh, I don't know. Can't remember now.

It's a platform. Were there drums you wanted to beat while you
had such a large audience?

Oh, yes, I probably—as far as I can remember, I talked about the
opportunity that California had provided me for producing a
magazine, which was a career I had never at any time in my life
previously contemplated. And then from that, the need for a
publication devoted to the special requirements for gardening on
the West Coast- -the reason for bringing it out in the first place,
of course.

Riess: The splendor of it all, that's when the Garden Club of America
begins to lock like the American equivalent of the RHS.

Riess:
Waters:
Riess:
Waters ;
Riess:

Waters:

176

Waters: Oh, yes. But the Garden Club of America--! 'm not sure what their
constitution says about objectives, but I suspect they weren't
quite the same as those of the RHS.

The Garden Writers Association

Riess: The Garden Writers Association of America, you were made a fellow
of that in 1989. That brings me to ask about the importance of
professional associations, your peer group of garden magazine
editors and writers, and what you might have gotten out of that.

Waters: I was involved with them [Garden Writers Association of America)
in about the mid-seventies--well, about the time the magazine was
launched. I suspect that what we did was to try to find
opportunities where we could take our new product and show it off.
The Garden Writers seemed an obvious place: here is another
magazine. Although, of course, it wasn't the kind of magazine
that most of them were interested in, because these people were
trying to get paid, and we weren't in a position for paying
people.

The situation was rather unusual. The Garden Writers
Association at that time was almost moribund. On the West Coast
at that time there was a fellow called Jim Wilson who was quite a
live wire. He was working, I think, for a seed company. He
decided that what the Garden Writers should be doing was
organizing symposia whereby we could get them together and talk
about professional needs and do a bit of educating and so on.

Wilson was in contact with a young couple, one of whom was
on the staff at Stanford. So they contrived to get one of the
lecture rooms at Stanford to hold this symposium. Emily Brown, a
member of the board of the Pacific Horticultural Foundation, was a
member of GWAA, and she took Olive and me along to that symposium.

There was a second symposium, also at Stanford, a year or
two later, and I was invited to give a talk. So I decided to talk
about writing, which seemed not a bad subject for garden writers.
I think I'd seen enough of newspaper columns on gardening to
realize that a talk on writing was not a bad idea. And really all
I did was essentially to rehash Strunk & White on the subject, and
throw in a few colorful examples of what I'd read and show how it
might be improved, and so on.

To illustrate the point, I explained that people looked for
guidance to the most-read literature of the time, which was

177

political speeches and advertising. I held them up as poor
examples of the use of language, since both were trying to confuse
the issue, not to explain it. And therefore, one had to look for
better examples.

Anyway, that's how we got involved in Garden Writers, and
symposia became annual events. The organization has seven or so
regions over the country, and each region tends to hold its own
symposia, one of which is the annual meeting of the association.

Riess: By way of an award, you were made a fellow.

Waters: I honestly don't know quite why. I suppose simply because I stuck
to it and tried to maintain good standards.

As you know, we haven't paid anyone, and I don't think that
members of the Garden Writers Association have been banging at the
door of Pacific Horticulture looking for opportunity to be
published. But I think it's probably true that when the RHS
publication was in danger—there was a period when it sunk to a
pretty low financial level, it began even to look tatty—that
Pacific Horticulture was being held up as an example for them.
Likewise, it's shown certain standards in the U.S. which have now
become more or less commonplace.

For example, the American Horticultural Society has greatly
improved the quality of its publication, and I can't help feeling
that it's because they recognized that there are people out there
who are doing better. Now I think that Pacific Horticulture is no
longer able to regard itself as being exceptional in that respect.
I think a lot of other publications are doing something similar.
Garden Design, for example, has come along since and maintained a
very high standard of color printing, and there are others.

But I still suppose that it's true that if they want real
substance in their articles, then gardeners probably have to come
to Pacific Horticulture.

Riess: You sound active still in Pacific Horticulture.

Waters: Oh, no, I don't do very much. When mail comes, I've been sending
out a card that was printed specially giving the new editor's
address and suggesting they alter the files, and gradually the

178

flow has been checked, and now presumably it's all going to the

new guy. And I'm quite grateful. I've got other things that I

can be doing. Talking with you! [laughter]

Riess: This is not a career move!

Unfinished Business

Riess: I see that you have one of my many lists of important people
[magazine contributors, board members] in front of you.

Waters: Dick Dunmire has been a contributor to Pacific Horticulture from
time to time. Of course, he's a remarkable man anyway, and you
probably know about him. He's an encyclopedia on legs when it
comes to garden plants, he has an incredible memory for plant
names. But he has also studied literature, and he was a teacher
at one time, which makes him a very able speaker. His knowledge
of literature, and the way in which he brings out extraordinary
quotations from literature to entertain while he's speaking, it's
just amazing. Everyone I know is astounded by him.

Riess: And that would have been a talent that he wouldn't be able to use
at Sunset.

Waters: I think he did, actually, because although he was in the garden

department, he also appeared in their kitchen columns, and he was
almost always, if they needed to photograph somebody doing
something, whether it was in the garden or in the kitchen, usually
it would be Richard. He used to do a column for them called
"Chefs of the West." Have you read that?

Riess: Yes.

Waters: Well, you would find his extraordinary literary allusions coming
up in there from time to time. Check it out. Of course, he may
not be doing it now, you may have to go back to the old issues.

[looking again at the list] And Ruth Bancroft, of course, we
celebrated her ninetieth birthday in the garden recently, didn't
we? Remarkably youthful, an astounding person. And she's been a
tremendous supporter of the magazine from the beginning.

I'm a bit unsure now who and what we've covered and what we
haven't. Probably the best bet, if it's feasible, is for me to
make good any insufficiencies in the written text.

Transcribed and Final Typed by Shannon Page

179

TAPE GUIDE--George Waters

Interview 1: July 6, 1998
Tape 1, Side A
Tape 1, Side B
Tape 2, Side A
Tape 2, Side B

Interview 2: July 14, 1998
Tape 3, Side A
Tape 3, Side B
Tape 4, Side A
Tape 4, Side B

Interview 3: July 21, 1998
Tape 5, Side A
Tape 5, Side B
Tape 6, Side A
Tape 6, Side B
Insert from Tape 8, Side B [8/12/98]

Interview 4: August 12, 1998
Tape 7, Side A
Tape 7, Side B
Tape 8, Side A
Tape 8, Side B

Interview 5: September 17, 1998
Tape 9, Side A
Tape 9, Side B
Tape 10, Side A
Tape 10, Side B
Tape 11, Side A
Tape 11, Side B not recorded

1

10
21
30

37
47
56
63

72
80
88
96
104

108
116
125
133

139
149
159
166
175

APPENDICES

A. Biographical Statement

B. Report of the Journal Revision Committee to the President,

Pacific Horticultural Foundation 182

C. Some Books Read Over the Past Twelve Months 186

D. Peering Through the Web, by Olive Rice Waters 187

E. Letters from the Editor:

Notes on Correspondents 190

Letter to Shirley Blumberg 191

Letters to Carol Buchanan 192

Letters to Barbara Deutsch 200

Letter to Sigrid Ewold 202

Letter to Mark Francis and Andrea Reimann 204

Letter to George Gessert 205

Letter to Heidi Gildemeister 207

Letter to Bodil Leamy (first page only) 208

Letter and Draft to Russell Beatty 209

Letter to Cynthia Simley 213

Letters to Nevin Smith 214

Letters to Elizabeth Stromme 217

Letter to Louise Bustard 220

180

GEORGE WATERS

George was born and educated in England, where he became a keen gardener,
cultivating in turn the productive greensand of Bedfordshire, the dry gravel
of Hertfordshire, and the clay and marl of the Chiltern Hills.

He is also interested in history, and in 1965 helped found the Garden History
Society, serving on its council for two terms.

To make the new society better known he arranged exhibits at the shows of the
Royal Horticultural Society in London. One of these, a display of photographs
illustrating changes in garden styles during three hundred years of British
history, earned the Silver Lindley Medal of the RHS . He was greatly helped in
preparing prints and staging the display by friends and colleagues at the
Research Laboratories of Kodak Ltd. where he was himself employed for about
twenty years .

George moved to California in the early 1970s and worked for a while in garden
restoration and design. In 1976 he helped launch Pacific Horticulture to pro
vide gardeners in the summer-dry western United States with their own publica
tion and a forum for discussion of the special character of gardens in this
extraordinary climate. George became the editor of Pacific Horticulture later
that year, and discovered a facility with the language that had been dormant
since childhood. He also became a photographer to provide more pictures than
were available from the customary sources to a new and penniless publication.

The American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta gave Pacific Horti
culture its Dorothy E. Hansell publications award in 1987.

George has had awards for his work on Pacific Horticulture from the California
Horticultural Society and the American Horticultural Society. In 1989 he was

181

elected a Fellow of the Garden Writers Association of America. On May first
1990, in New York City, the Garden Club of America gave George its Sarah Fran
cis Chapman Medal for outstanding achievement in literature and photography.
The following month the Strybing Arboretum Society gave George and his wife
Olive its Owen Pearce Award. Olive manages the circulation of Pacific Horti
culture and so the joint award properly recognized both members of the team
then at work on the publication.

182

PACIFIC HORTICULTURAL FOUNDATION

Publishers o/
THE CALIFORNIA HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL

ie California Horticultural Society The Hall of Flowers Please address reply (o:

ie Southern California Horticultural Institute Golden Gate Park

ie Strybing Arboretum Society San Francisco,

he Western Horticultural Society California 94122

^ September, 1975

Report

OF THE JOURNAL REVISION COMMITTEE TO THE PRESIDENT,
PACIFIC HORTICULTURAL FOUNDATION

At the Pacific Horticultural Foundation Board Meeting in January of
1975 a committee was appointed whose instructions werei

To revise the format, layout and content of the California Horti
cultural Journal, to promote a greater circulation and increased
membership of participating societies.

To produce an issue in the revised form at the beginning of 1976.

The members of the Journal Revision Committee are Margedant Hayakawa,
Harland Hand (joint chairpersons), Owen Pearce (Editor), Emily Brwwn,
Fred Boutin, George Waters and Dick Hildreth, president of PHF.
Helen Markwett was appointed in September.

The Committee has met sixteen times (includiag special meetings at
the premises of printers and Sunset Magazine and for interview with
designers and others) and feels now able to present this report of
its activities, preparatory to making final arrangements for the
production of the revised January 1976 issue. The Committee seeks
the approval of the Board for its plans.

Color Illustrations

The use of color printing, although relatively expensive is important
to the campaign to increase readership. The cost for a colored illus
tration on the cover and one or two plates elsewhere in each issue for
a year is estimated at $1,600. No other single change will have as
great an effect on circulation as illustrations in color.

Other Design Changes

The Committee very early in its deliberations concluded that a pro
fessional designer would be needed to enable the Journal to maintain
a consistently attractive appearance. From the ideas already con
sidered for improving the format and layout, it seems probable- that
the page size will be increased to about 7 x 10. This will give
greater scope in the arrangement of titles, text and illustrations
in pleasing page designs. It will also permit the use of larger
illustrations enhancing the impact of pictures and of a slightly
larger typeface which will make for easier reading and a bolder page.

Alternative papers are also being considered and the aim is to use one

1S3

giving good reproduction of half-cone illustration, while avoiding the reflections
which distract the eye when reading from a glossy page. These variables are
somewhat interdependent and all are modified by considerations of economy. Last
minute changes will have to be made and no firm decision is possible at present
about the details of layout and design, except to say that the January cover
is expected to show the California poppy in color. This will be supported by
two articles and is a suitable gesture with which to launch our venture.

Journal Name

A great deal of discussion has taken place, both within the Committee and with
members at large, about the name of the Journal. Four ideas are uppermost in
our minds t I/ If a change is to be made, now is the time to make it.

2/ The scope of the Journal is to be expanded to include the

Pacific Coast of the USA.
3/ The Pacific Horticultural Foundation as publishers was named

for that purpose.

4/ A btief title is preferable and is appreciated in libraries.
We therefore propose that the Journal be called PACIFIC HORTICULTURE.

Promotion

Much must be done, especially with the January issue to bring the revised Journal
to the notice of possible subscribers. We have no expertise in this sphere and
would appreciate the help of anyone with experience of promotion or publicity.
Our plans at present call for the preparation of an attractive brochure and
extensive mailing campaigns to garden clubs, college libraries, and other
possible subscribers. Early issues will carry tearout subscription forms.
Any television coverage we can find will be ased.

Our greatest promotional asset is the offer from Sunset magazine of a writeup
in their February issue. This will be seen by over a million readers and is
expected to at least double our circulation. Advertising space will be taken
in Sunset and some other publications.

Objectives

We have attempted to anticipate the rate at which new subscribers will be gained.
A response to the Sunset writeup of 0.02% would double our present readership.
The rate of recruiting after the first year will perhaps decline. We hope to
do better than this, but for budget estimates, it would be unwise to anticipate
a greater response to our promotion drive. The attached figures show how
growth and costs are related. At the end of a three year period our readers
should number more than 5000 or enough to cover our costs with some over and
we believe that we should then consider giving the editors some remuneration.
We may also be prepared to pay for articles and illustrations.
This increased readership is expected also to give increased membership to our
four Societies. It is also possible that other horticultural societies on the
Pacific Coast will wish to join the Foundation and we would welcome the strength
they can add to our organization.

Costs

The attached figures are largely self explanatory. Some facts additional to
those already given will help to make them clear.

1. The Journal has been subsidized by the Editor, who has drawn no expenses.
This must not continue and allowance has been made in the budget for this

184

and for additional travel for promotional purposes.
Mailing of the Journal must be placed: in the hands of a professional
organization able to make ;use of modern machinery for addressing and
labeling and of computers for renewal reminders. A start has already
been made on this.

The California Horticultural Society has guaranteed $5000 in support
of the Journal Revision Project. The Other societies within the Founda
tion are also considering financial support.
Private donations totalling $2100 have also been made to the project.

ESTIMATES FOR ENLARGING AND PROMOTING THE CALIFORNIA HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL

Size data

Number of copies/issue

Size

Pages

Costs/year

Printing & paper
Color printing
Design & layout
Illustrations
Editor's expenses
Secretarial
Promo t ion

Extra copies

Brochures, travel, mailing

Advertisements
Mailing
Income from advertising not taken

into account -- small sum

Proposed

4000
7 x 10
60-80

$15,200
1,600
1,200
200
1,000
1,200

2,000

500

1,000

1,400

$25,300

Present

2000

6x9

40-44

$6,400

$6,680

Sales and income estimates

Yearly cost to the four societies

Cost to be borne by new subscribers

No. of $5.00 subs needed to meet above: 3620

Ypar 1 new subs 2500

Deficit $5,600

Year 2 new subs total 3600

Deficit 100

Year 3 new subs total 4700

Excess 5,400

7,200 7,200
18,100

12,500 (yield)
18,000 (yield)
23,500 (yield)

185
Contents

The present Journal caters in the main to enthusiastic plantsmen whose interest is

in the rare and unusual plants and methods for cultivating them. Other subjects

are dealt with of course, but little space is devoted to the needs of these rr.any

enthusiasts, not yet ready for the rare and unusual and to whom many of the

technical terms used are unfamiliar.

In Pacific Horticulture we will continue to provide articles for the specialist,

but in the added pages, also offer a helping hand to the beginners.

The excellent standards of the Journal will be maintained, in respect of

botanical accuracy, proof reading and so on and we are confident that this

will be appreciated by the many intelligent beginning gardeners who are ready

for something beyond what is offered in Sunset magazine.

Authors will be encouraged to contribute from areas throughout the geographical
region we intend to serve.

The January issue, to be called the Spring issue, will contain articles on the
following subjectsj

1. Announcement about the changes and ambitions of the revised
publication Dick Hildreth

2. The California Poppy (the cover subject)

a/ Natural history McC1 intock

b/ Hybridization for garden use Ralph Gould

3 . S asanqua Came llias o^ f^tt^t

4. Desert Gardening W.E. Schmidt

5. Plants from seed, germination techniques Dick Hildreth

6. Seed exchanges, information on seed sources M. H=yakawa

7. Landscape use of roses . , t F. Boutin

8. Old Roses, a personal anthology. G. Waters

9. Planting from containers Lyal Pyett

10. Concrete in the garden H. Hand

11. Native plants in garden meadows Roxana Ferris

12. Notes from the Botanic Gardens and Arboreta

(a regular column). ., j. Kipping et al.

13. House plants (a regular column)..

14. Topical notes (a regular column).....

15. Dutch Elm disease W.D. Hamilton

16. Composting for beginners D. Pettit

17. Plants for the Strybing Sale ,.c. Stroud

18. Planting on Mounds Charles Kliem

19. Hybrids of native plants Lester Hawkins

20. Squibs, as space fillers

Advertisements in the Journal will be seen as a service to readers and to this
end will be edited to give information on the availability of plants, equipment,
services and supplies.

Classified advertisements will be invited also, and the income from both kinds
of advertising will partly offset the publication's expenses.

M. Hayakawa

H Hand joint Chairpersons,

Journal Revision Committee

186

18 September 1998

Some Books Read Over the Past Twelve Months

Newby, Eric: Love and War in the Apennines (mem)

Benson, E.F.: Make Way for Lucia (fie)

Dawkins, Richard: River Out of Eden (sci)

MacCarthy, Fiona: William Morris (biog)

Desmond, Adrian: Huxley, Devil's Disciple to ...(biog)

Lee, Laurie: Cider with Rosie (mem)

-- --: A Moment of War (mem)

-- --: As I Walked Out (mem)

Macaulay, Rose: Towers of Trebizond (fie)

Moore, Jerold: Edward Elgar (biog)

Bennett, Arnold: Clayhanger (fie)

Robertson, Adele Crocket: The Orchard (mem)

Migot , Andre: Tibetan Marches (trav)

Stone, Lawrence: Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (hist)

Berlioz, Hector: The Memoirs (trans. David Cairns)

Theroux, Paul: Kingdom by the Sea (trav)

Crick, Bernard: George Orwell (biog)

Shelden, Michael: Orwell, the Authorized Biography

Fisher, M.F.K. : Long Ago in France (mem)

-- --: To Begin With (essays)

Gledinning, Victoria: Anthony Trollope (biog)

Morris, William: The Ideal Book (essay)

Ondaatje, Michael: In the Skin of a Lion (fie)

Barker, Pat: The Ghost Road (fie)

Nabakov, Vladimir: Speak Memory (autobiog)

Davies, Robertson: World of Wonders (fie)

-- -- : The Manticore (fie)

-- : Fifth Business (fie)
Frazier, Charles: Cold Mountain (fie)
Silone, Ignazio: Fontamara (fie)
Brenan, Gerald: A Life of Ones Own (autobiog)
-- --: Personal Record (autobiog)
-- --: The Face of Spain (autobiog)

Woodham-Smith, Cecil: The Great Hunger, Ireland 1845-9 (hist)
Powell, Anthony: The Acceptance World (fie)
Doerr, Harriet: Stones Of Ibarra (fie)
Mehta, Ved : Shawn's New Yorker (mem)
Douglas, Norman: Siren Land (trav)

Knight, Laura: Oil Paint and Grease Paint Vol 1 (autobiog)
Graves, Robert: Goodbye to All That (mem)

George Waters

187

PEERING THROUGH THE WEB by Olive Rice Waters

Retracing the path which led to involvement with
Pacific Horticulture and the American Iris
Society

Members of my family were readers.

My tiny, spic and span maternal grandmother, H.B. Buroughs
Griffin, kept a precious bookcase full of classics. I was allowed to
lie on the davenport, feet up on the top rail, just so long as I was
reading.

Trips to the library were a must, as often as I wished.

My mother, in spite of a busy schedule, always took an hour or two
in the afternoon for reading. She came home from the library with a
stack of books, some quickly put aside after she had first read the last
page—the book might not be worth her time.

My mother's creativity was boundless. A favorite Depression-era
avocation was rug-hooking, since it combined design with use of recycled
materials .

When Mother was eighty-six the Indiana State Museum moved all the
paintings out of a gallery so Mother could hang a one-man show of her
rugs. From San Francisco I boarded a plane, my rugs in tow, to deliver
them personally via taxi to the museum, there to join the sixty rugs on
display. Mother was there to greet the show's visitors.

Mother's grandchildren continue this creative bent, as did my
older sister, a retired art history professor now living in Kensington.
Though she began her studies as a sculptor and painter, she turned to
ceramics as complementing rather than competing with a painterly spouse
on the faculty of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Both my daughters are Mills graduates. The elder is a textile
artist with an MFA from San Francisco State; the younger has an MA in
architecture from the University of Oregon. My son is a landscape
architect with degrees from DePauw and the University of Oregon, and is
a past president of Portland's Berry Botanic Garden.

Not to be overlooked in family influence was my dad, an outgoing
man who loved talking to anybody and everybody. He molded my outlook on
life and the world beyond books. I followed at his heels. He was ever
dependable, as was a favorite uncle who, though brusque, was soft as
Lutter underneath that brusqueness.

188

Something I find unbearable to relate: my younger sister, dead
this spring after a long battle with hepatitis C which cropped up out of
nowhere and took her, a valiant fighter, at the end. She leaves three
stalwart sons and a bereft husband.

From high school through college my main interest was journalism.
In the summer before my sophomore year in college, I was in competition
with friends for a job with our daily newspaper. The job involved
pounding the pavement, calling on merchants, banks, and passersby for
subjects of interest to local readers.

Having nailed the job, I arranged my work so that I could attend
college classes, both working and going to school fulltime, graduating
in the usual four years plus carrying off honors in journalism.

The summer of graduation, with my husband, a classmate and newly
minted magna-cum-laude, I was headed for Berkeley. He was to be a
graduate student and teaching assistant in chemistry, where the
department had instructors with such names as Calvin, Pitzer, and Ruben.
The last, Sam Ruben, died a few years later, the tragic victim of an
accident at the RatHaus, a wartime experiment using phosgene gas.

In late spring of 1943, Robert Oppenheimer was off to Los Alamos
to begin his work on Manhattan Project. One by one as their doctorates
came through, graduate students in chemistry and physics were off to
join him.

After three years in Berkeley, two children born at Alta Bates
Hospital when Alta Bates herself was still on hand to help deliver them,
we were off via train to New Mexico.

Los Alamos was an exhilarating experience. All spouses were
called in to help staff the operations. I worked in -C- stock, where
orders were processed for scientific materials. Enrico Fermi would come
in to pick up supplies and might be challenged, required to show his
I.D. card, since he resembled the locals.

In dropping off the children at pre-school, run by the University
of New Mexico faculty, I often passed a couple arguing in gutteral
tones: Hans Bethe and Edward Teller. Niels Bohr, whose code name was
Jack Baker, walked by on his way to the lab.

As during the Berkeley blackout, we didn't question our
government's need to be prepared for war. We weren't asked if we
approved nuclear testing. Los Alamos was like any other army post in
wartime: these are orders, this is the work, don't question the powers
that be. Mail was censored. Even Harry Truman, head of the Senate
Budget Committee, was turned away at the post gate when he came to find
out why so much money was being spent.

189

The spring when peace was declared we were off to join the Purdue
chemistry faculty. Later we were to be involved in radiochemistry work
at various pharmaceutical laboratories, and still later, at the National
Library of Medicine in the nation's capital.

It was from Washington that I returned to Berkeley to resume my
own graduate studies, so long postponed for family matters. I had been
working as a copy editor for Federated Societies for Experimental
Biology but really was interested in teaching. At Tolman Hall on the UC
campus, I found challenges, a way of helping youngsters, and many
friends both new and old. I was on my way to a Master's degree and
teaching credential.

At the end of 1972 's spring term at Cal, having just completed
finals, I was off from San Francisco to Heathrow, headed for the UC
Berkeley/Oxford Landscape Seminar. My interest was whetted by my son's
work in designing a downtown pedestrian mall in Eugene, plus his
interest in botanical gardens.

Also on my itinerary was a meeting in London, plus a leisurely
tour in France and Italy. Planned were a week in Paris on the Right
Bank, then time in Florence visiting museums and gardens; next would be
a return to Paris for a week on the Left Bank near some favorite
gardens. And I drove down along the Loire to Gien to visit the famed
four-generation Cayeux Iris Gardens, with Jean Cayeux commenting on his
hybrids .

In London, at the Golden Jubilee of the British Iris Society,
strolling through a fine flower show at Vincent Square, I came across
the Mercia booth. Here was an exhibit of iris pictures, accentuated
with panels of stained glass. Holding forth was the exhibit's designer,
George Waters, a Mercian taking time from his work at Kodak Laboratories
at Harrow. He was editing the Mercian; I was editing the American Iris
Society's Region 14 Bulletin serving northern California and Nevada.
That was July. By the end of October he had joined me in Berkeley.
This collaboration of shared interests has continued through many years
of iris work and Pacific Horticulture.

Work is in progress now on my sixteenth iris calendar, this one
for the year 2001. Our national society has twenty-four regions; I have
grown irises in three of them, the most prolific being in the red
tobacco soil of Rockville, Maryland, where the garden was magnificent.

The garden at 191 A Napa in Berkeley is pocket-sized; it was not
with a garden in mind that I purchased the house, but that it was close
enough to the campus to let me get to school if I had car trouble. The
location has been so convenient that I have been here thirty years, and
to my far-flung family it is the home which has been in the family the
longest.

189a

With George's tender loving care, all the irises have been dug and
replanted—the beds look better than ever before. It is not a garden
for show, but one to linger in and count the lapageria rosea blossoms
each morning and remember to go to the Botanical Garden in Strawberry
Canyon to buy more of these beautiful plants.

As to my part in the transformation of the California
Horticultural Journal into the larger, color-illustrated Pacific
Horticulture, I began by transcribing minutes of the format committee
during the eleven months preceding the appearance of the first issue in
January, 1976.

Though I have been a director for many years, and secretary of the
Pacific Horticultural Foundation Board, my directorship comes through
the California Horticultural Society. Each of the five publishing
societies sends three directors to the foundation's board, as listed on
the magazine's masthead.

The readership is the journal's most interesting facet to me.
Content and design are for others; I like to know who is ingesting the
materials. While the magazine has an editor, a circulation person, and
at present a half-time business manager, my work has been voluntary. I
make my own schedule and can be on hand when help is needed. And I like
it this way.

In summary, reading. . .writing. . .words, but people hold the
greatest interest for me. They always have, right from my days as a cub
reporter.

Olive Rice Waters

October 1999
Berkeley, California

190

Notes on Correspondents

Blumberg submitted an excellent article describing experiments with vegetables
in her garden. It required only a little revision to be easily understood by
readers with no technical background.

Buchanan wrote some articles for me, then was taken up with the idea of book
writing. The book manuscript discussed here was not published, but a later one
of hers, on Native American gardening, appeared I believe, in the late 1990s.

Carol, in northern California, was a beginning writer to whom I gave advice
and encouragement. She contributed a couple of pieces to the magazine. Her
family name is deleted at her request.

Deutsch helped find me an article on butterfly gardens and became an
interesting correspondent on a variety of topics.

Ewold took exception to references in the magazine to the German occupation of
France during the Second World War, and to my use of the phrase 'tall bearded
irises' in place of what she regards as the proper name, 'German irises.' Both
my references were in her view examples of anti-German bias.

Francis and Reimann asked me to expand on the ideas in my editorial of Summer
'93 for a symposium to be published by their department. I don't know the
outcome of our correspondence.

Gessert, an artist in Washington, wrote a book review and the letter attempts
to ensure sound and well presented criticism.

Gildemeister, a highly competent writer and gardener, needed better pictures
for her contribution to the magazine.

Leamy contributed to Davidsonia when it was published by the Botanical Garden
at the University of British Columbia. When Pacific Horticulture replaced
their own as the publication distributed to supporters I encouraged articles
from staff and volunteers there. Nothing came of this proposal for a revised
version of an article from Davidsonia.

Russ is Russell Beatty, then a lecturer in the Design Department, U.C.
Berkeley. He had written several excellent articles for Pacific Horticulture
and I particularly wanted the one discussed here for our anniversary issue
(Spring '96), but time ran out on us . I understand that Richard Turner is
preparing a new version of it for a forthcoming issue.

Simley sent her letter to Mildred Mathias, one of our botanical editors, at my
address. I invariably answered such enquiries unless the subject was
particularly within the speciality of the editor named.

Smith is a well known nurseryman in the Watsonville area with special interest
in California native plants. He wrote a fine survey of ceanothus and another
of manzanitas .

Stromzne wrote a couple of things for Pacific Horticulture, and asked my advice
about writing and publishing books.

191

22 December 1996

Shirley Blumberg

PO Box 368

Mammoth Lakes CA 93546

Dear Shirley:

Your article on high altitude gardening is full of ideas and good information.
While reading it I tried to put myself in the position of a gardener
interested in your subject but unfamiliar with scientific terms and experimen
tal methods. I found most of it easy to grasp, but felt that some readers
would need a helping hand here and there. For example, in discussing the ex
periment, it seemed helpful to first summarize the idea behind it in a couple
of sentences. This helps those unfamiliar with your problems when details have
to be grappled with later on.

It is almost impossible to be too sympathetic towards readers following new
ideas, however simple and familiar they are to the writer. In fact, the more
familiar they are to the writer, the greater the risk to the reader and the
more careful must be the hand guiding him or her over this unfamiliar
terrain. This is never more the case than when the ideas are technical. With
this in mind I avoided some technical terms, such as "variables," inserted one
or two explanatory passages (on ultra-violet, for example), and rearranged one
or two sentences to bring together matter that seemed related.

You may find that I have misunderstood a few points myself, and I crave your
indulgence and your help in straightening things out. I admit to my confusion
at the bottom of your page two, where the subtle change from high altitude to
high latitude had me turned around for a while. This, I admit, was my own
carelessness in reading, but perhaps others would trip here, too?

I also have avoided the numbered list, redolent more of scholarly endeavor
than of pleasant reading. My suggested title, too, may be seen as an attempt
at encouraging the novice, although perhaps a little fanciful for your taste?

Please read this draft with tyro gardeners in mind, and an eagle eye for
errors and transgressions of mine. Mark up this copy with any changes and
corrections you feel are needed and shoot it back to me as soon as you are
able. But don't let it interrupt you holiday festivities!

With best wishes to you for lots of good cheer, and a New Year full of
contentment .

Yours,

192

3 July 1990

Carol Buchanan

13625 179th Avenue NE

Redmond WA 98052

Dear Carol :

Back now from an exciting but exhausting dash round France with
impressions of the utter worthlessness of visiting Giverny --a
circus, with hundreds pounding paths made for one or two -- and
the soul salving serenity of Courances -- such superb proportion
and balance in its simple arrangement of water, grass, and trees.

Your Prelude to Wordsworth develops several excellent ideas and
brings them nicely to focus on the subject. The debate between
Price and Repton is especially well presented.

The reference to scientific ideas on page 7 opens up the
discussion to influences on esthetics beyond the debates of your
protagonists, and might, with advantage, be taken further. In
this chapter you are, after all, surveying the whole field of
thought for influences on the esthetics of landscape; the
investigation is sure to take you down paths that must be trodden
slowly and with care.

The 17th century can be said to have seen a scientific revolution
comparable in significance to the industrial revolution, and, of
course, was its essential precursor. Harvey, Hales, even Newton,
and other researchers did some, at least, of their work in this
period. The effect was not only to bring a more questioning
attitude to definitions of beauty, but also to weaken belief in
old philosophies and religious dicta. Notions such as Thomas
Burnet ' s conception of an orderly universe, explained in his
Theory of Earth, lost credence as scientific thought developed.
Ideas such as Burnet ' s had provided philosophical underpinning for
gardening in the formal, geometric style, and the erosion of
these beliefs helped, indirectly, to make way for the acceptance
of naturalistic landscapes.

More directly, perhaps, scientific enquiry, by allowing greater
understanding of natural processes, helped erase fear of the
natural world (to which you refer) , and lead to appreciation of
plants in their natural forms as objects of beauty. The scient
ific revolution, which paved the way for the Age of Reason, was
probably the most important influence on philosophy and esthetics
in the 18th century.

193

Political tensions created by the challenge to old aristocracy
from wealth accumulating around new industries also played a
part. (The industrial revolution is generally alloted later
dates, but its development was slow and its origins are found
much earlier.) Sons of the newly rich took the grand tour, too,
and their enthusiasm for the works of Claude and Poussin may be
attributed, to some extent at least, to a background and outlook
that questioned old attitudes and embraced ideas supportive of
their quest for governmental power. In challenging the power of
titled landowners the new industrialists sought justification in
any philosophy sympathetic to their ideals. Inevitably they were
attracted, in some degree at least, to the writings of Locke and
Hume whose philosophy gave little support to priviledge and power
as God-given rights. (The same moral conflict found expression in
America in the War of Independence; it was worked out in Britain
in parliamentary debates between Walpole and Pitt.) Questioning
minds in such a revolutionary environment may well have seen
formality in gardens as representative of the old order; the new
naturalism as symbolic of intellectual freedom. At Stowe, Cobham
gave direct expression to his political inclinations with such
edifices as the Temple of Ancient Virtue and the Temple of
British Worthies.

In this chapter you provide background to ideas about gardening
that colored Wordsworth's outlook; was there not a vein of
thought (and esthetics) removed from that of landscape and
gardening that might have influenced Wordsworth and other nature
poets? I can't call names to mind here, but am thinking of the
modern conservation movement, by way of analogy, that is
influencing the esthetics of gardening as much as do traditional
concepts. Damage to the countryside was a concern then, too, I
feel sure. Does Goldsmith suggest anything here, or the poets who
provided lyrics for Schubert's songs?

When speaking of Linnaeus it is important to distinguish between
his system of classification based on sexual characteristics, and
his adoption of binomials. The former was useful for a while but
is not now used, although relics of it remain in modern systems;
the latter, in modified form, are with us today. On page 8 you
seem to run them together in a dangerous way!

It would help your style, I think, to delete references to
"people," as in the last line of page 7 and line 2 on page 8. Aim
instead for a construction that assumes that people are the
subject throughout. For example, nothing is lost by simply
omitting "in people's minds" from the last line of page 7. On page
8 you might try something like "yielded exciting discoveries that
overturned many long-held beliefs."

Try giving ideas -- your main thesis -- greater emphasis by
omitting biographical snippets where they don't reinforce your

194

argument. I'm thinking of asides such as those on Brown's nickname
and Pope's morphology and appetite. They are entertaining, but
diversionary, and raise doubt about your purpose.

I hope these rather poorly organised thoughts of mine are help
ful. I've enjoyed reading your chapter, and regret that, having
taken time off in France, it had to be so hurriedly done. I trust
that my reading was not so cursory that I have misunderstood
some aspects of the work and wasted your time by discussing it.

Good luck with the publishers. Please let me know what Godine
says .

With best wishes,

195

23 August 1994

Dear Carol :

The dangers of poor plant growth from roots unable to penetrate a barrier
between nurseryman's potting mix and native soil seems not to be mentioned in
old gardening books. This is probably because until the 1950s nurseries seldom
offered plants in pots -- almost everything was sold bare-root. Another factor
may have been that in years past it was assumed that all planting was done
into cultivated ground where the soil had been thoroughly dug over the whole
area whether previously planted or not. You'll no doubt have seen those draw
ings in old books showing how the ground is marked out so that it can be sys
tematically trenched (dug) to a depth of two or three spits (spit = spade
depth, approx. eleven inches). In soil so well prepared problems from changes
in texture didn't arise.

Writers on gardening today seldom mention the method, although John Seymour
describes and illustates it in The Self -Sufficient Gardener (Doubleday 1978) .
It is an excellent and attractive book, worth seeking out if you enjoy
collecting good books on food growing. But then, Seymour was born in 1914!
Sunset's Introduction to Basic Gardening (3rd ed. 1981) also describes a thor
ough method of soil cultivation. They call it double -digging, but it is really
a method known as bastard trenching; the two are often confused. Double-dig
ging goes to three spits depth, bastard trenching only to two. Elsewhere the
Sunset book discusses planting from containers, and warns of the barrier that
may be created between soils of markedly different textures. It suggests
preparing a large hole -- twice the diameter of the pot and half again as
deep, roughing up the sides of the hole, soaking the soil if it is dry, and
adding a little organic amendment and superphosphate to the soil at the bottom
of the hole. The writer of another book the title of which I have forgotten
said that spades used in clay soil may glaze the walls of the hole thereby
effectively sealing the soil and reducing to nil the possibility of water
penetration. This seems plausible, but I've not seen it mentioned since. That
writer proposed the use of a fork to reduce glazing while digging planting
holes. Perhaps the Sunset writer had this in mind when roughing was mentioned.
If done well enough roughing might also encourage a tendency in roots to grow
radially rather than in circles within the hole, as your nurseryman mentioned.

Modern writers on tree planting advise against the previously widely advocated
practice of adding amendment to the fill soil, claiming that this creates the
difference in texture inimical to spreading root growth that you have spoken
of. The argument is, perhaps, more pertinent to bare-root than to container
plants. Container plants seem likely to benefit from fill that is intermediate
in character between the nursery mix and native soil and appropriate amendment
might achieve this.

But in this matter of planting holes and their filling I feel that most rules
have limited application; so much depends on the character of the native soil.
Good gardeners aware of the risks will use whatever method of planting seems

needed for the health of their trees and will take remedial action at the
first sign of distress. For every plant, large and small, I have placed in the
ground during fifty years of gardening the soil has been amended, and losses

196

have been few. Watchfulness is not the least of gardening virtues. The New
Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary seems to have a similar view of it;
there is little in the entry on planting shrubs and trees about soil prepara
tion and nothing about barriers to water movement. The attempt by so many
writers to codify everything for the benefit of new gardeners is misleading.
Is it helpful in the long run to imply that there is always a right and a
wrong way for everything, when we are dealing with plants of so many kinds in
soils of such great variability under skies of total unpredictability?

This rambling letter was not in mind when I began; the idea was just to
applaud your experiments, but it seems to have got out of hand. Maybe,
however, you'll find a snippet here of interest or value, so I'll mail it
unabridged, simply urging you in conclusion to send me your ms when done in
the hope that you won't mind if I find it unsuitable after all. Will you risk
it? Courage, my friend!

Sincerely,

197

7 October 1994

Dear Carol :

Inclusion of more quotes in your discussion does add variety and interest, but
I feel somewhat at sea after the first couple of pages; as though you had left
the tiller to your passengers. Perhaps it's time for a compass bearing; giving
the piece a title, even just a provisional one, may help you.

The first page establishes the writer as a keen gardener now gaining experi
ence. (The parenthetical interpolation in para 2 somewhat belies this, and may
be better moved to a later page.) This tone is maintained through page 3,
needing perhaps, only a little tightening of the language to establish an
unwavering course. But with the Robin Lane Fox quote on page 4 I believe I see
my difficulty. His methods are presented too baldly. Would it not be better to
link his ideas with those in the preceding para? Something of this kind
would be the minimum needed to provide the link and keep those other voices in
second place.

"Robin Lane Fox seems to have run into difficulties similar to my own in
propagating plants. In Variations on a Garden he tells of his pleasure in
producing so many plants for free, and feels that his own starts, rooted
in . . . "

Providing that link would, I believe, help keep your hand on the tiller, and
avoid the drifting that I detected after a page or so. My uneasiness worsened
on page 5, where several voices are heard without benefit of linking passages,-
it is as though their opinions have become your subject, whereas you should
merely be calling on them for confirmation of your own view. This is especial
ly marked in the para beginning, "Another interesting report in The Avant Gar
dener ..." where a new subject, Peter Smithers' wild garden, is introduced.
Here you seem to have shifted to editing a column of topical notes similar to
Bob Raabe ' s Laboratory Report .

Avoid beginning a para with a reference -- the emphasis gained by words in
that position is too valuable to be thrown away on secondary matter . Keep
the emphasis on your own voice and ideas, bringing in others in support of
them. Avoid referring twice to the same source; instead, demonstrate wide
reading by using a variety of sources. The Avant Gardener is not the best
reference because it is itself a compilation of quotations and references.
Going directly to the UC report and to Smithers himself gives you greater
plausibility among discerning readers, and avoids risk of mistakes originating
in the secondary reference.

In this connection I should tell you a sad story of PH and AG: Pacific
Horticulture was plagiarized in the Avant Gardener when material on yellow
clivias was taken from PH without acknowledgement. I challenged Powell, the
editor, and he excused himself, lamely, for what he said was a mistake, but it
has made me wary of his publication. Unfortunately, his treatment in that same
issue of another subject relating to PH was distorted, creating the impression
that our information on drip irrigation was inadequate while AG's was more
complete. He had no proper explanation for that, either. So, I prefer to avoid
secondary sources, especially the AG.

198

The Smithers quote needs a lengthier linking, or in this case introductory,
passage than most because of the change in subject from propagation to garden
making and cultivation. The reader must be prepared for the change, and in
your own voice. Smithers had something in a garden magazine recently. I saw
it, and have just looked through recent copies of The Garden (RHS) believing
it was there, but did not see it. If you happen to know where to look I may be
able to find it. Until recently I had a file on him, but was obliged to dis
card it along with much else to avoid being forced from my office by papers.

In mentioning tightening the language I had in mind phrases such as "this
vision has gradually become more realistic considering, " and "sometimes I have
regretted not putting time, effort, and money into soil amending and
fertilizing. Now I'm finding pleasure in the advantages of slow growing plants
toughened by the restrictions of their environment." (Page 1)

The idea of a vision becoming realistic is disconcerting. I suspect you have
little choice but to say your vision dimmed. This is more conventional, but
shortens and tightens the phrase, as well as making your meaning immediately
clear.

The second example could be rendered: "Sometimes I regret not having put time,
effort, and money, into soil amending and fertilizing, but find pleasure in
slow-growing plants toughened by a rigorous environment." Here the past tense
is suggested without the awkward "I have regretted, " and I feel that the
slightly ruminative tone is preserved in fewer words.

There are other places where similar economy is possible. I feel sure you will
find them if you pause after each sentence to ask, does this say exactly what
I intend? And then, could it be said in fewer words? In Q's words, "Think of
the reader, not only with your head, but also with your heart."

Oddly enough, that splendid para on page 8 beginning "The other time for extra
care ..." may have been pruned a little severely. I read it with great
pleasure for its heartfelt tone and the multiplicity of ideas that it presents
so seamlessly, and ask, would line 8 benefit from the repetition of "are"
before "wilting?" If so, word count might be maintained by deleting "the"
preceding "midday. "

By the way, I detected the merest whiff of self congratulation in the
insistence (page 3) that you read about the simplified way of planting after
having developed it for yourself. Readers are remarkably sensitive to that
kind of thing, and it well becomes a writer to avoid all hint of it. I'm sure
you can find a way of conveying the idea more reticently!

Yours, with envy for the quiet you enjoy up in those hills, but none for the
heat of them,

199

20 November 1994

Dear Carol :

Please don't think of your drafts as embarrassing. The best stories, articles,
and books too, are the result of multiple revisions from awkward drafts. Some
of the most accomplished writers go through draft after draft in the process,
and what is sent eventually to their publishers is usually worked on further
before it appears in print. An editor at a big publishing house once described
his career and some of the famous authors he had worked with in the Atlantic
Monthly. He said it is not uncommon for manuscripts to be passed on from one
editor to another when a work is felt more appropriate for a different pub
lisher. Some great names insist on having unwanted m/s returned so that they
may, themselves, send to the next publisher a clean copy free of the comments
and criticisms they know will be in the margins of the first one.

The pain of writing thoughtfully will never go away. If you are critical of
your own efforts, dissatisfaction may bring on even more pain despite
experience and greater facility with the language. Yes, it is more difficult
than gardening; that comes, as you suggest, from the privacy in which you
garden and the public character of writing -- the ego is at stake.

My task is to help provide you with a basis for self criticism. You must
practice your criticism, too, on everything you read: from Shakespeare to
Pacific Horticulture, keep one eye on what is being said and the other on how
it is said. You are coming along well. Don't despair and don't feel embar
rassed -- not with me, at least. Our exchanges are strictly private.

In a while I'll send you my comments on the most recent draft. They won't be
extensive; you have given the piece pretty well what it needed. My main
concern at the moment is what illustrations it needs for publication. Of your
suggested titles I like Learning the Limits best.

Have you given thought to the range of your future writing? I often wonder
whether you are confined, by and large, to your home in the hills, or do you
get out to other gardens? How will you extend your experience and subject
matter if you don't travel and talk with other gardeners? The hermit's life is
all very well, but it limits a writer to introspective and philosophical
pieces. I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

Sincerely,

200

31 August 1994

Barbara Deutsch

1919 Nineteenth Street

San Francisco CA 94107

Dear Ms Deutsch:

Thank you for your letter of 24 August, and the enclosed sample of Willow
Boughs. That design of Morris1 first made me aware of his reputation as
designer. I purchased the Nonsuch Press edition of his collected writing many
years ago, and the pattern was used on the end papers. It has been a favorite
ever since and one day I hope to paper a wall or even a room with it. May
Morris may have helped in designs that came from the Morris workshops, but I
haven't read of it. She certainly made tapestries and did embroidery; Yeats'
sister studied under May.

My first interest was in Morris' political ideas; only later did I become
aware of the extent of his reputation as a leader in the Arts and Crafts Move
ment. When my interest in printing and type faces developed, there, again, was
Morris shaking the Victorians out of their indifference to the clumsy type and
sloppy design in use by printers of his day. A highlight of the mid-80s for me
was an exhibit of Morris books and typography at the Bancroft Library. There
on display was a copy his Chaucer in all its glory, Golden type and all. It
was the first I had seen. Since that Nonsuch anthology I have read several
other things, including a number of his Mediaeval romances, which, I was sur
prised to discover, are available in cheap paperback editions for devotees of
what is known as Adult Fantasy. The more I learn the more I find to admire in
him. Now I am able to appreciate the unity of his political thought and artis
tic inspiration. There can be no doubt of the breadth of his talent and his
wide influence, even as a poet; he was offered the post of Poet Laureate by
Victoria, but declined it.

Philip Henderson mentions Yeats' admiration for Morris, but doesn't give the
quotation you mention. Henderson does quote Yeats as saying that Morris was
the most loved of people in the way that one loves a child, and that he was a
Mediaeval romantic. This is, as Henderson points out, only partially true. I
can find no mention of Yeats in Mackail's pioneering biography. But it was
written while May was still living, and many documents available now were
probably hidden then.

I saw something on book design by Morris in the rare books section of Black
Oak Books the other day. I dare not even ask the price, but would love to have
added it to my collection! Perhaps in a day or so I'll find the courage to go
in again and ask to handle it, at least. Black Oak is so temptingly close --
only a fifteen minutes walk.

Thank you for your observations and kind encouragement. May I extract the com
ment on the weeping torreya as a letter for the next (Jan. '95) PH?

Sincerely,

201

26 February 1995

Barbara Deutsch

1919 Nineteenth Street

San Francisco CA 94107

Dear Ms Deutsch:

Your delightful card (and addenda!) welcomed my return from Seattle, where I
had been judging garden exhibits in the Northwest Flower and Garden Show.
After only seven years it is already the third largest spring show in the
country -- Philadelphia and, I think, Massachusetts are larger. I usually find
something irresistible in the used book stalls there, and this time came away
with the first of David Fairchild's several memoirs on his travels in search
of plants for the US Department of Agriculture. I already have one or two
volumes.

I agree that the butterfly quarterly mentioned recently in PH is somewhat
superficial, but when considering the early efforts of enterprising editors,
am invariably reminded of my own early blunders, and my tone softens.

Surely we aren't obliged to refer to Tilden Botanic Garden always as the East
Bay Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park? Insistence upon the full
title will do no good in the long run, no matter how valid the reasons for it
may seem to those connected with the garden. Lay folk will use the shorter
title for the same reason the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is known
almost universaly by the acronym NATO -- it is shorter, pithy and no less
precise once generally recognized.

Widespread acceptance of a shortened name is often a mark of respect -- of
arrival, so to speak: the Royal Horticultural Society's Great Spring Show is
called Chelsea Show, and the Royal Botanical Gardens, Richmond, has long been
called Kew Gardens -- it is convenient and in no way derogatory -- quite the
reverse, in fact. A shorter name in common use is the mark of reputation,
and sometimes conveys affection. Notice how we drop the first name, and even
titles, from the famous -- Lincoln, Jefferson, Nixon, Eisenhower -- without
the least loss of respect. It is a mark of their status that we shorten names
to Bogart, Cagney, or Garbo. What harm is there, then, in using the popular
name Tilden Botanic Garden in a passing reference to it? The full name was
appropriate, I agree, in the opening to Edwards' article for the Summer '92
PH, when the garden was the principal subject, but I would have urged use of
the shorter name elsewhere in the text had the need arisen.

I haven't heard of Irene Wellingham's calligraphy, nor her More Than Fine
Writing. I do have Morris's A Book of Verse, the decorated manuscript
reprinted by Scolar Press and Clarkson Potter in 1981. Perhaps you alluded to
that in speaking of Irene W and Morris? Please tell me more.

Sincerely,

202

2 August 1995

Sigrid Ewold
Box 1815
Mendocino CA 95460

Dear Ms Ewold:

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful letter of July 31. I find the points
you raise so interesting that I have put aside correspondence already awaiting
attention in order to respond at once.

I agree that stories of the Peace rose are romanticized for promotional pur
poses: one version even had the bud-wood leaving France in the last diplomatic
bag out of Paris. And yes, the rose nurseries in Germany were, and are, excel
lent: Alain Meilland says that bud-wood of Peace was sent simultaneously to
Germany and Spain, as well as to the US. As for German hybridizers, Wilhelm
Kordes is among the most highly regarded worldwide today.

But in saying that bud-wood left France just ahead of advancing German forces
I in no way wanted to suggest that those forces were bent on searching out
roses for destruction. The idea was simply that correspondence and the ship
ping of roses abroad would be more difficult, if not impossible, once the
country was occupied. Whatever misunderstanding my remark may have created,
nothing in the nature of anti-German feeling should be seen in it, nor any
charge of prejudice laid at my door. As a young man of military age I was
subject to the full force of overheated World War II propaganda in England,
but declined to participate in any hostile act, despite family loss and
suffering. Instead, I turned my effort to refining blood plasma for medical
use.

The German iris is a more complicated matter. Botanists have not been able to
establish a natural habitat for it, and today consider the German iris to be a
naturally occurring hybrid whose parents were probably native to the Mediter
ranean region of Europe. The listing, Iris X germanica, in Hortus III and
other references designates that hybrid status. It is an exceptionally vigor
ous plant, as such hybrids often are, and is widely naturalized throughout the
world, as well as in Germany. Why it is called the German iris is something of
a mystery. Fritz Kohlein, in Iris (Timber Press, 1987), says: "It is certain
that the origins of this sword flag were not in Germany, as its name Iris
germanica, given to it by Linnaeus in 1750, implies." But the world of plants
is full of enigmas: the English iris is native to Spain and France -- not to
England at all; Azalea indica is not from India; Simmondsia chinensis (source
of jojoba oil) in not Chinese, but an American native. So botanical names as
well as vernacular ones may confuse.

Kohlein gives an interesting account of the development of hybrid bearded
irises, from which it can be seen that the introduction of tetraploid irises
from the Middle East and Asia Minor in the early years of this century gave
rise to new genetic combinations that greatly broadened the color range of
their flowers. So mixed now is the parentage, and so influential are the
tetraploids in it, that it would be misleading to call them by the name of any

203

one kind of iris, least of all one that is not a tetraploid. But if it were to
have such a name, why Iris X germanica? Why not instead I. florentina? I.
mesopotamica? I. variegata? They and several others are represented in tall
bearded irises.

And those original irises are all still with us. Perhaps the root of the
problem is in seeing the term tall bearded irises as replacing the name Iris X
germanica. It does not. The term designates a group of complex hybrids that
are now so far from their origins as to need some less specific name, whereas
the other names refer to botanical entities that, species or not, are self
sustaining in the wild. No modern hybrid bearded iris could survive for long
outside a garden.

Leo Jelitto and Wilhelm Schacht, in Hardy Herbaceous Perennials (Timber Press,
1990) also use the more descriptive term tall bearded irises, and while not
discussing their development in detail, do make passing reference to Iris
germanica as one of several in their parentage.

Mathew, whom I quoted in the article, takes a similar view of bearded irises,
but suggests that Iris florentina, I. mesopotamica, and several others, may be
subspecies of I . X germanica. This seems an odd stance to take while holding
to the view that germanica is a natural hybrid. But it is clear that there are
few absolutes in botany (or anything else for that matter), and the confusion
represented here only underlines the fact.

In conclusion, may I ask whether members of iris societies worldwide, who have
adopted the term bearded irises and encourage its use, are really guilty of
deliberate propagandizing, or even unwitting complicity in it? From my own
close association with those dedicated irisarians here and in England I must
admit to the most profound doubt.

I hope this explains my viewpoint sufficiently, and that you will find in my
garden scribblings only the benign motives that prompted them. As you see, few
things are simple, and heredity in botanical matters is less clear than we
might wish.

Thank you for your interest in Pacific Horticulture; I hope we may continue to
deserve your high regard.

Sincerely,

20 August IS 93

Mark Francis and Andreas Reimann
Department of Environmental Design
University of California
Davis, CA 95616

Dear Mr Francis and Ms Reimann:

Thank you for the copy of notes from your Ecological Garden Design Workshops
and the invitation to comment on them. Many of your participants are profes
sionals in garden design with a need to understand social trends as they af
fect demands upon their services. The piece in Pacific Horticulture to which
you refer was merely my musing on the tendency for gardens to be regarded as
conservation areas. I have no point of view on landscape design worthy of your
consideration .

But in the spirit of discussion represented in the notes I offer some rather
sketchy and incomplete thoughts prompted by my reading of them.

Some gardens are settings for the house; some are expressions of wealth; some
are hobbyists' havens; some, the vast majority I surmise, are simply there to
keep the site tidy. All, to seme degree, reflect an outlook on the world. Do
designers want it to be their own outlook that is reflected or their client's?
Which is most likely to give long term satisfaction to the client?

Why not provide clients with the gardens they ask for rather than urge them
towards an ecological ideal favored by the designer? Is it the designer's
conscience that is being salved? Gardens of any kind are surely more wholesome
than autos, armaments, deforestation, speculative development, and the poison
ing of land, sea and air by industries locked in deadly competition. Persuad
ing home owners to toe the ecological line in face of these horrors risks
accusations of pettiness. Resentment generated by demands for domestic water
conservation is already present among gardeners aware of the amount used in
agriculture .

Clearer distinction seems to be needed between gardens freely designed with
regard to local climate, soil, and topography (the Genius of the Place in
all), and those that attempt fidelity to nature.

Are designers turning towards literal interpretations of nature from a paucity
of artistic inspiration? Gardens as art draw inspiration from religious,
historical, philosophical, domestic, and political mores, and from the site
itself. Blended into an original design, these influences, while discernible,
are seldom obvious. Nature literally reproduced ignores so many sources of
inspiration and its origins are so obvious that questions of art seem scarcely
relevant .

Thank you for stimulating me to further consideration of this thorny subject.
Sincerely,

205

23 March 1997

George Gessert
1230 W Broadway
Eugene OR 97402

Dear Mr Gessert:

Thank you for the review of Plants For the Future. I like your criticism of
the book and your ideas on the need for debate on breeding and other methods
for producing new plants. (But I recall the ferment at the outset of gene
splicing, when scientists, philosophers, and other thinkers assembled to
debate the ethics of the process. A manifesto appeared calling for great
caution and the thorough examination of each new product. Where is that talk
now? The Feds, allowed the first engineered tomato onto the market without a
murmur, saying, in effect, "how would we test it anyway?")

As you anticipate, the review is rather long for PH. It would be best if we
could remove about 200 words, but that may be difficult. I'd like to suggest a
few changes, some of which, by tightening it overall, might even highten the
emphsis on your most important ideas. Perhaps you can find other ways of
shortening it .

You have a strong argument at the top of page 2 that might be more telling
with a little rephrasing to shorten it. I suggest:

Malitz does not speak for all gardeners. Organic gardeners, and probably most
others, want pest- and disease-resistant plants, but they don't want
insecticide- and fungicide-resistant plants. Resistance to sprays of this kind
is a genetic trait advocated by agribusiness. Crop plants resistant to her
bicides and other chemicals for the eradication of pests and weeds could allow
greater use of sprays. The goal is heavier crops, but the outcome may also be
heavier use of chemicals and an increase in the health problems that seem
inseparable from them.

Contamination and health hazards associated with agricultural chemicals have
been known for years, but Malitz seems oblivious to them. "The potential is
immeasurable," he says, "and progress to date has been astounding." He does
not mention reports of herbicide residues higher in some urban areas that in
the country, probably due to indiscriminate use of domestic lawn and garden
products. Would herbicide resistant garden plants worsen this already serious
condition?

The tone throughout is one of exaltation at the prospect of gardens and plants
made exactly as we want them to be. Concern for the land and the environment
is hard to detect. But many gardeners consider place something to honor, not
overcome. Plants adapted to particular hardiness zones and soil types express
place especially well, and place-conscious gardeners see no need to engineer
drought-resistant kalmias or frost-hardy plumerias.

206

This is about 30-40 fewer words words than on page 2 down to "At the same
time , . "

On page 3 I suggest deleting from "Forigene . . . (line 3) to the end of the
para. Then, at tha mention of Florigene in the next para change to:

Florigene, an Australian biotechnical company that for almost a decade has
been attempting to produce the longed-for blue rose, has already transferred
genetic material from the nightshade family into the rose, dianthus, and
composite families, suggesting some of the possibilities. . . and so on.

(By the way, am I correct in supposing that genetically produced plants would
be cloned, and therefore lack the inherent genetic variation vital to survival
in the wild? The thought came to me at the mention of genetic engineering as a
way of rescuing endangered plant species. Cultivars of native plants, usually
asexually propagated, are already subject to criticism from those who argue
that their widespread use in gardens precludes the possibility of garden
plants becoming a source from which lost species may be resuscitated.)

Consider too, replacing the section (P. 3, 4th line up) from "In the mid-
1980s . . " to the end of the para, with something along these lines:

Most of the achievements in genetic engineering that astounded us in the
newspapers, such as firefly luminescence transferred to plants, remain
unexploited. What we do see, and will see in future, are those products of
gene transfer that make money for someone, and these products will be launched
with little regard for their value to society as a whole. Jerome Malitz and
other gardeners who are not particularly . . . etc.

with a few amendments of this kind it should be possible to get your review
to a suitable length for PH. I hope you agree and can manage the reduction; it
is a valuable contribution and needs to be read by gardeners.

Sincerely,

207

Heidi Gildemeister

Torre de Ariant

E-07460 Pollensa-Mallorca

SPAIN

Fax 347 153 1497

My fax 510 524 1914

26 November 1995

Dear Heidi :

Many thanks for the sternbergia piece. Among the photographs included with it,
number one caught my attention at once as a well composed garden scene with
sternbergias prominent throughout and shapely trees in the background. Under
the loupe, however, the picture proved to be unsuitable for reproduction
because so little of it was sharp. I wonder whether it will be possible to
shoot that scene again in the near future?

May I venture to suggest how a better picture might be obtained? Having in
mind the effort and concentration you bring to gardening and writing, it seems
probable that you would want to apply the same diligence to photography. Pic
ture number one is dated 1989 and since then you have probably already learned
how, but I will take the plunge and send you my thoughts on sharp pictures.

Sharpness comes from a rock steady camera and extreme care in focussing the
lens . Sharpness throughout the depth of a scene requires in addition the
smallest practicable lens aperture. Small apertures demand slow shutter
speeds. Slow shutter speeds plus rock steadiness are seldom possible with hand
held cameras; some other support for the camera is necessary -- in other
words, a tripod.

Very few of my own photographs are made without a tripod. A good tripod is not
necessarily the lightest or most gadget ridden. Gitzo tripods, from France,
are simple, well made, and reasonably light in weight. Weight is important in
a tripod as a damper of vibration and a resister of wind shake. It is best to
choose the heaviest one compatible with expected use. In wild places where
camera and tripod must be carried long distances, I take the smallest and
lightest of my Gitzos, but at home, or when gear can be carried in a vehicle I
use a much heavier one .

As an additional aid to sharpness when using a single-lens reflex camera I
release the mirror in advance of the shutter. Most modern SLRs have a knob or
lever for this, and it allows vibration from mirror movement to subside before
the exposure is made. A flexible shutter release is also worthwhile. I use a
Rowi pneumatic bulb. It is provided with a reel of fine tubing which can be
cut to convenient length for everyday use (mine is about 18 inches long) .
Several pneumatic devices from Taiwan and other Asian countries have proven
unreliable, but the Rowi, from Germany I believe, is robust and I have used
it for years on 35mm and medium format cameras without the slightest difficul
ty. Flexible wire releases are too short and stiff in my experience.

A picture that seems adequate when projected is often seen to be unsharp when
examined under a loupe of five to ten times magnification. This is because the
screen is viewed from a distance and breaks up the image. We reconstruct it in
our mind as sharper than it really is.

Hope this helps without giving offense.
Sincerely,

208

Pacific Horticulture

W. George Waters, Editor

1914 Napa Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94707

(415) 524-1914

Mrs Bodil Leamy
The Botanical Garden
University of British Columbia
6501 N. W. Marine Drive
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6T 1W5

Dear Mrs Leamy:

Thank you for your letter of October 29 and the enclosed
pages from Davidsonia.

The subject you propose, the use of unusual plants in
hanging baskets, would be welcome in Pacific Horticulture, but I
venture to suggest changes in treatment that will make the
article more suitable for our readers.

The didactic tone should be removed as far as is possible.
For example, the seventh paragraph on page 72 of the Davidsonia
copy could be rewritten in some such way as this: "Plants with
leaves that have bold and clearly defined patterns of variegation
look cleaner and crisper from a distance than those with vague
and soft changes in color." You thus avoid telling readers what
they should choose.

And on page 74 it should be sufficient to explain the
dangers from drying winds without saying "A windy site should be
avoided." Your readers are flattered when, within reason, you
take for granted their ability to see simple solutions once you
have laid out the problem.

In going over your article you also will find places where
the didactic style lengthens sentences unnecessarily and gives
them a tone unattractive to sophisticated readers. Phrases like
"It should be kept in mind that. . ." and "Various factors should
be taken into consideration. . ." add nothing to your message and
are best avoided.

The fifth paragraph on page 72 should be your model. In it
I would change only "number of species" to "variety of plants"
and, perhaps, delete "as well as the color scheme," substituting
"change" for "vary" near the end of it. Nonetheless, it is a
good tight paragraph with a style most appropriate for Pacific
Horticulture.

If you will rework the material along these lines, and
suggest a few successful combinations (as well as individual
plants) for baskets, I think the article may prove ideal

209

19 August 1995

To Russ
From George

Herewith a draft in which I have tried to suggest ways of bringing a more
relaxed, conversational tone to the opening of your article. I felt a need to
make more of the earthy images (flowery cottage garden, tropical jungle) and
less of the abstractions (larger regional determinants, seemingly antithetical
models) . In adding passages here and there I may have overdone it, but found
the ideas in them helped in steering the discussion towards the every-day and
away from the formality of academia. If the suggestions help you towards the
voice you found in Browning of the Greensward, then they have served the
purpose, even if you scratch them now.

Let us look at the title, too. Perhaps something less stylistic? Those colonic
headlines reek of academia. Perhaps we could find a plainer one that reaches
towards the ordinary gardener's heart? With the strong trend to naturalism
(Stephen Lacey brings it up in his contribution) maybe something like Your
Eden in a Weed Patch would do? Or Wildf lowers Replace the Greensward? We'll
think of something.

Cheers,

210
Draft with suggestions for Approaching Eden: the Regional Garden in California

With the decline of interest in elaborate Victorian bedding schemes and exces
sive use of exotic specimen plants, garden designers have, since early this
century, been at a loss for direction. At first, a few designers tried to come
to terms with the mediterranean climate and semi -arid landscape, and their
efforts found a kind of harmony adapted to California's climate and landscape
in borrowings from Spanish and Italian architecture and naturalistic gardens
loosely related to the Arts and Crafts Movement.

But there is goal, elusive and ill -defined, that is not satisfied by the
results of this preliminary, tentative search for a style of gardening. The
elements remain imported and reflect more of their lenders than of their bor
rowers. Wonderful as many of these gardens are, little is felt in them of a
sense of home and region. They demonstrate a failure, so far, to come to terms
with the climate and topography of the West in the way that, say, the Spanish
have in their shaded patios and channeled waterways, or the English in their
mid-eighteenth century landscapes blending aesthetics and utility.

Perhaps a regional style will always elude us. Surrounded as we are, like
children at Christmas with too much of everything and insulated by mass -manu
factured diversions, we are denied those experiences of earth, air, and water
from which a shared sense of place emerges. Many are satisfied with the mish
mash of European (mainly English) and Asian styles that constitute garden
design here at present. For them, gardens are highly personal expressions of
human needs, desires, and aspirations, in which the gardener finds a retreat
from the chaos and trauma of a harsh and unwelcoming world. Why should that
garden not be individual --a dream world even -- incorporating whatever ideas

211
the gardener wishes? Why not, they may ask, do as we like?

True enough. Gardening is, after all, the peoples art, and through personal
expression the finest gardens are created. But is there not some higher order
within which we can do as we like? Are there no ecological and social con
straints within which our gardens can express more than self interest or fash
ion? Can our gardens satisfy our fancies and life-styles while also responding
to some larger regional need so that a shared vision may result in greater,
longer lasting satisfaction for all?

Assuming that a regional identity in garden design is possible or even desir
able, recognizing those things that might form it will not be easy wherever in
the West we live. We are coming to see, and are sometimes forced to see, what
does not contribute to our identity: it is not the rolling greensward of moist
temperate climates back East; the flowery water-demanding English cottage
garden; or the Rousseau lushness of a make-believe tropical jungle. Gardeners
here and there in the West have attempted, some with slight success to
make and maintain these gardens, but recognition of their incongruity is slow
ly growing .

The significance of our search is revealed when we step back to look at the
qualities of the region in which we live, the vast changes over the past cen
tury or so that have diminished or forever altered the natural landscape, and
the relentless manner in which we occupy and dominate the place we love. Added
to these are the fires, floods, and rainless winters to remind us of the natu
ral forces that govern our lives.

212

14 September 1995. To Russ Beatty from George re m/s Approaching Eden: The
Regional Garden in California.

Dear Russ:

Here are a few thoughts following our recent discussions on your article. In
the matter of my feeling, and your questioning, that the style is academic in
places, let me mention as examples a few words and phrases that seem stiff,
over- formal, or otherwise out of place for a general readership -- qualities
that I summarize as academic.

Page 1.

Par. 2, line 1: "Today we are searching for that elusive, yet compelling
goal" takes the reader somewhat for granted. Spoken, the phrase would focus
the thoughts of an audience of colleagues and carry them along with you, but
it is a mistake, I believe, to assume on the first page that all readers share
your goal . Following a few pages of persuasion one might perhaps invite them
to do so.

Par. 2, line 6: "seemingly antithetical models" could probably be replaced
with "gardens of both kinds." You were probably led to this phrase by the
sentence's opening "But even here we find obvious disagreement." Following
this familiar scholarly parry in demonstrating familiarity with all sides of
the question, the formality of "antithetical models" becomes almost inevi
table.

Par. 3, line 1: "In our Euro/Anglo -centric dominated world of landscape and
garden design, " seems a somewhat forbidding way of saying, "Throughout the
West, as in most other parts of the country, our gardens reflect European,
especially English, influence and ideas." In later pages you concentrate on
gardens rather than landscape design, which is OK with me. So I felt easy in
omitting landscape design here.

Par. 4, line 5: "responding to some larger regional determinants so that the
synergistic result," would, in some earlier incarnation of yours, I'm sure,
have been said differently. How about "reflecting the surrounding landscape,
our history and community, so that they give greater ..."

Page 2 .

Par. 3, line 2: Does "This statement is interpreted further by the late Wal
lace Stegner in," say more than "Wallace Stegner takes it further in?"

Russ, you implied that readers are more sophisticated than I assume, and will
understand words like synergistic and antithetical. Many will, I know, but
like me, will find their unfamiliarity tiring after a page or so. Simpler,
everyday words are best used if the reader is to enjoy instant rapport with the
writer, and follow him without hesitation into the intricacies of his argu
ment. If you read again the vernacular draft in which I have tried to condense
your intro, please consider the tone of it, rather than the ideas, just to
see whether it seems worthwhile aiming for language of that sort. I know that
you are under considerable pressure, but do want you represented in this
issue, and will do all I can to help resolve these questions to our mutual
satisfaction.

213

Cynthia Simley

151 East Noble Street

Stockton CA 95204-4522

8 August 1994

Dear Ms Simley:

Thank you for your letter of 27 July about your plans for a nocturnal garden.

Mildred Mathias is away and has asked me to reply for her.

Your ideas for the garden are most original, and seem to call for artistic
rather than horticultural or botanical aptitude. I can't help feeling that,
whatever help you find, the success of the project will depend upon experiment
and your own sensitivity.

My own experience of gardens in the evening suggests that pale flowers --
white, cream, pale yellow and pale blue -- will reflect moonlight more effec
tively than those of any other color. Moonlight has little red in it, if any,
and colors such as crimson and scarlet, that reflect nothing but red light
will look dull in your proposed garden. Colors that incline to red, such as
mauve and magenta, would suffer similarly and are probably best avoided, too.
Many white flowers are pollinated by moths and release their scent at night,
so your nocturne may be played with accompaniment.

For patterns I suspect you would rely mostly upon leaves,- among them the
choice is wide, and limited only by climate and space. This will change as
plants grow, and allowance must be made for this. From the delicate tracery
of Japanese maples, especially the cut-leaf kinds, to the huge perforations of
monsteras (Swiss cheese plant) , you need only visit a respectable nursery to
see the possibilities open to you. Plants with gray and silvery leaves may
serve in two ways -- reflecting moonlight as do pale flowers, and making
shadows, too. Many with gray and silver leaves are herbaceous plants one to
three feet tall, and may need raising in pots and baskets for shadow play.

When the moon is at its highest most shadows will be thrown by leaves overhead
onto the ground, and plenty of pale paving or gravel will be needed to capture
them. Finely cut leaves show better shadows on smooth surfaces; large leaves
will work on almost anything including gravel. Finding out what gives the best
effect will take a while and be easiest with plants in pots; that way you can
move them about experimentally, planting them only when you're satisfied.

Experiment will be the essence of your new garden. It is an artistic endeavor
that will depend upon a personal response to the effects you create; some will
bring an emotional response, others will not, and be discarded. I doubt if
anyone has written on plants used in quite the way you envision. Peter Lower,
author of several garden books who lives in South Carolina, wrote on gardens
in the evening recently. I don't have the book, and can't give you the exact
title, but I'm sure your public library will find it for you. It came out in
the past three years, and may still be in book shops.

As for student help, perhaps it would be best to approach a local college such
as the University of the Pacific (I believe that's what it's called) which is
in your own town. They may even have a department of horticulture.

Please let me know of your progress.

Sincerely,

214

13 November 1988

Nevin Smith
358 Merck Road
Watsonville, CA 95076

Dear Nevin:

How is the arctostaph. project now? I know how difficult the job is and wish
that I could help in bringing it to completion. More immediate jobs are always
waiting to be done and repeatedly distract from longer term things like this
one. But you said in your last letter that much of it is done, and I was
greatly encouraged. Perhaps this is a good time to consider a new date to
shoot for.

What about April? That leaves time to collect any new photographs that are
needed and, given the wet winter we all pray for, allows plenty of evenings by
the stove for the writing!

Is there anything I can do from here? Should I be ready to get photographs in
February? And do you need more frequent messages from me to help keep the
project in mind? Just let me know; I do appreciate the size of the task and
the difficulty of pulling it off along with earning the daily bread. I pers
ist, despite allthis, because it is an important article, greatly needed
inhorticultural circles.

With my best wishes to you,

215

10 October 1994

Nevin Smith
358 Merck Road
Watsonville, CA 95076

Dear Nevin:

The manzanita article is splendid! Congratulations on a tremendous task well
done. Here is a copy of the manuscript prepared for typesetting. Please mark
it up with any changes you feel are needed. Try to ignore the symbols in
square brackets; I'm sure you'll recognize them as signals for a computerized
type setting machine. Little has changed from your original, but you may like
to have my thoughts on reading it and reasons for the few suggestions incorpo
rated in this copy.

I/ Grey or gray: we adopted the spelling "gray" some years ago, and must be
consistent from issue to issue and within each issue.

2/ Clone: a widely and loosely used word imperfectly understood by readers. I
urge its replacement with "plants," or if that is not appropriate, with another
word or phrase that avoids ambiguity.

3/ Selection and population: in this context, more familiar to you than to
readers. I suspect that many see them as jargon. The phrase "a plant selected
from the wild" is clear but used alone as a noun the word selection leaves a
shadow of doubt in the lay reader's mind. "Selection" and "clone" are used
by some to avoid repetition of the word plant. I feel that losing the reader
is too great a risk for so small a gain. The word plant is simple, unambigu
ous, and its frequent use inevitable in an article on plants.

4/ Fungous: the New Shorter Oxford discriminates between fungous and fungus,
but Webster's Unabridged (2nd ed.) doesn't. Fungous will therefore be seen as
a Britishism, to which I am understandably sensitive.

5/ Subspecies and variety: taxonomists have abandoned all pretense of knowing
one from the other. We have therefore abandoned use of terms such as var . and
subsp. in favor of simply appending the trinomial without introduction. (Why
not, after all, since we don't insert sp. between generic and specific names?)

6/ Acknowledgements: to lessen the impression, already too common, that PH is
a scholarly journal we omit formal acknowledgements along with lists of refer
ences . I hope you feel that mention in the text is sufficient acknowledgement .

7/ Fuzzy: first appearing in quotes on page seven, the use sounds slangy.
Replacing it with furry, as used elsewhere, is clearer.

8/ Title: shall we add "a Gardeners Guide" to link up with your survey of
ceanothus?

9/ Vandenberg: your informal use of this name for a plant of A. purissima is
best deleted in view of the perhaps authentic A. rudis cultivar of that name
mentioned later. Or is neither a true cultivar and single quotes around the
name unintended?

Many thanks ,

216

Illustrations

I will attempt to run the text complete in one issue along with perhaps a
dozen pictures in color. I can do no less for such a monumental effort! From a
preliminary selection of your slides I have the following list chosen for
variety of habitat and subject, as well as pictorial and technical quality,
and probable impact on the page .

1ARC-002, 2ARC-005, 3ARC-007. These are garden and habitat shots, the first
shows A. ' Pt Reyes ' in Strybing Arb. I would prefer to show a private garden
such as is seen in -005 (Peggy Greer's), but the composition in -002 has so
much more depth and interest. The second shows low-growing A. hookeri at Elk-
horn, the other tree-like A. manzanita in the Napa Hills.

3ARC-002, 3ARC-008, 4ARC-004, 4ARC-005. All four are taken fairly close-up
and have fine modeling: green fruit of A. manzanita, russet of A. glauca, and
red- cheeked of A. tomentosa, plus A. uva ursi in flower and rich red fruit.

1ARC-010, 2ARC009. The first of these shows the rich brown bark of A. glauca
in Henry Coe State Park, the second pink tinted young leaves of A. glandulosa.
The bark picture is critically sharp somewhere near the middle of the bush,
which leaves the prominent trunks a little soft in focus, but used small this
will not be too obvious.

1ARC-001, 4ARC-007. Both are of A. viscida below Shaver Lake showing gray
leaves and pink flowers. I have yet to decide between them; the sharper has
shadow within the plant, which is slightly more distant and lacking detail,
the other, though softer in focus, has a more intriguingly mysterious back
ground.

1ARC-013, 1ARC-014, 2ARC-009. The first shows aphid gall, the second
botriosphaeria. Both worth using unless you feel the need to displace them
with pictures of other species or cultivars.

I had in mind using pictures of Gaultheria and Comanostaphylis, but realized
that they would displace pictures of manzanitas, which are more important.

There is also a picture of a large cluster of flowers on A. pajaroensis. Wayne
showed me a plant in a Berkeley garden that he thought remarkable, so I
photographed it with a 60mm camera. I mention it because of the detail
captured in the larger format. We could use it if you feel it worthwhile.

217

14 August 1992

Elizabeth Stromme
2411 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles CA 90026

Dear Ms Stromme:

Thank you for your interesting letter of August 7. Your stories on horticul
tural themes certainly break new ground and it must be dismaying to find
publishers reluctant to help cultivate it. But their 's is a conservative pro
fession, so patience is needed in dealing with it.

My contacts in book publishing are few, and those I have confirm the hazardous
nature of the business. Atlantic Monthly Press published a number of excellent
garden books of literary rather than exclusively practical merit: the editor
now works on Harrowsmith magazine and the AMP gardening department is no more.

On the brighter side: You are probably familiar with John Sherwood's crime
stories in which the detective work is done by Celia Grant, owner of a nursery
in England through which a great deal of esoteric plant lore is worked into
his plots. I enjoyed his Green Trigger Finger, and Botanist at Bay, but none
of the others have yet come my way. Grant seems to have a loyal following and
I would expect that Scribner ' s Sons, the US publishers, might now be recep
tive to further horticultural themes.

David Godine, a small publisher in Boston, has a list of lesser known authors
in high quality editions. Godine is himself a keen gardener and wants to
extend his publishing further into that field. It may be worth your while
sounding him out .

Timber press, in Portland, Oregon, tends heavily towards instructional books,
but has now and then done things such as Bellis' Gardening and Beyond, a sort
of private philosophical excursion into plants that may suggest Timber's wil
lingness to consider unusual manuscripts.

Sending a copy of one chapter and an outline of the story to all of these, and
to any other publishers who may possibly be interested, seems the way to
proceed -- tedious, but probably essential if you no longer retain an agent.
There certainly is no royal road to success here. Endurance seems the import
ant quality to bring to the task.

I wish I were able to give more help, but offer my best wishes and the hope
that you prevail soon.

Sincerely,

218
19 August 1993

Elizabeth Stromme
2411 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles CA 90026

Dear Ms Stromme :

It has taken me a while to respond, I'm afraid, and I must ask you to forgive
me. In some odd way several manuscripts came along at the same time, and have
had to be put aside for a lull in the production schedule.

The Gardens of the Villa Val d'Or blends taxonomy with garden lore and travel.
It is a fine idea, plant names being too painful for most people to
contemplate, and your sugar coating certainly helps down the taxonomic pill.
It is also enjoyable reading, but the story leans more towards travel, and I
would think that magazines with departments devoted to vacations would be
pleased to see it. Wasn't a new mag. launched recently blending travel and
gardens?

I've looked for ways to deal with taxonomy in PH, but among several ideas
proposed and manuscripts submitted, have found nothing that meets our
particular need. Most are too dull for words or are condescending. I have no
better ideas of my own, and so the subject languishes. Should I try harder?

Thank you for your continued interest in Pacific Horticulture .
Sincerely,

219

4 October 1996

Elizabeth Stromme
2411 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles CA 90026

Dear Elizabeth:

Thank you for your letter and enclosure of 30 September. I had read the Tulipa
saxatilis article in TSCG and was touched by the similarity it showed to my
own experience of that tulip. I first saw it in Frederick Stern's garden,
Highdown, in England, where it had naturalized and traveled great distances.
Apparently the bulbs are somewhat rhizomatous.

My own attempts to cultivate the tulip in a garden further north in England
failed. Here in Berkeley Marjorie Schmidt had a small field of it which
suggested that it could become a nuisance. But I put in a few bulbs and am
enjoying them. So far they are well behaved, inhibited, I suspect, by shade
from Magnolia stellata. Last year I was obliged to trim the magnolia, which
was interfering with the dome of Acer palmatum dissectum. This may give the
tulip a chance to colonize the neighborhood, but that may not be such a
disaster .

Your article reminds us that some wild tulips are preferable to the enlarged
Dutch ones. (I'm reminded of William T. Stearn who, during an after-dinner
conversation in London, amused everyone with a comparison of Turkish and
Dutch national preferences in tulips as they reflect cultural concepts of
feminine beauty.) Enjoyable as your story is, I prefer not to reprint it. For
PH the tone needs to be a little more earnest. And as a rule I avoid reprints,
having succumbed only rarely.

But if you should feel the urge to spill more ink sometime, do keep me in

mind.

Sincerely,

220
25 August 1997

Louise Bustard, Assistant Curator *
Information and Customer Services
Glasgow Botanic Gardens
730 Great Western Road
Glasgow G12 DUE SCOTLAND

Dear Louise:

It's wonderful to hear from you and to learn of new developments in your

:ment at the botanic garden. I'm sure you'll make a splendid success of
new exhibitions. Pierre Emile L'Angelier's sorry fate is an irresistible
story to work into the exhibit in some way. You'll not want to play it up too

course, lest your visitors think they're at Madame Tussaud's Wax
works, but it doesn't hurt to have a little scandal to tickle the public appe-

for knowledge. Perhaps you could make use of Pierre's fate by linking it
with the introduction to a display of plants in the garden from which alterna-
ive poisons (less easily diagnosed than arsenic?) are extracted -- unless you
think it may cause an epidemic of passed-on paramours!

And beware lest your sneaking admiration for Madelaine be put down by your

-leagues to the subconscious operation of the spider principle by which
post-copulatory males in some species are disposable!

Talking of disposables, I am no longer the editor of Pacific Horticulture

the Fall '97 issue is still on its way to you, but in it you will 'find
my fond farewells to contributors, readers, and others who made my task
possible and pleasant. I stepped down because I feel that a draft of youthful
energy is needed to propel the magazine into the next century Letters of
thanks and congratulations from many parts of the world have been surprising
:eply affecting in their numbers and the warmth of their kindness.

Your epilobium m/s is an excellent idea, plants of the genus being widespread
Epilobium angustifolium and other species, brought by accident or design from

long ago are naturalized here, and viewed with admiration or disgust
according to one's partiality for displaced natives. I will pass it on to the
new editor, but before I do so, would like to make one or two suggestions for
amendment :

In a mention of WWII bomb damage in London ' s Natural History (1945) , by RSR
Fitter,* there is a brief section (pages 230-34) on the work of EJ Salisbury

JE Lousely who are said to have surveyed these areas and published papers
on their findings. (Separately, I assume, but other details aren't given ) In
summarizing the surveys Fitter attributes the frequency of rose bay willow-
herb on derelict sites to the abundance and mobility of its seed. There is no
mention of it having lain dormant under buildings. This does not preclude the
possibility that there was more than one source of seed, but does point to the
need for confirmation, and perhaps a substantiating reference.

-Louise was working at Kew Gardens when she
wrote two articles for Pacific Horticulture.
This letter was in response to her draft for
another, on willow herb, or fireweed. The
letter includes ne^ of her appointment at Glasgow
Botanic Garden and plans for new exhibits there,
and I comment on these, too.

221

Fitter also mentions an increase in the occurrence of elephant hawk-moths,
whose larvae feed on willow herb leaves. This reminded me that, about the time
I moved to Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, it was said that elephant hawk-moths
were becoming rare because willow herb was almost eradicated by herbicides and
by new building at the fringes of woodland where the herb was thickest. This
was, of course, almost thirty years after the end of the war -- plenty of time
for a plenty-to-poverty cycle, especially in this era of rapid change. I think
your story would gain greatly from mention of the elephant hawk-moth, one of
the handsomest of its kind in Britain, and from some sort of comparison of
possible sources of willow-herb seed on bomb sites. If seed longevity proves
to be invalid as an explanation for it, then the story passes into the realm
of folk-lore --an idea attractive in the circumstances to Londoners at that
time that is worth including in the article on that basis.

Your opening paragraph is not appropriate for Pacific Horticulture and could
be deleted and the two following condensed. A brief mention of the blitz, the
extensive damage done, and the many sites, cleared but left vacant in some
cases for several years, would be sufficient to introduce willow herb as a
sort of symbol of resolution and good cheer. In these cynically grasping times
mention of the defiant spirit of the people, however true, is best avoided.

I hope you will be able to find the time to make these few changes. If you
would like my opinion on the new version, by all means send it to me.
Otherwise you should note the new man's name and address: Richard G Turner,
4101 Twenty-Fourth Street, San Francisco CA 94114 USA. When the Fall '97 issue
comes your way you will find him listed inside the front cover and in a formal
announcement on page 64.

Looking forward to hearing from you again soon.
Yours ,

* An early volume in that fine series published for many years by Collins
called The New Naturalist. I am proud of my long run of them, extending beyond
number fifty, which is on plant pollination, I believe. Those shelves are in
another room, so this near-enough number will have to do. Is the series still
running? George.

222

January 2000
HORTICULTURE, BOTANY, AND LANDSCAPE DESIGN

The following interviews related to landscape architecture, garden
design, horticulture, and botany have been completed by the Regional Oral
History Office. Through tape recorded autobiographical interviews with
scholars and professionals in these fields, individuals working in a wide
range of gardens and arboreta, and members of native plant conservation
groups, we are documenting over a half -century of growth and change in wild
and cultivated California and the West. The interviews, transcribed,
indexed, and bound, may be ordered at cost for deposit in research
libraries.

Individual Memoirs

BANCROFT, Ruth (b. 1908), The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek.
California: Creation in 1971, and Conservation. 1993, 149 pp. Interviews
with the owner-designer of a four-acre dry garden in Walnut Creek,
California, the Ruth Bancroft Garden, the first garden designated under The
Garden Conservancy.

BRACELIN, N. Floy, The Ynes Mexia Botanical Collections. 1982, 25 pp. An
interview with N. Floy Bracelin on the Mexia botanical collection and on
Mrs. Mexia 's Mexican and South American expeditions. Interview conducted
by botanist Annetta Carter.

CARMAN, Edward S. (b. 1922), Pacific Coast Nurseryman. Award-Winning
Horticulturalist, and Historian. 1998, 195 pp. Peninsula nurseryman
discusses area nursery history, introduction of the kiwi and other New
Zealand imports, propagation of rare and unusual plants, and the
horticultural community.

CONSTANCE, Lincoln (b. 1909), Versatile Berkeley Botanist; Plant Taxonomy
and University Governance. 1987, 362 pp. Dean and botanist discusses
research in the biosystematics of umbellif erae ; recollections of colleagues
and graduate students.

DOMOTO, Toichi (b. 1902), A Japanese-American Nurseryman's Life in
California: Floriculture and Family. 1883-1992. 1993, 360 pp. Life story
of eminent nurseryman, tree, shrub, and flower breeder, bonsai
practitioner; family, education, experience of racial discrimination;
membership in California nursery and horticultural groups.

GREGG, John W. (1880-1969), Landscape Architect. 1965, 182 pp. First head
of the Department of Landscape Architecture at UC Berkeley, professor from
1913-1946, talks about the relationship of landscape design to architecture
in the early days of the profession.

223

ISENBERG, Gerda (1901-1997), California Native Plants Nurseywoman. Civil
Rights Activist, and Humanitarian. 1991, 150 pp. History, through
interviews with owner- founder, of Yerba Buena Nursery, a California native
plant and exotic fern nursery in Woodside, California.

LAWYER, Adele (b. 1918) and Lewis (b. 1907), Lawyers. Inc; Partners in
Plant Pathology. Horticulture, and Marriage. 1990, 273 pp. Husband and
wife plant pathologists discuss research work for Del Monte Corp.;
developments in fruit and vegetable varieties; breeding Pacific Coast
native iris.

MCCASKILL, June (b. 1930), Herbarium Scientist. University of California.
Davis. 1989, 83 pp. Discussion of curatorial functions, and public service
role, of the UC Davis Herbarium, 1935-1988.

PEARCE, F. Owen (1897-1994), California Garden Societies and Horticultural
Publications. 1947-1990. 1990, 86 pp. Founding of Strybing Arboretum
Society; editing California Horticultural Journal; membership in garden
organizations, and memoirs of plantsmen. Interviews conducted by Adele and
Lewis Lawyer.

RODERICK, Wayne (b. 1920), California Native Plantsman; UC Botanical
Garden, Tilden Botanic Garden. 1991, 166 pp. Family history and career of
lifelong gardener, nurseryman; head of California section, UC Berkeley
Botanical Garden, 1960-1976; head, East Bay Regional Parks Botanic Garden,
1976-1983.

ROTH, Lurline Matson (1890-1985), Matson and Roth Family History; A Love of
Ships, Horses, and Gardens. 1982, 271 pp. History through interviews of
landmark estate, "Filoli," house and gardens in Woodside California; Matson
family history. Includes interview with horticulturist Toichi Domoto.

SCOTT, Geraldine Knight (1904-1989), A Woman in Landscape Architecture in
California. 1926-1989. 1990, 235 pp. Distinguished practitioner's
personal statement of her education and career choices; private practice
for over thirty years, clients and convictions; lecturing in UC Berkeley's
Department of Landscape Architecture.

WATERS, W. GEORGE (b. 1925), English Garden History. Western Gardening, and
Creating and Editing Pacific Horticulture. 2000, 229 pp. The earlier
careers and horticultural interests that led to a British gardener's re-
envisioning and editing of the esteemed journal, Pacific Horticulture;
detailed consideration of the journal's contents.

WIESLANDER, A. E. (1890-1992), California Forester; Mapper of Wildland
Vegetation and Soils. 1985, 316 pp. Forestry management, education; soil
and vegetation studies, mapping; native plants, and manzanita specimen
plantings; history of East Bay Regional Parks Botanic Garden.

224

Multi- interview Volumes

BLAKE ESTATE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT. 1988, 582 pp. Interviews with family
members, architects and landscape architects, gardeners, staff, and two
presidents of the University of California to document the history of Blake
House, since 1967 the University's presidential residence, and the Blake
Garden, a ten-acre horticultural mecca utilized as a teaching facility.

Interviews with Mai Arbegast, Igor Blake, Ron and Myra Brocchini, Toichi
Domoto, Elliot and Elizabeth Evans, Anthony Hail, Linda Haymaker, Charles
Hitch, Florence Holmes, Clark and Catherine Kerr, Janice Kittredge,
Geraldine Knight Scott, Louis Stein, George and Helena Thacher, Walter
Vodden, and Norma Wilier.

CALIFORNIA WOMEN IN BOTANY. 1987, 177 pp. Interviews with botanist
Annetta Carter on the UC Berkeley Herbarium, 1930s to 1980s; Mary DeDecker,
botanist and conservationist, on the desert flora of the Owens Valley
region; Elizabeth McClintock, botanist, on the California Academy of
Sciences Herbarium, collecting and interpretation, and conservation of rare
native species of the San Francisco Bay Area.

THOMAS D. CHURCH, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT. Two volumes, 1978, 800 pp. A study
of Thomas Dolliver Church (1902-1978), landscape architect, through
interviews with colleagues in architecture and landscape architecture,
staff, clients and friends, landscape contractors and nurserymen, and with
Elizabeth Roberts Church.

Volume I: Interviews with Theodore Bernardi, Lucy Butler, June Meehan
Campbell, Louis DeMonte, Walter Doty, Donn Emmons, Floyd Gerow, Harriet
Henderson, Joseph Howland, Ruth Jaffe, Burton Litton, Germane Milono,
Miriam Pierce, George Rockrise, Robert Royston, Geraldine Knight Scott,
Roger Sturtevant, Francis Violich, and Harold Watkin.

Volume II: Interviews with Maggie Baylis, Elizabeth Roberts Church, Robert
Glasner, Grace Hall, Lawrence Halprin, Proctor Mellquist, Everitt Miller,
Harry Sanders, Lou Schenone, Jack Stafford, Goodwin Steinberg, and Jack
Wagstaff .

LESTER ROWNTREE, CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT WOMAN. 1979, 344 pp. Memoir
about Lester Rowntree (1878-1979), horticulturist, naturalist, and seed
collector. Interviews with horticulturists, botanists, and family members:
Margaret Campbell, Skee Hamann, Heidi Rowntree Melas, Robert Ornduff, James
Roof, Cedric Rowntree, Harriette Rowntree, Lester Rowntree, Lester Bradford
Rowntree, Nancy Rowntree, Rowan Rowntree, and Jo Stallard.

225

Volunteer Interviews

Interviews conducted by volunteer oral historian Mary Mead with the
following five individuals relating to various periods and issues in the
history of the California Native Plant Society.

BURR, Joyce E. (b. 1912), Memories of Years Preceding and During the
Formation of the California Native Plant Society. 1947-1966. 1992, x, 120
pp. Botanic Garden site controversy, James Roof, William Penn Mott, Jr.;
CNPS founding; G. Ledyard Stebbins, Alice Howard, Susan Fruge, Mary
Wohlers; Huckleberry Trail, Citizens of Urban Wilderness Areas.

FLEMING, Jenny (b. 192A), Memories of the California Native Plant Society
During and After Its Formation. 1955-Present. 1993, x, 108 pp. Personal
interest in conservation, landscaping with native plants; CNPS plant sale,
fund-raising; Bay Chapter since 1976; Tilden Botanic Garden Volunteers,
Rare Plant Project; Sierra Club, US Forest Service.

STEBBINS, G. Ledyard (b. 1906), The Life and Work of George Ledyard
Stebbins, Jr. , 1993, vi, 145 pp. Developmental genetics, research in
perennial grasses, Davis herbarium; CNPS Sacramento Chapter, and state
presidency: Rare Plant Project, field trips, coordinating council, members;
endangered species, North Coast-Central Valley Bio-Diversity Transect;
Botanical Society, Friends of the UC Davis Arboretum, Botanical Congresses.

STROHMAIER, Leonora H. (b. 1911), Memories of Years Preceding and During
the Formation of the California Native Plant Society. 1955-1973, 1992, ix,
83 pp. Ph.D. in plant physiology, work in food technology; marriage to
Erwin Strohmaier; role of Berkeley Garden Club and Regional Parks
Association in creation of CNPS, and CNPS early years.

WOLFE, Myrtle R. (b. 1904), Memories of Early Years and Development of the
California Native Plant Society. 1966-1991. 1991, x, 92 pp. CNPS founding,
and crises of fires, freezes; East Bay Regional Parks District; Tilden
Botanic Garden; UC Berkeley Department of Botany, and Botanic Garden; James
Roof, Wayne Roderick, other CNPS members.

226

INDEX--W. George Waters

Abell, Richard, 117

American Association of Botanical

Gardens and Arboreta, 174-175
American Gardener, 119
American Horticultural Society,

115, 119
American Iris Society, 142, 145

Baker, Herbert, 75

Bancroft, Ruth, 98, 178; Ruth

Bancroft Garden, 47
Bates, Michael, 128-129, 131
Beatty, Russell, 77, 104-105, 134
Begg, Virginia Lopez, 144
Bevin, Ernest, 10
Boutin, Fred, 68
British Iris Society, Mercia Group,

44, 57-61, 80, 145
Brooklyn Botanic Garden,

publications, 115
Brown, Emily, 68, 176
Burr, Charles, 68, 143
Butterfield, Harry, 143

Curtis 's Botanical Magazine, 94

Davidsonia, 153

Descanso Gardens, 99

Desmond, Ray, 34, 42

Dhanna Press, 70, 93, 101, 103

Doerflinger, Frederick, 42

Donohue, Marcia, 128, 137, 163

Dunmire, Dick, 178

English garden traditions, 3, 4;

garden shows, 38-41
Evening Dawn Graphics, 120
Farwig, Stan, 144
Fremontia, 69, 108
Fricker, Laurence, 35
Friends of Pacific Horticulture,

96-99
Friends of San Francisco Parks and

Recreation, 148
Fruge, August, 103-104
Fruge, Susan, 103

Cabot, Frank, 47

California Academy of Science, 63,

68
California Horticultural Journal,

64-65, 143
California Horticultural Society,

63-67, 70, 92-93, 105, 147-150
California Native Plant Society,

103, 108

Carman, Ed, 143-144
Chelsea Garden Show, 163-164
Chez Panisse, Berkeley, 117-118
Clark, Bob, 130-131
Collingridge, publishers, 122
Conklin, Bob, 117-119, 124
Connelly, Kevin, 137
Country Life, publishers, 122
Cowden, Bob, 81-82

Garden Club of America, 148, 171-

172, 175-176

Garden Conservancy, 47-48
Garden History Society, 34-36, 42-

47, 51-52, 63, 136, 143, 161
Garden Writers Association of

America, 176-177
Gayton, Sharyn and Walt, 120
Girard, Victor, 144
Godine, David, 124-125
Greentree, Carol, 137
Greyfriars Glass Company, 59-61

Hadfield, Miles, 35, 52, 63
Hand, Harland, 68, 93, 134
Harlow, Nora, 108-111
Harper, Pamela, 137

227

Harrell, Dave, 109-110, 120

Harvey, John, 143

Hawken, Paul, 91

Hawkins, Lester, 104-106, 125-128

Hayakawa, Margedant, 67-69, 73-74,

88, 91, 95, 97-101, 103-104, 108
Hellyer, Arthur, 51-52, 173
Heritage Rose Society, 145
Hildreth, Richard, 67-69, 101
Hillier's Nursery, 50-51
Holt, Saxon, 170
Horticulture, 78-79, 87-88, 131,

170
Hunt Institute for Botanical

Documentation [at Carnegie Mellon

University] , 172
Hunt, Peter Francis, 35
Hyde, Henry, 143
Hyman, Laurence, 69, 73, 120, 174

Jekyll, Gertrude, 144

Kees, Karen, 113

King, Percy, 48

Knight, Leo, 55-57

Kodak, Ltd., 27, 29-33, 43-44, 50,
55, 60

Lacy, Allen, 137, 160-162
Lancaster, Roy, 51

Lane, Laurence W. , Sr., and Jr., 90
Lawrence, Elizabeth, 143, 161
Leonard Coates Nursery, 143
Lutsko, Ron, Jr., 134

Markwett, Helen, 68

Marshall, Elizabeth, 95, 97, 101

Martin, William Keble, 36

Mason, David, 135

Mathias, Mildred, 75

McClintock, Elizabeth, 68, 75, 111,

143, 155

McKeag, Michael, 135
Medallion Graphics, 109, 120
Mitchell, Sydney, 65-66, 70, 114

Monrovia Nursery, 88, 90

New Plantsman (Royal Horticultural

Society journal) , 118-119
New Yorker magazine, 111
Newton, Peter, 107, 128, 130
Norman Trust, 97

Ollbrich, Marshall, 106, 143
Ornduff, Robert, 75, 111
Orwell, George, 153
Osborne, Mimi, 91

Oxhey Horticultural Society, 38-40,
52-53

Pacific Horticultural Foundation,
65-67, 72, 74, 93, 97, 100, 112,
136, 147, 149, 176

Pacific Horticulture, 64ff-178;
advertisers, 87-90; and
landscape architects, 77-78,
104-107, 128-135; attention to
climate, 76-77; audience, 82-
85; bamboos, 160; book reviews,
114-117; circulation objectives,
102-103, 119; designing an issue,
155-157; editing, 110-111;
editorial committee, 74-75;
editorial succession, 112;
editorial voice, 85-87, 113-114;
format committee, 67-68, 72;
funding, 93-99, and See Pacific
Horticulture Foundation and
Friends of Pacific Horticulture;
gardening fads, 80-82; index,
159; inside cover, 173-174;
Journal Revision Committee, See
format committee; Mediterranean
gardens, 125-128; nursery
history, 143-144; photography,
121, 168-173; promotions, 91-92;
travel, 92

Pacific Horticulture Book of Western
Gardening, 123-125

Park Seed Company, 92, 94, 96

Pasadena Garden Club, 175

228

Payne, Theodore, 144

Pearce, Owen, 64-65, 67-68, 111,

168

Perenyi, Eleanor, 160-161
Prentice, Helaine Kaplan, 125
Purdy, Carl, 143

Quiller-Couch, Arthur, 153

Raiche, Roger, 128, 132

Raphael, Sandra, 42

Reiter, Victor, 67, 104-105, 136,

141, 147

Rollins, Betty and Fitz, 105
Rowntree, Lester, 144
Royal Horticultural Society [RHS] ,

39, 42-43, 78-80, 115, 118-119,

143, 147-148, 176
Royal Horticultural Society Journal,

78-79, 118-119, 134, 163

San Francisco Landscape Design

shows, 148
Sanecki, Kay, 42
Schmidt, Marjorie, 98
Sedenko, Jerry, 115
Skaggs Foundation, 95, 97
Smith & Hawken, 91
Smith, Susan, i-iii, 92
Southern California Horticultural

Institute, 66, 93
Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust,

94

Stearn, William, 44
Strong, Roy, 44
Strybing Arboretum, 128; Helen

Crocker Russell Library, 171
Strybing Arboretum Society, 66, 93,

115, 148-149
Suburban Press, 103
Sunset magazine, 70, 83, 87, 90,

107, 115, 159, 170, 178; Sunset

Western Gardening Book, 115

Talbert, Pat, 113, 158-159

Taylor, George, 94-95
The Garden magazine, 78-79, 163
Thomas, Graham Stuart, 136, 143
Timber Press, 117-119, 122, 124
Turner, Dick, 112, 131

University of British Columbia,

Botanical Garden, 153
University of California Botanical

Garden, 132; Friends of the

Botanical Garden, 65
University of California Press,

103-104, 120

Van deKamp, Georgie,
Vertrees, J.D., 117

97-99

Walter Clarke Nursery, 143
Waters, Dorothy, 2, 5, 9-10, 14
Waters, Edward, 2, 9, 12-13
Waters, Olive Rice, 59-62, 65, 68,
71, 95, 120, 142, 150, 163-167,
176, 187-189a

Waters, W. George: Berkeley garden,
163-167; bicycling, 4-5, 9-10,
13, 22, 139-142, 145-147; books
and libraries, 9, 20, 34, 38,
65; conscientious objector
status, 8-12ff, 21; debating,
16-19, 102, 141, 151-152;
editing, 73-74, 83, 109, 111,
124; education, 5-6; employment
at Cable and Wireless Company,
6-7, 14-15, Dolcis Shoes, 14-16,
Burroughs Wellcome Company, 12,
16-19, laboratory work, 22-23,
trainee teacher, 20-21,
Northhampton Polytechnic, 23-24,
British Whiting Research
Laboratory, 25-26, and See
Kodak, Ltd.; family 1-5;
gardening business in Berkeley,
61-64; gardens in England, 27-
29, 38-40, 48-50, 54-55, 57-58;
Kings Langley, flint house, 55-
58; men in gardens, 3-4;

229

Waters, W. George (cont'd.),
motorbiking, 26-27, 55; on
garden books, 34-37, 65, 114-
118, 122-125; photography, 33,
168-173; reading, 151-152, 161-
163; recent writing for PH, 128-
133; trade unionism, 8-10, 23-
24; truck farming, 21-22;
writing tips, 151-155; WWII,
London, 7-8, 11-15, 19

Waters, William Ernest, Iff -14

West, Pat, 88

Western Hills Nursery, 106

Western Horticultural Society, 66,
93

White, Alfred, 39-40, 52

White, Katherine, 160

Wilkinson, Elizabeth, 135

Williamson, Joe, 70

Wilson, Jim, 176

Winter rowd, Wayne, 131

Woodford Press, 120

Yew & Non-Yew: A Guide to

Horticultural Climbers, 80-91

Suzanne Bassett Riess

Grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Goucher College, B.A. in English, 1957.
Post-graduate work in English and art history,
University of London and the University of California,
Berkeley.

Feature writer and assistant woman's page editor,
Globe-Times, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Oakland Museum natural science decent and chairman,
Council on Architecture. Free-lance photographer and
gardener.

Editor in the Regional Oral History Office since 1960,
interviewing in the fields of architecture, art,
social and cultural history, horticulture, journalism,
photography, physics, Berkeley and University history.

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