Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
California Horticulture Oral History Series
Edward S. Carman
PACIFIC COAST NURSERYMAN, AWARD-WINNING HORTICULTURALIST, AND HISTORIAN
With an Introduction by
Angel Guerzon
Interviews Conducted by
Suzanne B. Riess
in 1997
Copyright © 1998 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 Edward S.
Carman dated March 21, 1997. 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 and to
the Sierra Club. 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 Edward S. Carman requires 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:
Edward S. Carman, "Pacific Coast
Nurseryman, Award-Winning
Horticulturalist, and Historian," an oral
history conducted in 1997 by Suzanne B.
Riess, Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 1998.
Copy no.
Ed Carman, photographed in his nursery by Suzanne B.
Riess, 1997. Top, Ed with a trough containing
Scleranthus biflorus; middle, Ed removing the form
from a trough he has made; bottom, Ed weeding the
Rhodohypoxis baueri.
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CARMAN*
NURSERY
Cataloging information
CARMAN, Edward S. (b. 1922) Nurseryman
Pacific Coast Nurseryman, Award-Winning Horticulturist, and Historian, 1998,
vi, 195 pp.
Carman history in the Los Gatos area, founding Carman's Nursery in 1937;
Peninsula nursery history, businesses, impact of WWII; Ed and Jean Carman's
nursery since 1946, the role of the family; successful introduction of the
kiwi vine from New Zealand, 1968: Trevor Davies, shipping arrangements, the
market, other imports, Rhodohypoxis ; travel, photography, and English
connections; wisteria, and Toichi Domoto; Victor Reiter and other northern
California plantsmen, plant propagators; horticultural society affiliations:
American Rock Garden Society, Western Horticultural Society, California
Horticultural Society, Saratoga Horticultural Foundation, and others;
California Association of Nurserymen, awards and honors; active role in Los
Gatos community; aspects of running a thriving nursery business and plant
inventory.
Introduction by Angel Guerzon, UC Santa Cruz Arboretum.
Interviewed 1997 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 Ed Carman.
American Rock Garden Society, Western Chapter
California Association of Nurserymen, Peninsula Chapter
Western Horticultural Society
Toichi Domoto Horticultural Oral History Fund
Wayne Roderick
TABLE OF CONTENTS--Edward S. Carman
INTRODUCTION by Angel Guerzon i
INTERVIEW HISTORY ±±±
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION vi
I CARMAN FAMILY HISTORY, LOS GATOS AND EARLIER 1
II CARMAN'S NURSERY, 1937-WARTIME
Peninsula Nursery History 6
Wartime, Tomatoes 8
Cans, Pots, Stone Sinks 10
Advisors, Organizations, Customers 12
III ED'S MOTHER, AND ED'S EDUCATION 15
Childhood Memories of Hayward 16
Lexington School, and Time out for Fishing 17
Los Gatos High School 20
IV WORLD WAR II
80th Division Headquarters 22
Photographing War's Destruction 24
V CARMAN'S NURSERY, 1946-1970
In Boom Times, and Since 27
Specialization, Kiwi Vines 31
Fungicides, Labor 33
Ethnicity in the Nursery Business 35
C.A.N. 37
VI KIWI AND OTHER INTRODUCTIONS 41
Trevor Davies, New Zealand 41
Shipping Arrangements 44
Creating a Market 45
First Kiwi Shipment, 1968 47
Into Production, 1970s 51
A Trip to New Zealand in 1972, and Returning with Rhodohypoxis 55
Other Imports 58
English Connections, and Further Afield, 1975 61
VII THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL SUBJECTS
Plantsmen and Businessmen 66
The Unusual, Micropropagation, "Disposability" 68
Catalogs, Perennials, Cycles 69
Wisteria Mysteries 71
VIII HORTICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND PEOPLE
Western Horticultural Society 78
Times Change 80
Promoting New Plant Materials 81
Saratoga Horticultural Foundation 83
UC Davis 85
Cal Hort, Awards, Journal 87
Lester Hawkins 89
Rock Garden Society, Bonsai 90
Kiwi Growers' Association, and Photographing Plants 93
Royal Horticultural Society, and English Gardens 95
Saratoga Horticultural Foundation Directors 96
International Plant Propagators Society 98
Santa Cruz Arboretum 98
Alpine Garden Society 100
The Herb Society, the NCCP in England, Gene Pools 102
A Review of the Route from Grower to Retailer 103
Conserving Gardens 106
Victor Reiter 107
"You Can't Control Things After You're Gone" 109
IX THE VIEW FROM LOS GATOS
Jean Carman 111
Staying on in Los Gatos 112
The Other Fellows in the Business 114
The Vanishing Experts 115
Community Volunteer Since 1946 116
School Board 118
Moving Houses Around 119
More on Writing the Peninsula C.A.N. History 121
The Future of Small Nurseries 122
Continuous Arrival of New Plants 123
"Choose Horticulture"? 124
Victor Reiter 's Rule of Three 126
Fanatics and Novices 127
X WALKING THROUGH THE NURSERY WITH ED CARMAN 129
TAPE GUIDE 142
APPENDIX
A Biographical sheet provided by Ed Carman 143
B "Carman's Nursery", by Marshall Olbrich, Pacific
Horticulture, Winter 1991 148
C "Perennials for Western Gardens", by Ed Carman, Pacific
Horticulture, Summer 1994 152
D "Ed Carman's award caps 49 years in nursery trade", by
Joan Jackson, San Jose Mercury News, September 21, 1995 156
E "The First 25 Years, 1950-1975," by Charles Burr,
Peninsula Chapter, California Association of Nurserymen 158
F "2nd Time Around, 1950-1986," by Charles Burr, Peninsula
Chapter, California Association of Nurserymen 171
HORTICULTURE, BOTANY, AND LANDSCAPE DESIGN ORAL HISTORY SERIES LIST 188
INDEX 192
INTRODUCTION by Angel Guerzon
I first encountered Ed Carman sometime in the late sixties while I
was at San Jose State. I was looking for an elusive herb requested by
the mother of a close friend. An acquaintance working the reference
desk at the college library suggested that I try Carman's Nursery in
Campbell. I remember walking in out of the parking lot, and the first
thing I saw was a small table holding some little pots of Armeria
maritima, Arabis sturri and Erodium reichardii. I asked a very serious
man if he had any comfrey, and he showed me where and what it was. I
bought a plant and left. Mrs. Blake was very pleased to get it. But I
was doomed. I went back the following week and bought some of those
little plants on the table.
I went to Carman's almost once a week thereafter. Eventually I
got to know Ed Carman better. He was and still is a quiet, reserved and
shrewd man. He is an observant and assessing individual who prefers not
to waste his time and attention on anything he deems unimportant. What
is important to Ed are his wife, Jean, their three children and his
plants. Ed has become legendary amongst his customers for not selling
plants to them. Here and there (often but not always near the NOT FOR
SALE sign) are some one and onlys, perhaps the last of a batch needed to
reproduce the next crop, or some pet plant that hasn't yet rooted
permanently into the ground. The potential purchaser elated by finding
such an uncommon gem has their bubble burst at the cash register.
But if Ed jealously guards some of his rare treasures, he is also
generous with the plants he has worked hard to introduce into the
nursery trade. About twenty years ago I asked him if I could purchase
his kiwi plants to sell at a small garden center I managed in Gilroy.
At the time Ed's nursery was the only place I knew of where kiwis were
available outside of mail order catalogs. Ed consented and some people
in the Gilroy area became very happy. Another time after Otatea
acuminata aztecorum (Mexican weeping bamboo) had bloomed and died I was
asked to pick up a flat of seedlings to give to fellow nurseryman, Mike
Smith, owner of Wintergreen Nursery. Ed really is more than willing to
share his horticultural wealth.
He is an active member of his chapter of the California
Association of Nurserymen, volunteering both his time and effort. I
would see him working at the NorCal Trade show in San Mateo nearly every
year. He is also active in the Western Horticultural Society, again
donating his time. He would phone me on Western Hort's behalf to sell
the organization's publications. He would regularly go to the monthly
meetings of the California Horticultural Society in San Francisco and
often display some wonderful new plant (s) that he was growing.
ii
In the 1991 winter issue of Pacific Horticulture magazine,
Marshall Olbrich wrote an article about Ed and his nursery. Marshall
and his partner and bete noire, Lester Hawkins, were the creators of
Western Hills, the horticultural heaven in Sonoma County. Marshall was
a cynical and bitter man with the broken heart of a romantic. Yet with
all that spite and spleen he was kind, generous and honest, although he
was more honest behind one's back. In his article, being aware of his
own limitations, he offered in contrast a list of the "Saints" of
horticulture: Nova Leach, Ray and Rose Williams, Gerda Isenberg, and Ed
and Jean Carman. These were and are unpretentious people quietly
fulfilling their mission in life, all possessed with the passion for
plants and passing it along to others. (Of course Marshall was and will
always be a patron saint of horticulture to most of us.)
Any mention of Ed would not be complete without a word about Jean.
They are incomplete without each other. They complement each other
perfectly. Jean is irrepressibly cheerful and optimistic in contrast to
the more austere Ed. In the face of chronic health problems Jean
perseveres and manages to enjoy life and look forward to each day.
Ed once made a rock garden in front of his home. I remember at
least a couple of Raoulia species, maybe some tiny-leaved matting thymes
and some mounding member of the caryophyllaceae. It was extremely
spare, subtle, elegant and evocative of something far larger. There was
an understated Zen- like element to it. But it also suggested the bare
windswept Scottish moors of the movies and National Geographic magazine.
I never asked Ed what inspired it. I just believe it is an expression
of who and what he is .
Angel Guerzon
Horticultural Consultant
San Lorenzo Garden Center
April 27, 1998
Santa Cruz, California
ill
INTERVIEW HISTORY- -Edward S. Carman
The evidence, from all the awards and testimonies, is that Ed
Carman is the nurseryman's nurseryman. But that is not to say he is
solely a nurseryman. He is also in the best sense a joiner and a doer in
the larger horticultural world, and his acquaintance in that world is
wide. It was not until 1996 that the Regional Oral History Office asked
him to consider doing an oral memoir- -he seemed too young to be
reminiscing- -but long before that he had been recommended for an oral
history by friends and peers. Predecessor interviewees in the office's
California Horticulture Oral History series, as well as old friends from
the garden world, were happy to learn that we were taping Ed's story. To
the extent that it's an honor to be interviewed for The Bancroft Library,
Ed's world wanted to see Ed honored for what he has done for his
profession, and because as a nurseryman he has been exceptionally
generous in the rare and best tradition of sharing what he has created.
Ed Carman earns the natural appellation of nurseryman, but in him
that is redefined to mean pillar of the community, organization man,
teacher, mentor, family man. In all these roles he gives as fully as he
can. Probably he would think it grandiose to say that the "nursery" he
is tending is humanity, but to walk through the Carman nursery, out
behind the house Ed and his wife Jean share in Los Gatos, and to see with
what indulgent understanding he bestows a touch on his little plants,
rescues the straggler from suffocating weeds, one can easily imagine what
it was like to be a daughter, or a Boy Scout, or a young member of the
profession coming to Ed for advice.
I first met Ed when I was raising funds to do an oral history
memoir with Hayward nurseryman Toichi Domoto. They are friends and
peers--Ed co-chaired the Committee for the Domoto Oral History. Oral
history meshed, for Ed, with his project to document nursery history on
the Peninsula, a subject he discusses in the following interviews. How
the many start-up nurseries served the burgeoning post-war Peninsula
population, from what different backgrounds their owners and operators
came, and which nurseries survived and made significant contributions to
the diversity of materials available, these are topics that engage Ed.
As well as compiling Peninsula nursery history, Ed has an ear for the
history of the world in which he and his family have become "old family,"
and the interviews are rich in Los Gatos recollections.
Having described the wide scope of Ed's interests, it is necessary
to make clear for the reader the relatively modest style of the operation
that is Ed's nursery. In the San Francisco Chronicle, August 23, 1995,
there was an article, including information on location and hours, on
Peninsula "horticultural hot spots". They included Filoli, "a Georgian-
style mansion surrounded by sixteen acres of formal gardens," the
Elizabeth S. Gamble Garden Center, "an old-fashioned Edwardian garden
iv
filled with roses, wisteria, and cherry trees," seven other nurseries and
gardens, and Ed Carman's Nursery.
Here is the description of Carman's Nursery:
"In nearby Los Gatos is Carman's Nursery. This backyard nursery,
started in 1937, has been in business here for twenty-five years,
attracting collectors looking for something different in
perennials, grasses, vines and rock garden plants.
"It's a great place to get plants with dramatic leaves--gunneras,
rodgersias, tetrapanax, and a host of hostas and hellebores. Here
you'll find Iris pallida, with white striped leaves, variegated ivy
and variegated hydrangeas.
"Here are one-gallon blooming lapagerias, Chilean vines with big
waxy bells in white, rose and carmine that are rarely seen outside
of botanical gardens. There is also a connoisseur's collection of
named wisteria, including W. longisslma, with four- foot racemes of
blue flowers, a double- flowered lavender one propagated from plants
at Filoli, and the large-flowered, white W. venusta.
"But this is a nursery that demands the patience of a treasure-
seeker, since plants are not arranged in any order and most are
unlabeled. Fortunately, proprietor Ed Carman and his daughter
Nancy are on site and happy to help out with names, provenance and
information on plant care.
Does this "backyard nursery" sound like Orchard Supply, or Home
Depot, or whatever other generic nursery has cropped up in the local
mall? Far from it. Yet it is places like Carman's Nursery, and Domoto's
in Hayward, that make the Filolis possible. They are the "hot spots" for
the knowledgeable garden-lovers, and men like Ed and Toichi friends of
the heart and suppliers to the great gardeners and landscape architects,
all of which is to say that the rewards are more than monetary.
To be monetarily rewarded in the nursery business usually means
more business than nursery. Yet for Ed Carman there are the rewards of
plant propagation, hybridization, and bringing the remarkable new
creation to gatherings like the California Horticultural Society, and
winning the Cultural Award, or the Award of Merit. In 1978 Ed received
Cal Hort's Special Award for the "knowledge, skill and dedication [he
brings] to the introduction, propagation and distribution of unusual
plants. His nursery in Los Gatos, California, is Mecca for adventurous
gardeners in search of rare and beautiful plants." Mecca in Los Gatos--
the horticultural world has a tremendous reach, as Ed makes clear when he
talks about the trips that he and Jean have taken, visits to countries
that have old and interesting cultures and important museums, but most of
all for Ed, countries that have fellow plantsmen, nurserymen who will
drop everything to walk through their gardens or their growing grounds to
share that excitement, and that culture, with a knowledgeable peer.
Ed Carman and I began interviewing in March 1997, and we quickly
established a pleasant Monday pattern for the four interview sessions.
We sat at the dining room table of the Carman house in Los Gatos. There
was a hum of life in the background: a sister would stop by, Ed's wife
Jean would look in, daughter Nancy might interrupt in order to satisfy a
customer's question. After two hours of interviewing we would adjourn to
the kitchen where the very adept Ed would quickly assemble a lunch for
Jean, himself, Nancy--the daughter working at the nursery—and myself.
Lunch had several basic components: peanut butter, jelly, homemade bread,
cheese, leftovers from the weekend's fare, and an interesting preserve or
concoction made by Jean.
It's tempting to romanticize the Carman's Nursery experience,
because I found there a family working well together, and a man who is
the matrix of his various communities. But then Ed would walk me out to
the car when lunch was over, and I would murmur some admiring comment
about kiwi vines strung out along the drive- -"an awful lot of pruning" --
and I would hark to the charming chatter of the mockingbirds--"they ' 11
drive you crazy, they're at it morning, noon and night "--and I would
inquire into the elements of the rock garden- -"haven't had time for
that." In other words, I had to be reminded that while I revelled in the
richness of the "scene," it was just plain a lot of work to sustain.
When it came to editing the oral history, Ed read the transcript as
I had edited it, but he didn't make changes, except where I asked him to
clarify a few names. Any such fussing wouldn't be how he would spend his
time, and I appreciated that Ed was taking time from the nursery, in
doing the oral history. It was spring when we interviewed, he had been
in the nursery for hours before I arrived, everything was growing—out
there the fussing was necessary. As with Domoto's nursery, the Carman
nursery is a one-man show the likes of which won't be seen again.
I hope this oral history, and the fine appreciative introduction by
horticultural consultant Angel Guerzon, give some feeling of the man, the
time and the place. Other Regional Oral History Office interviews in
horticulture, botany, and landscape design, are listed at the end of this
volume. The Regional Oral History Office, a division of The Bancroft
Library, was established in 1954 to record the lives of persons who have
contributed significantly to the history of California and the West.
Suzanne B. Riess, Senior Editor
Regional Oral History Office
May 10, 1998
Berkeley, California
vi
Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
(Please write clearly. Use black ink.)
Your full name
Date of birth 2(p
/<P2~2- Birthplace
Father's full name
Occupation
Mother's full name
Occupation
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Where did you grow up?
Present community J-grT—
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Areas of expertise
Other interests or activities
Organizations in which you are active
I CARMAN FAMILY HISTORY, LOS GATOS AND EARLIER
[Interview 1: March 24, 1997] it1
Riess: Let's begin at the beginning with your family history.
Carman: My grandfather- -we think he might have been born in New Brunswick,
but we're not sure. Otherwise he was born in New York and went to
New Brunswick. My grandmother was from Prince Edward Island. She
was a Stuart, and that line my sister's traced back to Bonnie
Prince, I think. They married in P. E.I. --Prince Edward Island--
and then he was an editor or a publisher.
They started moving west, my father was born in Winnipeg,
and they were there for several years, and he [grandfather] edited
a farmer's almanac type of thing, in which he had all sorts of
stories about settling the great plains of Canada, and some
priceless illustrations of farm equipment, and steamer sailings
and everything like this for immigrants, for people coming into
Canada. I have a bound copy of it- -my sister has it right now.
I guess they moved next to Oregon, and he was on the
Oregonian. either as a writer or an editor or something. Then
they moved I think to San Francisco. You never talk to your
parents much about stuff like this, so I never got the full story
[chuckles]. But anyway, they were in San Francisco for a while--
I'm not sure if they were there during the quake--and then moved
to Zayante, which is over by Santa Cruz up in the Boulder Creek
area.
Riess: They wanted to get out of the city.
Carman: I guess they did. You know, I'm not sure. I have one cousin
who's older and I'm not sure if he knows. He said he neglected to
'II This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun
or ended. A guide to the tapes follows the transcript.
ask his dad about a lot of this stuff, and so nobody really can
tell now why they did this moving.
Then I guess my grandfather kind of disappeared for a while
or something--! don't know what happened. So after that my father
moved here to the valley, before the war, in 1910 or 1912,
something like that, I guess. He actually rented a little cabin
down at the end of Mozart, down by the creek here, and worked for
people who had land in the area. There's a big ranch that used to
be over here [gestures] and another big ranch over here, and this
was Cilker's, and that was Johnson's. Cilker's was actually
across Bascom.
Riess: Do you know how much education your father had?
Carman: [laughs] He said that when he got to the sixth or seventh grade he
was teaching the other kids then. You know, like they did, the
older kids teaching the younger ones, and I guess that's about as
much education he had.
Riess: It's interesting, if his father was a publisher.
Carman: I think my grandmother was quite well-educated, and our neighbor
here, Mrs. Evans, remembers having her up to tea or going down to
see her for tea when she would visit my father down here at the
cabin. My cousin remembers her, but I don't remember her at all;
she passed away before I was born, I think, actually. Maybe not,
I'm not sure about that.
Riess: Your father was doing farm work?
Carman: He was working on the farms and pruning and stuff like that, and
working in the dry-yards.
Riess: Dry-yards?
Carman: Yes, where apricots were sundried after being treated with
sulphur. Also prunes which were dipped in large kettles of lye.
Riess: You never asked him about this?
Carman: I was thinking about this the last couple of weeks, and I should
have asked him how he ever got interested in growing plants.
When I was born we lived right over here on National Avenue,
and then I think we moved up by the Lexington Reservoir for a
short time. Then we moved to San Jose, and I know he leased a
nursery in San Jose at that time. That would have been about '24
or '25, I guess. Then he got a job as a manager of a ranch up in
Hayward, right next to the mausoleum which was being built at that
time on Mission Boulevard. We stayed there until 1930, when I
guess the Depression hit and he was let go.
Then we moved back up by Lexington, my mother's home place.
My mother's father was still alive, and he was by himself, so we
moved up there and took care of him. Then my dad started working
in gardens in Saratoga as gardener and growing plants at the home
place up there, at the ranch. I really didn't pay much attention
then, either--! was in grade school, and I know I did some spading
for the garden.
I remember Hayward, because I know my mother was growing
pansies in raised beds, and they would dig them up in bloom and
put them in these wood veneer fruitbaskets and sell them at the
florist's. Someplace I have a picture of a wicker basket with a
handle, full of big pansies and a ribbon. She had won a prize at
one of the fairs up in Hayward, a flower show or something.
Riess: Was she working with him everywhere he worked?
Carman: Pretty much, I would guess. She was born in Alma and grew up in
the Lexington area. They were French- -both the grandmother and
grandfather on her side were French—and so they had big gardens,
and she always worked in the garden. My aunt worked in a big
estate up there [the Tevis Estate, on Bear Creek Road], and some
of the uncles did too- -there were thirteen in the family, so they
always had a big garden and grew a lot of their own food.
Riess: There were many big estates around here?
Carman: That was a Dr. [Harry] Tevis. He was up by Alma. It was quite a
show place at one time. I know several of my uncles, my Uncle
Vic, and my aunt used to take care of the dahlia garden. He
[Tevis] was a very prominent doctor in San Francisco. He also had
a place in Fresno, I believe. It was a great big summer home.
He [Tevis] had a staff up there of cooks and maids, and one
of my uncles was a chauffeur for him for a while and would drive
him up to the city. I have a tape of him [my uncle] talking about
driving the help over to Santa Cruz on their day off in this great
big seven-passenger touring car. It [Tevis Estate] was quite the
place, actually. It did a lot for the area up there, of course.
And then it was sold to the Jesuits.
Los Gatos had a Jesuit school, used to be — now it's a
retirement place—a novitiate. They used to walk through the
ranch, I can remember, on their way up to the school up there at
the Tevis place. It wasn't on their direct route, but I'd see
these young fellows walking through with their beige pants, all
dressed in the same color.
Riess: It's an interesting part of the world, isn't it?
Carman: Oh, yes. There's a thing at the museum in Los Gatos right now
about George Dennisen and Frank Ingerson, who were two artists.
They were doing tiles and paintings and textiles and all sorts of
things like that, way ahead of their time.
Riess: And The Cats.
Carman: Yes. There was just an article—the paper in Los Gatos, a weekly
that comes out, John Baggerly is an old-timer who does a
reminiscing article in there. There were several pieces about The
Cats, and so then I wrote and told him about Evelyn Paine Ratcliff
in Berkeley: she's the daughter of Paine, who did the cat
sculptures. So he got that in the paper, but he got it a little
mixed up. He had Paine as her grandfather [laughs], and he was
only her father.
Riess: I would have expected it would have been Japanese or Italians who
would be working in the big gardens then.
Carman: At the Tevis place?
Riess: Yes.
Carman: No, it was all local people I think he hired. I think that came
afterwards, actually, because this would have been in the
twenties --Tevis left there probably in the mid-thirties, so it
would have been the late twenties to the mid-thirties, that ten or
fifteen years in there, I guess. I think they would have hired
just local people.
Riess: Do you have the feeling that your father loved what he was doing?
Carman: Oh, I'm sure he must have, because he never made much money on it.
We don't make any money either [laughter], so you've got to love
it. He was mostly happy when he was out there working on the
plants. He didn't like to wait on customers too much [chuckles].
Riess: Going into business on his own meant that he had to wait on
customers more.
Carman: Yes.
Riess: What's the transition from working for Dr. Tevis to getting his
own place?
Carman: He didn't work for Dr. Tevis, that was the other side of the
family.
No, my father was working in gardens around the Saratoga
area, gardening and raising plants. So when my grandfather passed
away, then we had to move, I guess, because the family wanted to
rent the place up there, and we didn't have any money to rent. So
we found a place down at the corner of Union Avenue, 2640 South
San Jose-Los Gatos Road, which is now Bascom Avenue. It was about
an acre, with an old house.
We moved there in '37, and that's when they started the
nursery. He was still gardening, but then he started growing
plants, bedding plants, and worked up to shrubs. He put up a
little store, lath, and like everybody else, we were in business:
some of these places I've been getting the history of [see
explanation in chapter following] started with a twelve-by-
fourteen-foot sales store, and put up sun lath, and started a
nursery—it "s interesting to see how they started.
II CARMAN'S NURSERY, 1937-WARTIME
Peninsula Nursery History
Riess: Let's include here what you are doing to collect histories of
Peninsula nurserymen.
Carman: The first history [of the Peninsula Chapter, California
Association of Nurserymen] that Charlie Burr did came out in '75.
It was called "The First 25 Years, 1950-1975." Then the next one
came out ten years later, and it was called "2nd Time Around,
1950-1986." It went up to '86, but it still didn't include many
more nurseries. I'm trying to get all—even though they weren't
in the association—all the nurseries that were around the valley.
Riess: Why are you doing this?
Carman: Well, there are so many young people in the nursery industry now,
and most of them can't remember more than ten years. They don't
know anything except the places that we have now: Woolworth's, and
the big garden centers, Orchard Supply and places like that.
They're good nurseries, they have a lot of good material, but the
people running them— the managers of them—aren't really nursery
people. They're getting certified nursery people and things like
that, but the people working for them are just out of college, or
they're retreads from electronics who got tired of that and want
to do something else. There's a lot of that going on now, too.
I think they should know about what's gone on before,
because some of it is really interesting. What I'd like to get in
there is the story written by Leonard Coates, who was the man who
founded Leonard Coates Nurseries. He started up in Santa Rosa.
John Coulter, I think it was, sent me a copy of that and it's four
sides, legal size, and very fine type, telling about his starting
in the nursery business, starting his nursery. I don't know if I
can get that all into it or not, it's a lot of pages.
Rless: The reason they don't know about this earlier history of nurseries
is because they don't get it from the horticulture classes?
Carman: There's nothing in history, I think. They're not looking back,
they're trying to look forward, so they're teaching them the
newest things, and salesmanship and stuff like that.
Most of these are individual people who- -sometimes they had
an interest in one thing and they'd grow that, and sell a few
things besides, or they'd sell little tiny pots. There were just
hole in the wall [operations], in San Jose, several of them.
Riess: One of the things that keeps the nursery business together seems
to be the organizations. Is that their role, keeping the history
of the profession?
Carman: The Nurserymen's Association has fairly good membership, and they
do have a program now where they're trying to improve the
knowledge of the people working in the nurseries. They call it
the California Certified Nurserymen. They have classes and things
like this, and so they can keep getting more knowledge, about turf
and bugs and diseases. That's working out pretty good, but there
are a lot of people that aren't involved in that.
Most of the big places like Woolworth's and Home Depot,
they're getting their people certified too now, but the
Nurserymen's Association in California is having kind of a rough
time right now because there's some infighting, I think, factions
that don't think the C.A.N. [California Association of Nurserymen]
is doing what it should.
Riess: When you get out the third and updated and more complete edition
of this history of C.A.N., how will it be made available?
Carman: I think the Peninsula Chapter's going to print the first I don't
know how many copies. I'm going to have to find out what the cost
is going to be. And then we're going to use it as a fundraiser, I
think, and sell it. We'll probably copyright it and give the
copyright to the Nurserymen's Association, and then keep
publishing it. I think we'll do it in these plastic binder-type
things. Western Hort Just did a vine book in that manner, Vines
for the Peninsula.
Riess: How much space are you giving to the Ed Carman story?
Carman: Oh, I don't know, maybe a little bit more than what's in here now.
I'm going to cut some of this out probably, although what I was
thinking of doing is to put this entire section in and then have
the section before that and after that. I don't know how it's
going to work out yet. I've got to talk to the young lady who did
Western Hort's book- -she did the computer work on it, and I think
she did some of the layout.
I may get Elaine Levine, who is a--she and her husband used
to publish some of these weekly papers around the valley, and they
still have interest in one in Milpitas, I think. She was editor
of the Western Hort books. I don't know how it's going to work.
It's one of those things.
Riess: Those early nurserymen, do you think they were propagating
material from estates where they were working?
Carman: No, most of them- -because there were wholesale growers available- -
they would grow some things that were easy to grow, probably, but
they would buy and sell mostly, I think, as far as I could find
out. None of them did a great deal of propagating, unless they
were growing on a wholesale level- -then they would, of course,
propagate everything to sell. But they were not propagating from
where they were working; they were propagating from other stock
plants or buying cuttings and things like that.
Riess: This is '37, just pre-war.
Wartime. Tomatoes
Carman: Yes. And then in 1941 the war started. Then my father went into
--they were rationing everything and there was not much, and so he
went into- -he knew one of the men who worked for CPC- -California
Packing Company- -in San Jose, one of the big canneries around
there. The people that were growing the tomatoes were the
Japanese, and they were all put in concentration camps.
Then my dad converted the nursery into growing tomatoes for
the canneries. He put up these beds with kind of a tent-like
structure, and we got linen sheeting—that's what it was, I think
--from one of the big department stores. The beds were forty feet
long, I guess, so we had this cloth that would go over the bed to
protect the tomatoes from frost. We had to put those on at night
and take them off in the day. In fact, I've still got one. Then
the tomatoes, they would get about that big [gestures] in the
beds.
Riess: "That big" being a foot and a half?
Carman: Yes, a foot and a half. And they'd pull them up and put them in
mud in fruit boxes. Remember the deep fruit boxes?
Riess: No.
Carman: They were about that long [gestures], that wide, and about that
deep. They were strong wooden fruit boxes holding forty to fifty
pounds of fresh fruit.
They'd just stand them [tomato plants] in there, and they'd
count them in and they'd buy 1,000 or 10,000 or whatever they
needed for the fields.
Riess: They would plant them out in the fields when they were that big?
Carman: Yes. Then what they do is they furrow them in and they set them
down--say if a plant is that big, they set them down until there's
only that much [gestures] sticking out of the ground.
Riess: Only about eight to ten inches.
Carman: Yes. The stem that's buried makes more roots. That's the way you
should plant your tomatoes too. Bury them down to about three or
four leaves on top.
Riess: But when people buy tomatoes now, seedling plants, they're soft
little plants that are only about seven inches tall anyway.
Carman: Still bury half of it, though. It makes more roots.
Riess: What variety?
Carman: Oh, they were growing some special ones. They would bring the
seed, because they had these special hybrids that they were
growing for canning. I don't know what it was now.
Riess: You mentioned frost. So you're in an area where you do get frost.
Carman: Oh, yes. We had twenty-two [degrees] this year for two days. And
in the big freeze in '90 we had sixteen [degrees] for five days.
Then he would hire the—there was a school right across the
street from the nursery, so he would hire the kids there. Mostly
girls, actually, to transplant the tomatoes in these beds. We've
still got some of the old timecards on the kids [chuckles].
Riess: This is the kind of thing that you're saving?
Carman: Yes. Talk about stuff!
10
Riess: That box of plants sounds unwieldy.
Carman: They would pick them up then with a truck and take them to their
field growers, and then they'd go out with their machines and
plant them. Yes, they were fairly heavy, because the stems were
about that thick [gestures].
Riess: In your lifetime- -you* re probably writing about this in your piece
for the Peninsula Chapter of C.A.N.--you must have watched new
equipment being developed to follow needs. You used an old fruit
box to put the tomato plants in. But the means of picking the
boxes up. Were there new devices?
Carman: Well, we didn't have any. They probably had forklifts when they
were handling the tomatoes themselves, but they were still picking
the fruit in individual boxes, they didn't have these big four-by-
four containers then. And it was all by hand; there wasn't any
machine picking at that time. That didn't come in until the
fifties at least, I would guess—maybe later than that.
Cans, Pots, Stone Sinks
Carman: American Nurseryman magazine came out in one issue with a timeline
of when things first appeared- -plastic, things like that. I kept
that one, and I've got to write to them and get permission to use
some of those things in there [C.A.N. publication]. Because, see,
when we were in the nursery business then, in the forties,
everything was grown in clay pots, before the war. After the war,
then the tin cans started coming in.
There was a place in Santa Clara that would pick up the used
tin cans from the canneries. (They would can the pineapple in
Hawaii or someplace, bring it over here in gallon cans, cut them
open to make fruit salad, and then the cans would be discarded.)
This man collected and had a machine that crimped and tapered them
so they would stack like pots. That place is still in existence
over in Santa Clara, but they converted to plastic now.
But that was a big thing, because then the cans would stack
and you could get 500 in something like this — whereas if you had
500 before they were just loose. We used to buy cans from a man
who did the same thing up in Hayward, but he would dip them, and
they were all, of course, dipped in either black or green paint.
Then we got to collecting them from a cannery in Campbell and
doing our own dipping.
11
Riess: The little incremental technological steps.
Carman: After plastic started coming in, then they started making or
selling plastic pots. Of course, that's all plastic now.
Riess: And now they make plastic clay pots.
Carman: Right [laughing], they sure look like it.
Riess: And you're making your troughs, your stone sinks. This is going
way off the subject, but we are talking about containers--! guess
that's the subject. What is the tradition of the troughs?
Carman: Supposedly it's simulating the stone sinks from England.
Riess: Which were created, or just hollowed-out stone?
Carman: Just hollowed-out stone. They were chiseled-out stone, but they
were perfectly square and everything, and they were used as sinks
at one time in England. Then as new plumbing came in, of course,
they were discarded and then they were used as containers for
alpine plants mostly, or miniature plants. They were very
popular. Authentic ones, I guess, are very difficult to find now.
You hear about somebody who has a real sink, but most of the time
they're made.
That's even changed: when we first started them we had to
put a chicken-wire frame in the middle of it, get it in the center
of that piece, and that was a terrible job. Now they have this
plastic mesh, with little pieces of plastic—it looks like
fiberglass but is plastic. You mix that in the concrete, and it
reinforces, so you don't have to use wire anymore. That
simplifies it a great deal. But when you get done with the
trough, then you have to take a butane torch and burn it because
it's got little hairs sticking out all over it, from the plastic.
It looks like a wet dog or something [chuckles].
Riess: I think you must have been unique in dipping your pots and making
your sinks.
Carman: No, a lot of nurseries did it at that time.
II
Carman: They used asphalt-based water-soluble paint, I think it was. And
they would set up a drain—generally galvanized tin or something-
draining back to the main dipping. You'd dip the can, put it up
on this thing, push it up, and the excess paint would roll down
12
and come into your dipping can again. So a lot of nurseries did
that at that time.
Riess: And it was water soluble?
Carman: Well, I can't remember now- -I guess it was. But when it dried, it
wouldn't come off the can for a year or so. By that time the can
was rusted out anyway. But I've saved a couple of cans [laughs].
Riess: You would! What kind of a relationship did your father have with
the tomato grower, the Japanese family?
Carman: There was no relationship at all. The Japanese got moved out to
the concentration camps, so there was nobody left to grow the
seedlings for the canneries. My dad knew this buyer for the
cannery, Will What 's -his -name, I guess he knew him maybe from
working on the ranches and stuff, because he used to work over
here at Roger's Packing House, owned by Mrs. Rogers, where they
packed fresh and dried fruit, too, before he got married. Anyway,
the Japanese were moved out and then they had to get somebody to
grow the seedling tomatoes, and that's what Dad was doing, he was
growing the seedling tomatoes. The cannery brought us the seed,
he'd grow the tomatoes, then they'd buy the plants back.
Riess: The seedling growing operation had been abandoned? Nobody would
have bought it from the Japanese family that had been doing it?
Carman: No, because they could make more money working in a defense plant
someplace, probably. You could go on up to Hendy's Iron Works and
Foundry in Sunnyvale or someplace like that.
Riess: There are lots of stories—you probably are coming across them—
people taking over the businesses of the Japanese.
Carman: There weren't any big operations--! think it was probably just
small, like Dad's. They'd have a half acre or something like
that, and they'd be growing 100,000 or 200,000 a year for them.
So it was just small operations, I'm sure.
That continued until '45, I guess. Some of the beds were
still there, I guess, in '45 after the war.
Advisors, Organizations. Customers
Riess: Growing seedling tomatoes—were there crises of wilt and mildew?
13
Carman: The only thing that we really were worried about was freezing. I
still have some of the lanterns. We had these old kerosene
lanterns. We'd hang these in the beds and light them and keep the
frost off of the plants. They were being grown- -they would be
putting them out right about now [late March] I would guess.
They'd have to be started quite a bit earlier than that to get
them big enough.
Riess: If there had been problems, was the agricultural extension system,
or the co-op, was that set up so that your father could call
someplace for advice?
Carman: There wasn't anything available. Bordeaux was the only thing
available, Volk oil was available. That was about it. And Black
Leaf 40. Those three things were about all that was available at
that time, I guess.
Riess: Volk oil?
Carman: That was mainly for fruit trees and things, scale and stuff.
Riess: Was your father part of the larger community of nurserymen, like
you are?
Carman: There wasn't anything at that time. There wasn't any nursery
association until after the war, actually, and then there was a
group in San Jose, kind of a bunch that started to get together
because some of the gas stations started to sell plants at a cut-
rate price. I think that's what started it, I'm not sure. The
association started in '50, so it would have been between '46 and
'50, I guess, that this group met at different places around town
and talked about prices and stuff like that.
They didn't have any real organization to it; it was just a
group of people meeting and discussing stuff. The Nurserymen's
Association started around '50, and we joined in '54, I think,
when the chapter was formed. Dad liked to go to those meetings.
There were a lot of people the same age that he was.
Riess: Did your father go back and get any more education?
Carman: He read Argosy magazines [laughs]. He was a very avid reader. He
read everything. And he remembered a lot of stuff. He bought a
couple of sets of encyclopedias, some of them with one volume
missing, from used book stores. He read those. And of course all
the seed catalogs and stuff like that he would read. The seed
people—the A. H. Modena Seed Company in San Francisco he used to
get seed from, and Hallawell's Seed Company—that was an old seed
company.
Riess: They're still around, aren't they?
Carman: I'm not sure if there's any Hallawell's left or not. Nurserymen's
Exchange, of course--! remember when Pearlstein used to come
around and sell his plants and bulbs.
Riess: Not as organized as it is now. The history of the profession is
so recent. And the passion, for instance, for native plants,
that's probably nothing that he would have known about.
Carman: No, that didn't start until way after that. Well, there was a
native plant grower in San Jose, actually. I have a couple of old
directories of people that held licenses to sell nursery stock in
California- -one from '34 and one from '37, I think- -and there was
one nursery in San Jose that was native plants, I think, but I
don't remember that one. The ones that I knew mostly were the
ones that we were selling to during the forties.
Before the war we were growing bedding plants in wooden
flats, and so I would be delivering sometimes to those nurseries,
Navalet's and F. H. Cornell, and there were several other small
places, like floral shops around town, that we would deliver a
flat of bedding plants or something like that to.
Riess: And he probably worked with gardeners from estates?
Carman: Yes, there would be some coming in, and some of the owners were
coming in--he used to work for Mr. Maurice Ranken, who was a
lawyer in San Jose, and he would come in after we were down there.
And Father Riker from Holy City would come in [laughs]. He formed
sort of a cult at Holy City on the road to Santa Cruz above Alma.
Riess: Why do you laugh?
Carman: Well, he would come and sit there and honk his horn to get
somebody to wait on him.
A lot of customers around the area were not big estates, but
they were regular customers. But then we were growing, like I
say, bedding plants and delivering around town a little bit.
That's why I got to know some of these places more than others.
15
III ED'S MOTHER, AND ED'S EDUCATION
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Had your mother's education gotten a little further along than
your father's?
Probably sixth grade, I would guess, because she was about the
third or fourth oldest. She was helping at home and working out
at different places--Dennisen and Ingerson I mentioned before,
they were living quite close to them at one time, and she was
keeping house for them, I guess, part time. And then my mother's
family moved down to Lexington, and there was another summer
resort up the road a mile or so and she was working up there. I
just found the man who owns it now, and he says he's rebuilt the
cottages, so I've got to go up--it was called the Wake Robin Inn.
Charming .
It's up on Black Road.
When did your parents marry?
family?
And how many children were in the
I guess it would be 1921. I was born in '22. I have three
sisters: Marie, Marge, and Dorothy is the younger. Marie lives
over on the east side of San Jose, Marge lives by Valley Fair, and
Dorothy just moved to Arizona. Her husband was in the navy,
retired, and moved to Prescott, Arizona.
Then on my mother's side, of course, I think there were
thirty cousins, twenty-four or twenty-five still living, and we
have a family reunion once a year up here in Los Gatos Park, and
we can get 150 at the reunions sometimes.
My mother was a Weltz [spells]. They're getting spread out
now; a lot of them have gone to the Seattle area, and up in the
valley. Most of them are fairly close, actually. There are only
about five or six up north, one or two down south. Most of them
16
are in central California. And then the next generation, I don't
know how many of those there are. I'd have to look at the list.
We have four grandchildren: one is here in Sunnyvale, and
three of them are up in the Sierra, up on Highway 70 by the little
town of Portola, above Quincy. The oldest one is a junior in
college at the University of Nevada right now.
Childhood Memories of Hayward
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
What are some of your early memories?
I have a poor memory. I can remember being up at what they called
the Walker place. That was a place up above the ranch in the
Lexington area. All I can remember is being outside, and I think
my cousin said they were having a turkey shoot for the Foreign
Legion or something. There were a lot of brass spent shell cases
out there, and I can remember picking them up.
thing I can remember there.
That's the only
In Hayward I was a little bit older, I started school in
Hayward. I remember Dad had charge of this apricot orchard and
peach orchard, and there was a cow out there which he hated
[laughter] because he had to come home on Sunday night to milk the
cow, unless he could get Manuel to do it, the hired help.
Wait--just Sunday night?
a week [laughs] ?
This was a cow that you only milked once
No. He would like to come down here to see the folks, I guess, at
the ranch over the weekend, and he'd have to go back early Sunday
to milk the stupid cow.
But there I remember my mother growing the pansies in the
bed. And they were building the mausoleum right next door on the
property across the little creek, so Dad got a lot of scrap
lumber. I had one little seed flat that he built at that time out
there [in the nursery). I remember we had a little tin trough
about that deep, about maybe two by four feet, set up by the
fence, and my cousin and I would play with little wooden toy boats
in there. We had a rock for an island and stuff.
I guess my cousin had a .22 at that time, and we hiked over
in the back—it was just hills up there with eucalyptus—and down
a little gully, and he would shoot at the squirrels up there.
17
Riess:
Carman:
Riess :
Carman:
I remember picking peaches with my cousin in the orchard- -to
eat, not to pick. He [my cousin] didn't do too much work there
either, I don't think. Well, he might have cut 'cots there,
because I remember he talked about his mother and he coming up
there to cut 'cots. Maybe they did. I don't remember that. As I
say I have a poor memory for all this.
And I think my father used to drive Mrs. Gory, the owner of
the ranch, around--! believe G-o-r-y is the way it was spelled. I
talked to Mr. [Toichi] Domoto about it and he said he could
remember the name, but I drove past it, and there wasn't one
single thing. There's a road that's cut through now and goes
right up the hill. There's a university up on the hill there [Cal
State Hayward] . It goes right through where they had a big row of
big palm trees on this property. The property looks so much
smaller, I can't believe it's the same property.
The land that Mr. Domoto 's nursery is on was apricot land too.
Yes. That was all orchards there.
I remember there was a fish farm between us and Hayward on
the west side of the road there. They used to sell goldfish.
They had big ponds out there and they raised goldfish. They'd
take a net and scoop them out. Just like Bay Shore Fisheries up
by Moffett Field. I've got some of his old fish cans that he
built to ship the fish all around the country. Galvanized tin
cans. [laughs] Talk about "stuff!"
Did you always kind of expect to be in the business yourself?
Not really, no. Like I say, I started school there, went one year
to first grade, I guess, moved down to Lexington and went to
school there, at Alma.
Lexington School. Time out for Fishing
Riess: You've referred to Lexington. It's the Lexington Reservoir?
Carman: Yes. Well, there was a little town of Lexington there. Have you
been over Highway 17? As you get to the reservoir there's a pond
on the right-hand side of the freeway. Have you ever noticed
that? That pond was my grandfather's ranch, actually. And so the
road goes almost--oh, it's a ways from the house, anyway. [Lake
Canyon Road, where a large pond is created between Montevena Road
and Black Road, which winds up the hills to Skyline Road.]
18
It's easy to say Lexington because that's the closest.
There was a little settlement of Lexington too, just a mile up the
road. Then there was Alma, which is where the school was. It was
the Lexington School at Alma, and so that's where we went to
school then. I went to the rest of my grade school there, a two-
room school with four grades in each room.
Riess: Do you remember anything especially inspiring about any teachers?
Carman: Well, Mamie McDonald, of course. She was a great gal. She taught
there up until the fifties, I think, and then moved down to Los
Gatos, to town, and taught even longer there, I believe. She was
just a little short thing, too. Somebody was in the other day,
one of the people we knew up there, and she said our class of five
boys from the fifth to the eighth grade, this gal said that we
were always Mamie's favorites. She lived in Los Gatos and drove
up there every day.
We had a visiting shop teacher, a singing teacher, which
most of the boys didn't care for, and once in a while we had a
dance teacher. McClendon was her name. She's still teaching
dance—she's eighty- something.
And we had movies. They would get a Friday afternoon movie.
We would pull the shades down, have a projector and a screen, and
you were really in the upper echelon when you got to thread the
projector and run that. We had a little library that was about
six by eight, connecting between the two rooms. And you could
ring the bell once in a while—we had one of those handbells— to
get the kids in to school.
We had a bunch of what we thought at the time were big
rocks, and we were climbing all over them. I went up there before
the school moved, and those rocks had shrunk. They were just so
small [chuckles]. We had a big rope swing— which would never go
now— on that tree down below. My sister fell off one time and
sprained her arm. And we had these other things, like a merry-go-
round: you'd run on it and jump on it, and it would keep going
around. Stuff like that which certainly wouldn't be allowed these
days [chuckles].
I only have one picture of those days, too. I can't figure
out— I had a picture of about the third or fourth grade, and it's
the only picture I have of that school. I don't know why we
didn't have more pictures.
Riess: Do you have reunions?
19
Carman: Not from there. We have high school reunions. They had one up
there, I guess, but I didn't hear about it or something. In fact,
one of the girls a couple of years behind us wrote a story about
the town of Alma because her grandfather was Mr. Osmer, he had
Osmer's Store there. It was a little general store with a gas
pump. At that time, that was the main road to Santa Cruz. Then
they built the three-lane freeway above, and that was our Sunday
afternoon entertainment: we'd walk out to the road and sit there
and watch the cars coming back from Santa Cruz.
And we'd fish. And fishing during the fishing season, it
opened on May 1st, and sometimes that landed in the middle of the
week- -now it's on a Saturday. At that time, when it fell in the
middle of the week, Mamie would say, "You can go fishing, but
you've got to get here by noon so they can count you as being
present," so they'd get their ADA, see [chuckles]. So a lot of
the kids would get back by noon, and some of them would never get
back.
Riess: Trout streams?
Carman: Trout, yes. At that time, I think the limit was twenty- five.
Once I was fishing with my uncle there, and he put on two hooks
and he caught two fish at one time. I still see him pulling those
fish out!
Riess: It does sound like the land of plenty.
Carman: Oh, it was great at that time. We had a stream run through the
ranch. We fished on that stream, too. It wasn't very big. In
the summertime when it was real dry the water would dry up between
pools. There would be a pool here, and then there would be gravel
and then another pool down here. My uncles and cousins, we'd all
get buckets and we'd bail out all the water, throw it down the
creek, and then get the fish that were left in the pool. [laughs]
They were going to die anyway.
Riess: And you ate the fish.
Carman: Oh, yes, we ate them. It was in the thirties, anything you could
get to eat, you ate. My uncles, we hunted rabbits and quail. I
remember once my mother made stuffed quail for Thanksgiving. Can
you imagine a quail about that big [gestures] stuffed? She was a
great cook. My sisters take after her.
When we got really modern we had a school bus, a four-door
Model A Ford to take us to the school in Lexington, because we
were about a mile from school. We'd walk out to the highway, and
two or three of my cousins lived on the same property in the house
20
above us, so they would walk out. Then I and my sisters. So we
would fill the bus; there would be six of us in the bus for one
trip [chuckles]. I don't remember how we got to school before the
bus--I know we walked sometimes, but I can't remember walking in
the rain. My sister remembers good. She's two years younger, she
has a good memory, I'll have to ask her about that.
Riess: Did your father have a car?
Carman: Oh, yes. He had a Model T Ford pickup, I think. And they had a
'34 Dodge hardtop touring car. We might have had another one,
because then we moved down to the other place in '37, and in '38--
I think we had it still into '39 or '40 maybe.
I remember my sister and I were going to a show in San Jose,
and we were looking for a parking place. We were driving down the
street, and some guy came down a cross street and hit us in the
back end and tipped the car over on its side. The tow people took
it down to the garage, and we went down there the next day, and
they put some oil in it and we drove it home [laughter]. It was
an all-metal body, and so it had a dent on a couple of fenders,
but it went fine for another year or two, I guess.
Los Gatos High School
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
When did you come back down?
We moved down to Union in '37.
Was Los Gatos High School a rude shock?
different?
Was that very big or very
Well, I guess it was maybe 600 in the school. It was quite a
difference because they were changing classes, and all that sort
of thing, which we didn't do up in Alma--you sat at your same desk
all the time. And they had a cafeteria.
We were actually in the Campbell school district, but at
that time you could go to any school you wanted to. I knew
everybody up here, so I went to Los Gatos. There was a Peerless
bus that came by, so we could buy bus tickets, and sometimes the
school even gave you a discount on tickets to get you to come to
school, because they wanted the attendance too. My sisters
started in Cambrian, but they transferred within a year or two, I
guess, and then they both went to Los Gatos High too.
21
Cambrian was right across the street from the nursery. That
was the one Cambrian school at that time; now they have three,
still active—they had seven at one time, but they closed them
down because of declining enrollment. Now it's going up again, so
I don ' t know what they "11 do .
Riess: What kind of ambitions did you have for yourself when you were in
high school?
Carman: In high school I guess I really didn't think too much about it. I
liked shop, though. Like I say, we had a shop teacher who came up
to Lexington, and we'd make a couple of end tables or something.
And when I got to Los Gatos High there was a shop teacher there.
So then I was thinking I was going to be an industrial arts major
and teach shop .
Riess: That would have required that you go to college.
Carman: Yes. I took college prep courses. I graduated from there in June
of '41, and then of course December was Pearl Harbor. In the fall
of '41 I had already started [San Jose) State. I went a year, up
to '42. Then during that summer of '42 I went to work in the
shipyards in Richmond. My brother-in-law, Jean's brother Alvin,
was working for the SP [Southern Pacific] as an accountant in San
Francisco, but then he started to work for the shipyards because
it was better money. I went up and stayed in a rooming house with
him in San Francisco, and we'd take the bus over to Richmond to
work in the Kaiser Shipyards, building liberty ships.
22
IV WORLD WAR II
80th Division Headquarters
Carman: I had joined the ASTP--Army Specialized Training Program- -which
they had started because they needed engineers. So you could stay
in school until they called you up, and then you would go to
engineering school and be graduated and be in the army. I found a
letter, going through this stuff—in '43 I got some sort of an
exemption to finish school, I guess, or something. I don't know
what it was .
Anyway, in "A3 I was called up, and we ended up in Fort
Benning, Georgia, for our basic training there. That was six
weeks or something like that. It was a modified officers'
training course. Then I went to Jonesboro, Arkansas, to school.
That would have been in the late fall, I guess, and by the
wintertime I had flunked out of there as the math got more and
more over my head [laughs]. I got sent to the 80th Infantry
Division in Yuma, Arizona. They were on desert maneuvers at that
time. Another young fellow and I got sent there—he had flunked
out about the same time.
At the interview, when we got into division headquarters, I
could type, so they put me in the judge advocate's office to be a
clerk-typist there. (The other fellow got sent down to one of the
infantry companies.) That was a real fortunate break there,
because then I stayed in that office, in division headquarters,
the rest of the time.
In June, we were sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey, and got on
the Queen Mary and went to England. I stayed in that office while
we were in England, and just before we left England to go to
France I got changed up to the general's office because they
needed another flunkie in the general's office, so this staff
23
sergeant or master sergeant thought. So that was even better. I
stayed with that division headquarters, in that general's office,
through the rest of the war.
I went into France on "D+30" [thirty days after D-Day] , I
think, and we went across France and just into Germany. We went
into the Bulge to rescue Bastogne. Then we went in through
Germany, almost to Berlin, and were called back because the
Russians were supposed to take Berlin. I ended up in Garmisch-
Partenkirchen, which is in Bavaria. That's a beautiful place
there.
We went from there over to Braunau, which was Hitler's home
right at the edge of Austria, and back to Kaufbeuren, which is on
the edge of the southwestern corner of Germany. We were there in
occupation for a while. Then we went to Czechoslovakia, and we
were there in occupation until Christmas of '45, and came back
through France and back to England. We came home on the Queen
Mary too. First-class all the way. Of course, there were 20,000
other troops on the ships; you didn't have a stateroom to
yourself.
It was the spring of '46 when I got out. I went back to
school for a couple of semesters, and then I thought, Well, I
didn't want to spend four years in school. I decided I would go
into work with my father, so I went into the nursery business at
that time.
Riess: How do you feel about that war experience now? Lucky?
Carman: Oh, very lucky.
Riess: And at the time?
Carman: Oh, I felt lucky then. And I was riding--! didn't walk one mile
anyplace, I rode everyplace!
Division headquarters was about as good as you could get,
unless you were at army headquarters, and then you were in
England. No, I guess army headquarters would have been another
twenty miles back. But we were generally about five to eight
miles back of the lines where the actual fighting was going on.
You could hear the guns. We got shelled one time when we were
moving headquarters—we were in a convoy.
Photographing War's Destruction
Carman: I felt very lucky. A friend of mine used to work for Popular
Mechanics, and we got together and set up photo developing, got
all the trays and chemicals . His wife and my wife sent stuff over
there, and so we could develop our own films and print stuff if we
could find the paper. I've got I don't know how many thousands
negatives I haven't even printed since then.
Riess: Stuff relating to the war?
Carman: Oh, yes, it was pictures of war. Destruction. I mean, we'd go
through towns and there would be nothing but a couple of chimneys
left. We'd take pictures of everything. You could take pictures
of anything you wanted. You couldn't send it home because there
was censorship. But I've got all kinds of pictures of some of the
Holocaust camps, the death camps.
Riess: You moved, you were following the line?
Carman: Yes. The front line was, say, five to seven miles ahead of us, so
we were five miles back.
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Why did you decide to make that record?
The pictures?
That wasn't your assignment.
No, no. It was just private. Just another fellow and I taking
pictures. I've always taken pictures. I've got lots of pictures
I took up at the ranch. I've got one of me holding a prize fish
that's about that long [gestures]. I had a little camera about
that big, and I took pictures about like that.
Two by three?
No, no, smaller than that. Really little ones,
small photos kicking around.
I've got a lot of
But now I can't remember where the pictures were taken, I
don't think. I didn't keep a really good record of where I took
them. We do have a fairly good record of where our command posts
moved. Every time we moved we'd have a new town or something, and
I can remember some of those. But even that I don't think is
really complete to the very end.
25
I was very lucky. One of my school chums that graduated a
year ahead of me, he was a company commander down in the
regiments, and he got wounded. I visited him in Nancy when he was
in the hospital there. He's up in Paradise [California] now. His
wife was in our class, and he was in the class ahead of us.
Riess: You haven't done anything with these pictures?
Carman: No.
For a while, you know, like everybody else, we printed our
own Christmas cards, the kids growing up, the kids by the tree and
all the presents. We printed those until the kids got too old to
get dressed up. Then for some reason I just didn't get around to
it.
Riess: The pictures that you took going into the concentration camps
after the war, what do they show?
Carman: Just bodies laying all over. Just like the pictures you saw on TV
of the Holocaust.
I should dig them out and look through them at least and see
what's there. Nancy and her husband were going to set up a
darkroom, but now they're getting going on getting their house
finished, and so there's no convenient place to print them.
Riess: You've printed them all though, haven't you?
Carman: No, I've developed the negatives, but I haven't printed them.
I've got a stack of negatives about that high. They're all in
glassine envelopes.
My aunt gave me a camera to take, a folding camera. I think
I still have that, I brought it back. And then this buddy of mine
found a little Retina which he took pictures with. But it was
35mm, so he had to have an enlarger for that, so it wasn't very
practical.
Riess: I think I had one of those. It had a little bellows.
Carman: Yes. It was a hard case, you pulled it open, and it would come
out just a short distance. I got another Retina when I came back
after the war, and I still have it. It's a really good camera.
And I got a Nikkormat later on to take closeups. It's seen a lot
of miles. [See further discussion, p. 172]
Riess: Earlier, when you were stationed in Yuma, Arizona, and Arkansas-
were you interested in plant materials that you saw?
26
Carman: There was no time. In Yuma, we didn't even get off the base. The
colonel wanted to go down to Mexico one day, so we drove down
across the border into some little town, and I guess they got some
liquor or something, and I just went along for the ride.
But in Kaufbeuren, the thing I really regret now is that
there was a nursery that I used to walk by when we were going down
to the park, and I never did stop in and talk to them. It's one
of those things, when you're eighteen or nineteen years old and
you think, "Oh, I'll do it next week." [laughs] I never did.
Riess: Did you write home to your dad and tell him what you were seeing?
Carman: No. I don't think so. Anyway, Jean threw all the letters away.
I wrote one every day, too. I remember the colonel—one night I
was writing a letter, and he said something about having a
girlfriend, and I said, Yeah, I was married. He opened his eyes--
"Oh!"
27
V CARMAN'S NURSERY, 1946-1970
In Boom Times, and Since
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
After the war did you come back and finish college?
I got out in '46. Jean and I had married just before I went
overseas, and by the time I got back I guess I went to one quarter
or something, and then I figured it was going to take too long, I
had three or four years to go,
the teaching at that time.
and I wasn't so all fired hot about
So then I decided I would go into landscaping and work with
my father in nurseries. I took a couple of courses in botany and
things like that. I took one correspondence course in
landscaping. I was going to do landscaping first, and I did some
of that for a while. Then we decided I'd go into partnership with
my dad, and we built up the nursery, and we then had a small,
general nursery from then until '70.
What about this location?
We moved here in '70. After my father and mother passed away--
that was in an estate, like. The only way we could divide the
estate was to sell the property.
Tell me the address of the first nursery again.
It was 2640 South San Jose-Los Gatos Road. That's the first
address. Then the name changed to Bascom Avenue, and it's still
Bascom Avenue. Our original nursery was about a mile away.
The history of freeways in San Jose! [laughs]
Yes, the name changes.
28
Riess: How much of your father's business was landscaping?
Carman: None. Well, we did a little bit of it. Cambrian Park was going
in at that time, so 1 went down and landscaped some of his model
homes. We sold plants for people to do their own landscaping.
But I really wasn't that ambitious, I guess, like some of
the other people, to go out and get after that. I think I was
kind of lazy, really, looking back at it.
Riess: What would you have done?
Carman: Go out and make plans for people like other people were doing.
Riess: Because you had taken the correspondence course.
Carman: Yes, I had taken the course, so I knew all the basic stuff and
plants. I was just lazy, I guess.
Riess: Through what institution did you do the landscape correspondence
course?
Carman: I think I've got it out in the garage [chuckles]. It was the
National Landscape Institute, or something like that. They were
giving nationwide courses. It was just a basic landscape course;
it didn't lead to much except they'd send you out a problem and
you'd have to do it and send it back, and stuff like that.
Riess: Did they teach you plant materials?
Carman: Yes, they had lists. I've got plant lists.
Riess: And how about structural things, like drainage?
Carman: Yes, I think that was included too. It was so long ago that it
was one of those things I forgot.
Riess: There were big changes in the landscape business after the war,
and I guess in the nursery business too. How would you
characterize the changes?
Carman: After the war? Probably the biggest change was the multiplication
of nurseries. Between '45 and '50 there were probably fifteen
nurseries within five or ten miles of San Jose that opened up.
I recently talked to a big one over there. He says they
started out with a tin-roofed salesroom that leaked in the rain.
The other one had a ten-by-twelve salesroom. Most all of them
were a family thing, just a man and wife starting, probably
29
starting with borrowed money. I don't know where they got the
money to start with or buy the land. One of them bought one acre
over there.
A couple came out here to visit from Cleveland, and she said
when they hit Pasadena and saw all this fruit and stuff there her
husband said, "This is it!" He had a friend up here, and they
never back went for twenty-five or thirty years. Never went back
to Cleveland. He stayed here. He went back to visit once and
came back. They have a son now who has the nursery over on
Sunnyvale Road.
Riess: And they all were making a living.
Carman: Yes. Of course, I think a living was easier to make in those
days. A dollar went farther- -well, things cost in relation too, I
suppose. They probably weren't living so high like everybody
wants to do now.
Riess: Is it like the difference between the 160-acre farm and the
corporate farms? Is size everything?
Carman: Around here size wasn't that important because it was on a retail
basis. On a wholesale basis, then you have to have space to grow
all the plants to supply the retailers. There were a couple of
wholesalers, though- -there was Leonard Coates, and they had a
growing ground in Morgan Hill and another one in Santa Cruz. And
their fruit tree operation was at Brentwood. They grew fruit
trees and ornamentals. So they were one of the big suppliers.
Another one started hauling plants up from Los Angeles,
brokering. And Pacific Nurseries up in Colma--they expanded. And
California Nursery was big in the forties too, up there in Niles.
Also, too, we have to remember that at that time there was
an expanding market. The valley up until '45, probably, was
pretty much all orchards. Then the city of San Jose expanded all
over the place, annexing people and putting in tracts, 600 homes
at a time.
Springdale was a garden center down in the south part of the
town, and they operated from '60 to '85, I guess. They expanded
down there; they had the top garden center in the county at that
time, probably. And then in '85 when the expansion and the houses
stopped, they just closed it up because they had made money and
they had bought property around, and the land was worth more to
sell than continue the nursery.
30
Now there's infilling, and it's commercial, and so the need
for these small places [nurseries] has disappeared. So all the
small places have disappeared, for one thing. In the second
place, the generations have turned over. The second generation is
not interested, they can't afford to do it. They don't want to
work seven days a week. I know one there who's trying to decide- -
his kids are working at five-day jobs, they get more money, and
they don't have to worry, they can close the door and go home at
the end of the day.
Riess: Probably also like in farming, the farm can support one child, but
not all of the next generation.
Carman: There are three or four I can think of offhand where the second
generation is taking over. Either a relation or a family member
is taking over.
Riess: I don't know whether you're analyzing your data as to what makes
it work and what doesn't. Of the sixteen you interviewed, let's
say, were all of them inspired nurserymen? Some of them must have
been just merchants.
Carman: Yes, a lot of them were, although they were interested in plants.
But like I say, when the business started falling off there was
nothing for them to do; you couldn't create business if it wasn't
there. And there was other competition coming in, Woolworth's and
Orchard Supply and things like that. That made a difference too.
Riess: But for some maybe they specialized, maybe they started
propagating. Maybe the pressure on them was creative.
Carman: The ones that succeeded, I guess, are the ones that have grown and
specialized. They've taken a more aggressive attitude with their
advertising or something like this, so they've built up a customer
base that looks to them for their knowledge and plant material
rather than the discount houses most of the young gardeners are
drawn to because of the big ads.
Some of them probably will learn after a while, you know,
that they've got to be really careful how they buy at some of the
places. They're getting plants almost as good as some of the
other places, and from the same source sometimes. But within two
or three days, when they stick it under a shelf, it starts going
downhill very quickly, and so then the plant is not going to
perform like the other places that really take care of their
material. The ones that I think are succeeding are upgrading into
really quality plants and knowledgeable people and service.
31
Riess: Did you need to follow what the magazines were pushing?
Sunset. Make stuff that wrote about available?
Like
Carman: Sunset. I think, did a great job, except that sometimes they would
publicize something that wasn't very widely available. This made
a lot of nurserymen very unhappy [laughs]. They really didn't
like that at all. So a lot of them got upset sometimes when
they'd put a special plant in the magazine, and then people 'd come
in and ask for it and they didn't have it because it was hard to
get. They were pushing new and unusual things.
Riess: Was Dick Dunmire on the garden end there?
Carman: He was a writer. He didn't do the pushing, I don't think, it was
some of the editors that did the pushing. He would do the
articles.
He [Dunmire] was really the brains at Sunset. He's a
remarkable young man—not young now, but remarkable, one of these
guys that's got a photographic memory. He can recall stuff from a
description that you can't believe. He's still active. In fact,
he just rewrote their orchid book for Sunset, on a contract.
Specialization. Kiwi Vines
Riess :
Carman:
How did you and your father share the business?
structured?
How was it
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
He did most of the growing, and I was doing most of the selling at
the nursery and buying hard goods and going out and getting plants
that we didn't grow. I would go out and pick up plants at
wholesale growers.
By "growing" you mean that he was propagating then?
Yes, he had been propagating all the time. Up at the ranch he was
propagating then—from seed, I guess. Like I say, I just didn't
pay any attention.
Was he particularly gifted, do you think?
He was very good. Mostly it was seeds and cuttings; he didn't do
any grafting. I started grafting some conifers when we were down
there, but he didn't do any of that. It was mostly seeds and
cuttings.
32
Riess: What was unique about Carman's Nursery in those years, between '46
and '70?
Carman: Well, in the forties, after the war, there was a nursery up in
Stanford on Page Mill Road. It was called Page Mill Nursery. And
[Peggy] Stebbins and [Margaret] Truax, two ladies ran that nursery
who were graduates of a gardening school or a nursery school in
Stanford. They were contemporary with Elsa Uppman Knoll.
Anyway, they were doing ground covers and perennials. They
closed up not too long after that, so then I thought we should do
some of that. We started doing that: we would grow ground covers
and things like that, and we would sell them to some of the
wholesalers. I think we were one of the first ones to grow herbs
in little pots and sell them, five kinds, five of each one in a
flat, so you'd have a collection of herbs.
Riess: Sort of windowsill planting?
Carman: No, these were for resale. For wholesalers. There was a man up
in the Mountain View area who had a nursery, and he would sell to
different places. We would sell those to him at wholesale rate,
and then he would resell them. And Nielson Nursery up in Hayward,
we used to sell to him ground covers and some odd shrubs that we
would grow quantities of. So we gradually got into the more
unusual and perennial plant material.
Then in '68 we got into the kiwi vines. We were one of the
first ones to bring those into the county, actually. We had
become friends with Trevor Davies in New Zealand—in '67, I think,
he was here. (That was Duncan and Davies in New Zealand, and they
were exporting at that time, and they were exporting mostly to
growers who were putting them out in the fields, to Chico and that
area. They were doing a lot of that up there.) So we got in a
shipment of those and we started growing them from that shipment,
and we continued to grow them from then on.
Riess: This was a major introduction. [See further discussion in Chapter
VI]
Carman: For this part of the valley it was, yes. Then we were doing mail
order for quite a while. After we moved up here we were mail
ordering.
Riess: How come Davies contacted you?
Carman: I met him as a nursery meeting and brought him up here to our
house—he was going to stay in Los Gatos, I guess— and we talked
about it then.
33
Then in '68 the New Zealand nurserymen as a group came here
and toured California. This friend of mine, George Martin, who
used to work with Tommy [Thomas D.] Church, was their California
guide. He was on the bus and took them all around the state. We
met him [Trevor Davies] several times and finally decided that we
would get some and start selling them. We should have put out a
couple of acres at that time because that would have been a
profitable crop [laughs]. Again, I was too lazy.
Anyway, we got them and just kept growing them from then on,
it just kept multiplying. Some of the plants out there [on the
grounds of the Carman nursery] are some of the original ones from
New Zealand.
Riess: You've said two or three times now that you were too lazy.
Carman: Well, in talking to all these other people who have retired and
done so well, I just realized after all this time that I was just
too lazy [chuckles].
Too well off, I guess. I didn't have any really heavy
payments to make or anything. When we built the house on the
nursery property down there my father deeded me a piece of
property so I could have a separate lot to put the house on. Then
we built the house piecemeal: that section [indicating a portion
of the house] was the first square. That wasn't on it, and that
wasn't on it. It was a like a little mystery house.
Anyway, we built the house and we kept adding to it. We
were making payments on the property down there, but that came out
of the business. We never did make a great fortune off this
business. It was just too easy to get by, I guess, the way I was
doing it.
Riess: I don't understand about this house being there.
Carman: Oh. This is the house we moved with. We moved this house.
Fungicides. Labor ii
Riess: Would you tell me again about the fungicides that you mentioned
using. What was Volk oil?
Carman: I guess they just called it Bluestone. It was copper sulfate,
which was a powder which you could mix up in water. And then they
would add Volk oil to that to make it stick to the tree, and they
34
would spray this on the apricot trees and peaches to keep the
borers and the fungus off of them. That would be done when it was
dormant so there were no leaves on the trees. Otherwise it would
burn the leaves, with the oil.
Riess: We still use that combination, don't we?
Carman: Yes, it's Microcop now, and it doesn't have nearly the oil nor the
copper in it, I don't think. I think it's Microcop. They've
taken so much off the market that it's hard to tell what's still
available.
Riess: And actual people had to spray this? [laughs]
Carman: Real people. They'd have a tractor pulling a spray rig which had
its own engine on it, and that would build up the pressure, and
there would be two men with long hoses and they would get about
four rows of trees on each side of the rig and go down through the
orchards.
Riess: Would they be migrant labor?
Carman: No, I think they would be probably permanent labor. Migrant labor
was mostly used to harvest. They could have been people living on
the farms: sometimes they would have a house where the people
would live on the farm and work year round.
Riess: But it might have been Mexican labor?
Carman: It could have been, yes.
Riess: Were these chemicals regulated at all?
Carman: No, you could buy them by the ton if you wanted to.
Riess: They were used because they solved the problem.
Carman: That's right.
Riess: Toichi Domoto talked about using nicotine in the greenhouse and he
said you would get almost high on the fumes .
Carman: Oh, those are fumigation canisters which you would put in and let
them burn in the glass houses to kill all the insects in the glass
house, the bugs and the aphids. Yes, if you inhaled that, why,
you were inhaling pure nicotine smoke. You're not supposed to be
inhaling it, really. You were supposed to be out of there when
that was burning.
35
Riess: And then Black Leaf 40?
Carman: Black Leaf 40 was a concentrated nicotine sulfate, I guess they
called it. You would use a teaspoon to a gallon, something like
that, and then spray. That would get all aphids and that sort of
soft-bodied insects.
Riess: These early retail nursery people, where did they get the learning
so that they could tell people what they needed in terms of sprays
or problem solving?
Carman: Most of them when they started, they weren't selling sprays. They
were just selling plants. Then you would have distributors who
were starting to package these things in small packages. Like the
Pacific Guano people came out with small packages of one-pound and
sometimes half-pound packages of guano.
The salesmen would tell the nursery owners what the stuff
was used for and how to use it and how to sell it, so they'd have
an education program, which the salespeople still do. If somebody
is selling chemicals, they come around with a brochure and tell
the people how it can be used and how it should be used. They're
still doing that. But as things became available then these hard-
goods people would bring them around and start selling them. So
that's where they got the knowledge.
Riess: And that was your part. You took care of that end of things in
your business with your father.
Carman: Yes. I did all the buying of that sort of material.
Riess: When did agricultural extension- -county, university, and so on,
get themselves involved? They were doing inspections?
Carman: In '54, from then on, they really became active. The county
agricultural commissioner was doing plant inspections. They were
inspecting plants, but they weren't doing anything else as far as
enforcing things, except cleanliness. So if you had certain kind
of bugs, they would put a tape around it and you couldn't sell it
until you sprayed it and cleaned it up.
Ethnicity in the Nursery Business
Riess: And for Mr. Domoto, a Japanese-American nurseryman, there were
political and other aspects in dealing with the nursery
inspectors. I mean, there was prejudice.
36
Carman: Oh, yes, there was quite a bit. I don't know if he told you, but
he told me about going to deliver stuff down in Los Angeles and
putting it outside and leaving before they opened up. He'd unload
in the dark and leave, because there were feelings against him.
Riess: To go back to the histories of the retail nurseries, were a
certain percentage Japanese?
Carman: About 90 percent.
Riess: Ninety percent Japanese?
Carman: Of course, this was after the war. Before the war it was the
other way around. There was only three or four: S. Onishi,
Kitazawa Nursery, Japanese Nursery, S. H. Jio, T. Tanaka Nursery.
Yeah, it had been the other way around before the war.
Riess: And we are talking about the Los Gatos area?
Carman: The Santa Clara Valley is what we're talking about, this side of
Sunnyvale, and this way.
Riess: That sounds like a success story that's due to the war, and yet
there's something kind of twisted about that view.
Carman: It seems like it is. As I've gone around and found out- -and when
you ask that question, I realized there's only three or four that
I can think of offhand that are not Japanese.
Riess: What makes your whole answer even more interesting is that it's
not until you're thinking about it now that you realize it. So
that means that for you it's just been so much of the nursery
world that—is this possible that you don't actually see the
Japanese as a different group?
Carman: Like I say, I hadn't thought about it until you asked me that. I
realize that the real success stories are all Japanese. Maybe
it's their work ethic paying off [chuckles].
A lot of them are very active in the association. Some of
them have gone to be A.A.N. presidents and C.A.N. presidents.
They can be as active and go as far as they want, actually. And
some of them have.
Riess: But that's all within your lifetime.
Carman: Yes.
Riess: Your father would have had no prejudice?
37
Carman: No, because What's -his -name down here, Sam Oka, he used to farm
right next to Mozart on the creek there, and Dad was good friends
with his father. I knew his son. Of course, we had Japanese in
school. Some were on our basketball team, Onishi and a couple of
other ones. My sister had a real good friend, a Japanese, Mae
Rawauchi .
Riess: Mr. Domoto--! don't know whether he's typical, but I found him a
profound person to be around, deeply principled. But I'd hate to
just generalize. Can you generalize?
Carman: He's a different generation, really, than most of them in the
business now. The ones that are active now are actually the
second generation. The first generation I would think would
probably be similar to his feelings and his thoughts. The second
ones, I think, are becoming more Americanized, if you will.
They're a lot more business-oriented, where he was probably more
plant-oriented. I can see that difference there.
Riess: Not wanting to disturb some sort of sense of harmony that was
important to him. I don't think you can have that and have a big
business at the same time.
Which kind of a nurseryman are you?
Carman: Definitely plant-oriented.
C.A.N.
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
We started these interviews with your telling me that you were
bringing up to date the history of the Peninsula Chapter of
C.A.N.. Would you tell me more about that organization and how it
functions for the members?1
The California Association of Nurserymen is a statewide
organization. There are eighteen chapters — our local one is the
Peninsula Chapter and it includes everything from San Francisco to
Gilroy. We meet once a month and have a speaker on some topic
related to the nursery.
It [Peninsula Chapter] was formed in 1950.
Or your father?
Were you a founder?
'This portion of the interview was conducted through correspondence
dated October 22, 1997.
38
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman :
Not really. The Peninsula Chapter was split off the Central
Chapter which covers the East Bay. There were several C.A.N.
members in the peninsula area, so more were asked to join to make
a chapter. We joined at that time as charter members.
How much did you participate?
I was on the Board of Directors for about ten years, I think, at
different times. I was president in 1964 and 1971. Also I was
treasurer for about five years but Jean did all the work
[chuckles] .
You have spoken some about the different kinds of people who came
out to the area and started nursery businesses. How did the
organization serve those people from such different backgrounds?
Was there any special effort to educate them about the business
that the chapter would have done?
The chapter meeting usually has a speaker on something
educational. Subjects like new rose varieties or fruit trees. Or
pests and diseases, or health insurance. In the early years we
had a new plant presentation as a short part of the meeting. Then
C.A.N. started the C.C.N. program that has written tests on plant
identification, landscaping, insects, lawns--this is for all of
the sales people.
Do you have a population that includes women members now?
African-Americans?
And
I think we have five nurseries in the Peninsula Chapter that are
owned by women. One I know is the daughter of the founder. There
are many women managers, buyers, designers, and sales people.
What is the J. H. Wilson award, which you received in 1988 from
the Peninsula Chapter of C.A.N.? And for what service or activity
or what is it given? And in 1988 they gave you the Chapter
Nursery Service Award, and in 1992 the Outstanding Achievement
Award .
The J. H. Wilson Award was named for Jim Wilson, owner of Peters &
Wilson Nursery in Millbrae, which was started in the 1930s. Jim
was the Peninsula Chapter's first president, served two terms, '50
and '51. Jim passed away about two years ago I think. This award
is given for service to the chapter, and for horticulture. Jim
was the first recipient in 1986. That 1988 award was actually the
J. H. Wilson Award. I'm not sure what the 1992 award was really
for.
39
Riess: You have received so many awards,
you?
Which have meant the most to
Carman: I can't say any one means more than any other. They were
different times and different groups,
to me.
Each one means a great deal
Riess: In 1978 Cal Hort presented you with what is called their Special
Award. The wording from Pacific Horticulture is, "The award
recognizes the knowledge, skill, and dedication Mr. Carman brings
to the introduction, propagation, and distribution of unusual
plants. His nursery in Los Gatos, California, is Mecca for
adventurous gardeners in search of rare and beautiful plants."
Carman: Yes. This is the Cal Hort Annual Award. You should see the list
of recipients. It's like a Who's Who in Horticulture in the Bay
Area.
Riess: That year you received a cultural award for Syzygium paniculatum
"Variegatum." [laughs] I think you deserve an award for being
able to pronounce the name of the plant. What is it?
Carman: That's a mouthful- -it ' s the botanical name for what used to be
called Eugenia paniculata. It is a special form with green,
white, and pink on the leaves. Ours was killed in the freeze of
'90. Victor Reiter had the parent plant, but I'm not sure if it
is still alive.
Riess: I guess the most recent award—and perhaps the top award—was the
Pacific Coast Nurseryman of the Year award from C.A.N., in 1995.
The C.A.N. award says you're really best known for helping your
customers, perhaps to the detriment of your own business! Oh
dear!
Carman: Yes, it is really the top. When you see the list of P.C.N.
recipients from all over the state and all they have done it is
very humbling.
Riess: You were a C.A.N. director in 1965-1967, and again in 1972-1974.
What were the most crucial issues that you dealt with in those
years?
Carman: That was so long ago- -I doubt there were any really crucial items
to deal with.
Riess: It's very interesting to me to think of how the three groups
differ. How would you characterize the difference, and the reason
for being, between the local C.A.N. chapter, the California
Horticultural Society, and the statewide organization?
40
Carman: The Peninsula Chapter is nursery business oriented. Meetings
usually have a speaker relating to nurseries—hard goods or
plants. These are dinner meetings, so it is a social gathering
where you meet other nursery workers in your general area. I
guess the basic purpose is to educate the sales people so they may
better help the customers.
The Hort Society's meetings generally have a speaker, and a
plant discussion show and tell, and a plant raffle. So those
meetings are plant or garden related. Some nursery people attend
the Hort meeting, but it is mostly home gardeners, designers and
individuals who have an intense interest in plants—many experts
on all sorts of plants. Cal Hort has had some very interesting
weekend tours over the years .
The statewide group, C.A.N., has a staff of about ten in the
Sacramento headquarters. They coordinate the meetings of over
twenty committees of volunteers from nurseries all across the
state. These groups meet during the year to establish policy on
insurance, scholarships, standards, education, and everything else
pertaining to the nursery industry.
Riess: What has your work bean with each of them?
Carman: I have been involved in the Hort groups with plant material
mostly: at Cal Hort I have shown new or interesting plants for
many years , and served on the board and on the awards committee
for several years. At Western Hort I have led the plant
discussion for too many years, and served on the board and as
president.
In the Peninsula Chapter [of C.A.N.] it has been service on
the board—of f ice holder and work on project committees. It has
been mostly time devoted to the chapter. And as for C.A.N., I
have done very little. I just could not give the time and travel
that is required.
41
VI KIWI AND OTHER INTRODUCTIONS
[Interview 2: March 31, 1997] ti
Carman: [talking about what becomes of gardens] People have a new house,
they get it all landscaped the way they like it, and they sell it.
They move away, but then in four or five years they might come
back, go back to see it, and the place is a shambles. It's
completely different. In fact, there was a couple in the other
day, and they had been away for a long time, and they couldn't
even find the house where they used to live, and I know they
haven't torn it down. What they had done is remodeled the house,
and so these people didn't even recognize where they lived. It
was only a few blocks from here.
It's the same way with plants: you sell the plants, and some
people come back and tell you how well they've done, and that
pleases you, but you try to sell them good plants. One of the
best compliments I ever had was from a young lady up here in Palo
Alto, a very knowledgeable person, really knew her plants, and
very good at designing. She came in one time and was getting some
plant material, and she said that none of the plants she had ever
gotten from me had died—and she would get all kinds of unusual
plants. That was the greatest compliment I think I've had from
one of those people.
They buy these plants in four-inch pots--the way it's
commercially done—and plunk them in, and if you're not really
careful with it you're going to have quite a bit of loss, some
loss at least.
Trevor Davies, New Zealand
Riess: Today would you tell the whole Ed Carman and the kiwi story?
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Do you want any other stories in the same vein, or plant material
introductions today?
Well, we might call it the New Zealand story,
a bigger story?
Would that make it
Yes, there would be two basic plants that have come from New
Zealand that are, as far as I'm concerned, major. The kiwi, of
course, Actinidia, was the first one. This came about, I guess,
by meeting Trevor Davies from Duncan and Davies in, I think, 1965,
at a C.A.N. board meeting in Monterey. I was past president, so I
was a state director.
I met Trevor there, and he talked a little bit about New
Zealand, I think, at the board meeting. Then I brought him back
to Los Gatos because he was supposed to be staying in Los Gatos
for a couple of days. I hadn't remembered this, but Jean said
that she had asked him, when he got to the house, if his nursery
was very big. We were kind of floored when he said it was a
thousand acres, or something like this. It was the biggest
nursery in New Zealand [chuckles).
Why was he visiting in this country?
He was probably on a selling trip, because he was a worldwide
salesman for Duncan and Davies. It may have been the first time
he had been up here. I'm not sure.
I took him up to a motel in Los Gatos where he was staying,
and then I think his other friend, George Martin, who was an
architect and worked with Tommy Church for many years, he picked
him up and took him over to his home near Saratoga and put him up
there, but I'm not sure if it was that night or the next day. We
talked a little bit about it, and then-
Talked about what?
About kiwis. Then in '66 I got some things from them. The
correspondence starts in '66 with Trevor. [looking at documents]
Yes, it was in 1966 that we got the first plants from New
Zealand. It wasn't kiwis though, it was some other ornamental
things which I think George Martin had suggested, because he had
been to New Zealand previous to that and spent two or three months
touring New Zealand with his family. It was some ornamental
things that we got in from Duncan and Davies at that time. Then
we kept corresponding and kept getting the different plants.
43
Riess: These were plant materials totally unknown to Calif ornians?
Carman: They might not have been totally unknown, but they weren't in the
trade around here.
Coprosma prostrata1, Golden Monterey cypress, and Alectryon
excelsum, which was a tree. We have one planted [Alectryon] out
by the house out here, but in 1990 it froze to the ground. There
are some in one experimental plantation that Saratoga Hort put
out- -I'm not sure if some of these went to Saratoga or not.
That was one of the first groups of plants that we brought
in. Then we got other things, I think, in '67.
Riess: These were native to New Zealand, not brought by the British?
Carman: No, no. These were all New Zealand natives.
There are some other Corokias we got in 1966 also, and those
are all hybrids or selected forms of it. And the flaxes--we got
one flax at that time. And Lophomyrtus, we still have some of
those outside on the ground.
Riess: Was flax not being used in landscaping here until you brought this
in?
Carman: Yes, but they were the really large ones-- just the green and the
purple ones. This was probably one of the variegated.
Riess: What's the common name for Corokia virgata?
Carman: There isn't any. They have small leaves, and some of them have
purple leaves and some have green leaves and yellow flowers, and
then some have yellow berries and red berries. That's where they
get these names: Bronze Knight and Bronze Lady and Red Wonder and
so on. Nurserymen give these fancy names to plants—these all
came out of their catalog.
I guess that's why we imported them. We have all their
catalogs down there, and so that's probably where we got the names
of them. And then I think Trevor probably suggested some of these
'C. prostrata and C. kirkii are about the same. C. kirkii is the one
that was being grown, still being grown; prostrata has never been widely
grown—there are some still over in the Campbell Water Company pumping
station in Campbell. I've got to get some cuttings back of that. [E.G.]
44
things. I know George tried them, because he was very interested
in getting things in for the landscape trade.
And we were sending them things at the same time.
Riess: But you were a small nursery. He's a great big nursery.
Carman: Yes, but they were things that weren't in New Zealand at that
time, so they were getting new things. We sent them some
different rosemarys in '66 that they didn't have at that time.
Shipping Arrangements
Riess: Was this the first time that you had to deal with shipping things
overseas?
Carman: It probably was, yes.
Riess: Did you do that yourself, or did you have some service?
Carman: No, we did it ourselves. You can't have somebody ship plants—you
lose control [laughs]. Most people don't know how to ship plants,
including some of the botanic gardens and nurseries [laughs]. I
hear tales of how they get plants in the mail.
Riess: Had you already been shipping to southern California, so this was
not different, or what?
Carman: No, we hadn't been shipping much of anything, I don't think,
because in '66 we were still down at the other place. It was just
something new to do. Something we just started doing.
Riess: Did you make your own packing materials and crates and so on?
Carman: No, and mostly it was all small things. The parcel would be only
as big as a shoebox or smaller, the smallest you can ship because
the shipping expenses were quite high. Here he gives me explicit
directions [referring to the correspondence], because the cubic
costs more than the weight sometimes. So a big package is going
to cost more than a small, heavy package.
Riess: The rosemary- -they were Just little slips?
Carman: Yes, just rooted cuttings. They put a new name on them when they
got them down there, "Bluelake" or something like that. It's in
their catalog.
45
Riess: This was by ship or by air?
Carman: It was all air. Either airmail or air freight. In fact, I've got
a bundle that thick [gestures] of packages that got lost for a
month after arriving here in California. I had one just this year
get lost for two weeks. The postal service sometimes can pull
some real boners; I don't know how they do it [laughter].
We've finally come to the conclusion that air freight is the
best way, because you have a bill of lading and you can trace it
exactly. They can tell you exactly. FedEx or UPS would be the
way to do it now. That way they would take it to customs, pick it
up at customs, and deliver it back to your door, I believe. I
haven't checked into them, but I've got to find out about that.
Riess: In the beginning, just a few little things from him and he gets a
few little things from you, there's not a lot of money involved.
Carman: No. These were mostly no charge at all. We'd ship them plants
and they'd ship us plants, and there was no charge to it at all.
After a while they wanted some special things from back east, and
we had to buy them, and so they paid for that. But it was just at
our cost, actually.
Riess: You acted as their agent.
Carman: Yes, to obtain the things and ship them. We never made any money
off of it, actually- -nor did they. The stuff that they charged us
for like kiwis, why, they were so reasonable—of course, the
exchange rate was pretty low anyway. Their dollar was worth our
fifty cents or something like that . So we never made any money
off it.
Creating a Market
Riess: That's interesting. Money wasn't the issue here.
Carman: No, the plant was the thing. Even to get them to ship the plant
in small quantities—it's more bother to do that. And then, of
course, to ship them plants was the same thing: it's a lot of
bother. You'd have to root the cutting so you have a small rooted
cutting, and that would take maybe six months before you'd have
the plants ready to ship. They appreciated that, and so did we
appreciate getting stuff that we didn't have here. The time and
effort probably offset on both sides.
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Then you've got the plant, and if the plant sells good then
you can make money off your propagation of it and sales of it.
That's where you get the idea of doing it. Last year I got some
wisterias—Trevor Davies sent me a little package, and I got
forty-eight plants out of that one little package of grafts. In
two or three years they'll be saleable, and so I'll make some
money off of that. He still sent it to me for nothing.
When you started with the small things with him you didn't even
know what they were going to look like necessarily.
No. Except George, I think, might have seen them down there. He
is a very good friend. He lived in Los Gatos, and he was very
interested in getting new plants and helping us.
What was his relationship to Tommy Church?
He was foreman for Tommy Church for many years . He ' d run the
landscape crews, before he went out on his own. He graduated from
Berkeley as a landscape architect. I'm not sure what year that
was.
In that case you didn't have to promote the materials,
there was already a user waiting at the other end.
because
Riess:
Well, not really, because these were new things, and they never
did get accepted in the trade at that time. Now they're being
grown. Other nurseries have made a second introduction. At least
one of the Corokias is on the market now.
Why did that happen? Why didn't they get accepted?
Because I didn't promote them, I guess. It's very hard to get new
plants introduced, because unless it's seen someplace, unless an
architect knows it and can put it in a garden, why, there's no
demand for it. So if there's no demand, nobody grows it because
it won't sell.
Some of these things aren't that showy, which a lot of
people demand. It's difficult. Now, like I say, they can get
these color pictures in the wholesale catalogs, and they can sell
all 50,000 in one year because they sell them all across the
country.
I can see why the organizations and garden clubs tie in here.
They can be part of the larger promotion.
47
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Yes, and some of the hort societies—there will be people in there
who are interested in certain things and they'll bring a plant in
and show it, and then of course everybody wants to get one.
And you were one of those people.
Yes, I took in some things,
very much.
But they didn't come and buy them
Well, you probably gave them away [laughter].
I tried not to, except to people starting nurseries.
You continued to get things from him in the late sixties.
Yes. Then in '68 the New Zealand nurserymen, twenty-eight of
them, came up here as a tour group [also see p. 33] and Trevor was
there and his brother and a lot of other people we have kept up
with. George Martin took on the job, or was asked to be their
tour leader for California. They got a bus and they went clear
down to southern California, back up to northern California, and
stopped at all the nursery associations and the big nurseries.
They had a great time, I guess.
First Kiwi Shipment. 1968
Carman: We talked to Trevor some more at that time, and that's the time we
got interested in the Actinidia, the kiwis. So late in '68 we got
our shipment of a hundred rooted cuttings of kiwis.
We were first going to import rooted cuttings and establish
them and sell them at a wholesale basis. But at that time there
was a two-year quarantine on them, so you had to keep them for two
growing seasons , and we figured this was going to be not very easy
to do, to keep them separated. We decided not to do that, and we
started growing our own cuttings. From then on we Just kept
growing our own cuttings and selling our own rooted cuttings in
gallon cans.
Riess: Why wouldn't that always have been a better way to do it?
Carman: They were so reasonable down there, and I didn't know I could grow
them when I got them in. But the first year they grew we took
cuttings as soon as they got big enough, and some of those rooted
the first year. So we figured from then on we'd be able to do our
own.
48
Riess:
Carman :
Did you have enough room at the other nursery?
down there.
You were still
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman :
Yes. It was a little bigger than this; it was an acre and a half,
actually. You can put a lot of cans in a small area. Actually,
we grew most of them up here. We were growing maybe a thousand a
year at the most. It wasn't really big numbers at that time.
Were they under shade?
No, they were out in the open, under sprinklers with our regular
plants. They would get too lanky, really, in the shade.
When did you know what a runaway success kiwis would be?
Someplace in here [referring to his files] I found a letter I
wrote to him that I was going to do an article on kiwis , and we
were going to be listed as one of the sources—as soon as that
article broke, then we got letters from all over the state and out
of state too, inquiries about it. So then we started mail order
on the kiwis for several years after that.
Where was the article published?
In Sunset magazine, probably in 1970, about the time that we moved
up here. [January 1970, p. 57]
The name really means Chinese Gooseberry?
No. The botanical name has actually been changed now. At the
time we got it, it was Actinidia chinensis; now it's Actinidia
deliciosa [laughter]. Botanists are doing that all the time.
How is this an improvement?
It doesn't necessarily mean improving it. It means that the name
was given to it before chinensis or something. That's the way
they figure out these things a lot of times.
An article by Charles Burr from 1979 says "...kiwis had been
introduced at the plant introduction station near Chico, but were
a sleeper in California." [San Jose Mercury News, 26 October,
1979]
Yes, they were up there for years, but nobody did anything. In
fact, in the late sixties the Schmidt Nursery in Palo Alto was
selling kiwis--! never did find out where he got them. But he was
selling them as an ornamental vine. One of those was bought by a
49
landscaper- -planted in his place—and it had fruits on it, and
supposedly this one was a self -fruiting one.
I got cuttings from that and started to propagate it. Not
until several years later did we find out that it did not have
pollen on it, and it was not self -pollinating. In fact, we had
two like that—one from the Blake Garden that Mai [Arbegast] told
me was self -pollinating and it was not. There are no self-
pollinating kiwis, although we have another one now which is
supposed to be self -pollinating [chuckles] but I'm sure it's not
going to be, because they never found any in New Zealand either.
Riess: Were kiwi fruits available in the markets in California?
Carman: No. In fact, they didn't show up until Frieda Kaplan, who was a
fruit broker, brought them in.
Riess: Where is she? In southern California?
Carman: Yes. I think the daughter is carrying on the business.
She was one of the first ones to bring them in, and I think
they're the ones that gave them the name of "kiwi fruit". Down
there they're Chinese gooseberries--in New Zealand that's what
they call them. And in other places they call them tao. She gave
them this name to sell them, of course.
She [Frieda Kaplan] was really quite a promoter; all kinds
of tropical fruits she promoted. She used to put out a newsletter
which we got for a while—she probably still does—to the grocery
departments at the grocery stores. She was growing sunchokes too,
Jerusalem artichokes.
Then in the mid- seventies fruit growers started importing
plants from New Zealand for commercial plantings for the
orchardists, putting in acreage of kiwis. And there was one
famous fiasco up by Gridley. Barbie Benton's mother imported a
bunch of these, enough for several acres, and they were planted up
in this area where they were going to start a plantation to grow
the fruit commercially. They didn't take care of them, and so
they lost most of them.
Trevor had a friend who was up here looking at them and said
that they didn't prepare the ground, there was Johnson grass
through the planting. It was a total loss, practically. Trevor
sent me a copy of the letter [he received from her] : she asked
what they were going to do about it. So Trevor came up here one
time and looked at it. [Carman looks through correspondence file]
50
Riess:
Carman :
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
That looks like three inches of correspondence with a lot of
little air letters.
That's only for ten years.
You didn't use the phone?
Oh, the phone, goodness, no. That was unheard of in those days.
We phone them very seldom, maybe once or twice a year now maybe.
He's got a fax machine, we don't, so we're still writing letters
mostly.
Are they friend to
Give me a sample of one of these letters,
friend at this point, or business?
[hands interviewer a letter]
[reading] "Dear Ed: Thank you for your letter of the 11th March
and for your interest in providing us with information regarding
Actinidia. At the moment, the whole matter is in abeyance as we
have not received confirmation from our clients, and as I finish
work the day after tomorrow, it would appear that this deal will
probably fall through." And so on.
Now why would you be providing them with information
regarding Actinidia?
It was probably information on the place that they were going to
be sold to, or the people they were selling them to. I wonder if
I could find my letter- -was that March '69? [hands interviewer
letter] This was my original letter to him.
[reads letter] "Dear Trevor: George has been keeping us posted on
your plans for a quick trip around the world, ending here in
April. Would suggest your customer make arrangements with a
custom broker. The rain has stopped. Our Actinidia are starting
to bud out."
a
When you get plants from overseas, they're coming in by air
freight. They come in to the airport, and they're under customs.
They get shipped to a customs office. First, I guess they're
inspected by the USDA, and then they go to customs. Customs then
determines if there are going to be any customs on them, and then
they're released either through a broker or to the consignee. But
you have to go up there personally and pay the custom fees and
broker fees.
51
So for any kind of major shipment it's much better to have a
customs broker do it because they can- -I guess they must go from
the USDA to the customs, and then they are released from customs.
But you have to get all these papers signed before you can get
them out of customs. Sometimes it's a lot easier to have a broker
do it for you. Then you go up there and you just pay him and then
they give you all the plants right there.
So that's probably what we were talking about here in these
letters, to have the customs broker—as I mentioned before—do all
the paperwork because it's much easier to get it cleared that way,
to clear customs.
Riess: Did dealing with New Zealand mean an exponential leap in the
Carman Nursery?
Carman: Yes. We've done a little bit with England, but that was much
later, actually, after we moved out here. It was very
interesting, I think, but not very remunerative. Didn't add to
the bank account very much [chuckles]. But it was a lot of fun.
Riess: Had you been working much with George Martin before?
Carman: Yes, we were selling him plants, because by that time he had his
own landscape office in Los Gatos, and he was doing different jobs
around. They did West Valley College, 1 think, and a lot of other
schools. We used to supply them with some of the groundcovers
that had come from New Zealand, like Coprosma kirkii, which was a
flat groundcover. We supplied him with a lot of that one time,
and with some other odds and ends, things that we had.
Riess: You didn't offer large landscaping plant materials?
Carman: No. Five gallon [cans] of some things was the biggest we carried.
Sometimes we put a certain thing in a barrel or half barrel, but
that thing just sat there for years before it sold.
The Coprosma, the only one we sold much of, was a flat
groundcover. It could be in a gallon can, but we kept it sheared.
Sometimes we grew them in small pots, and they'd plant them out
from the pots.
Into Production. 1970s
Riess: At first did you think of kiwi as a vine, or as a fruit tree?
52
Carman: Oh, it was strictly for fruit. In fact, in one of these letters I
noticed I said to Trevor that we were getting orders from people
who had never even tasted the fruit, because of the article in
Sunset . I should have kept that article and sent that. One thing
I didn't keep.
Riess: [looking through files] This recipe handout is a reminder of how
important it is to tell your customers what they're going to be
able to do with this thing, how to eat it.
Carman: This is from New Zealand, though, this is a New Zealand article.
This is what he sent to me.
Riess: The October 1979 [San Jose Mercury News] article mentions a Kiwi
Growers Association. That was here in this country?
Carman: Yes. That was started up in Gridley. It was a growers'
association to promote the fruit and to try to have some kind of
quality control on it. When they first started selling it, why,
they were selling all kinds of little ones and big ones, they were
ungraded. Then they went into having commercial packers grade
them and pack them and store them, because they'll keep for six to
eight months under storage.
Then they had an assessment, so much per ton of fruit, so
that they could pay for the growers' association office and their
publicity and promotion. That was very active for quite a few
years. Lately I think they have only a part-time office in
Sacramento because right now the kiwi-growing industry is on the
decline because of the competition from France, Italy, South
America, and Japan.
Every place is growing them now. We're still importing them
from New Zealand. But I can't think of what they're getting for
them. If they're selling them for twenty cents a pound here, how
much can they be getting them for down there? They're getting
them from South America now, too, I'm sure; a lot of fruit is
coming in from Chile. Commercial growers are pulling them out and
putting in Fuji apples or something like that. Whatever the vogue
is right now.
Riess: New Zealand imports continue to be very strong: the apples, the
Braebum, the Gala.
Carman: Those are going to be losing out pretty soon because the markets
are coming on here for those.
Riess: California-grown Braeburn and so on?
53
Carman: Yes. But they're having trouble here, too, with them. We get the
Farm Bureau publication, and growers are having trouble getting
the color on them.
Riess: At what point were you making money on the kiwis?
Carman: From the mid-seventies, after we got here and into production, up
until the early eighties, probably. By then, of course, some of
the people who had put in vineyards in Gridley were growing the
plants too, and supplying the other growers.
We never did supply many growers. One man I think got
enough for an acre over time, but mostly it was homeowners. I
know one letter I sent to Trevor had an order for forty-five; that
was the biggest order up to that date. But we shipped back east
to one of the universities, North Carolina, and a lot of other
places.
I noticed one letter said we shipped to Chicago—some lady
wanted to grow them as container plants. I never did follow up on
that [chuckles]. And some of the big growers in southern
California started growing them. Monrovia started growing them.
Brokaw Nursery, which grows avocados and other tropical fruits,
they're one of the growers now that's growing them. I don't know
who else. Monrovia still, but I'm not sure. They're not growing
them as much as they had been in the past .
Riess: Do you have the expertise to have done experimental work with
them? Crossing them with something, or making a larger kiwi?
Carman: Don't have the time. It would take five years from seed to fruit,
and then you could have a fruit that big [gestures]. It could be
all males, so you'd have to grow thousands of them to do anything
like that. The New Zealanders have done all this work already,
basically, although they are coming out with some now with
supposedly orange-colored fruits. Somebody gave me one of those a
while back. I haven't seen the fruit on it yet.
Riess: If work like that were done in this country, who would do it?
Agricultural experiment stations? Individuals?
Carman: The experimental stations are almost nonexistent now because of
the government cutbacks and things . Individuals probably would be
doing it, but most of the time it wouldn't be profitable. And the
time involved. And there wouldn't be a market for that fruit
after you've got it developed. There's a limited market for kiwis
because of the space requirements. They take a lot of space. Big
vines.
Most people who come in and ask for kiwis, the first thing I
ask about is space, because if they don't have the space it's
impractical. They want to put in a 10' x 10' arbor, but it's not
really practical to do it because you'd really be cutting it back
severely all the time.
Like I say, if they do develop something new, why, there's
going to be a very limited demand for it. The rare fruit growers
are probably going to want them, and then they're just going to
pass the cuttings around anyway, so there's not going to be a
market for it. Where the money is is in getting new petunias and
new marigolds and new zinnias—that's where the money is for
hybridizing.
Ever been to Goldsmith Seeds in Gilroy? You should go
there. In fact, they're having a trial day the 21", I think, of
this month. They have all their trial plants out growing in the
field plots.
Riess: Is it open to the public?
Carman: The trial day may not be, but in the summer they'll have their
beds out, and then you can go down and visit those. They have all
kinds of petunias and marigolds and zinnias, different kinds
planted alongside of each other, and they're trialing and
comparing one to the other to see which one is the best and if
theirs are better than somebody else's. That's big business.
In Africa they have big growing grounds, and in Colombia,
where they can grow year-round.
Riess: Apparently they have amazing volcanic soil there.
Carman: It's not that, they build their own soil. It's the climate, see.
They get the light. They've got so much daylight that they can
get three or four crops a year, where here they only get one or
two. That's the difference. And the growing conditions—they
have even temperatures, there are no cold nights, so the plants
just grow better.
And then they've got labor which is very reasonable, because
they have a lot of hand pollinating for that stuff. So if you're
doing crosses, why, you just take the pollen off one flower and
put it on the flower of another plant. They make a lot of money
on it.
Riess: That's interesting that you say they build their own soil.
55
Carman: Yes, because all the plants are grown in containers, I'm sure, so
I don't think they're using the native soil. They may use some of
it, but I'm sure they're making their own mix. It's all grown on
benches and with watering systems in houses, or just out in the
open on benches. That way they can control the growth and
fertilizer and everything.
Riess: What about the kiwi business for you now?
Carman: We still grow a limited amount. We have one nursery in Redwood
City that we sell a few to each year at wholesale, but otherwise
it's mostly retail sales here, which are a few every year,
very minor now compared to what it used to be.
It's
A Trip to New Zealand in 1972. and Returning with Rhodohypoxis
Riess: You introduced other things from New Zealand besides the several
we've talked about.
Carman: The other introduction from New Zealand was Rhodohypoxis. That
would be the most profitable one that was introduced.
We went to New Zealand in 1972.
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
You and Jean?
Yes.
Earlier you were talking about something, and I was wondering if
"we" meant your father who was working with you.
No. Dad passed away in
just Jean and I.
'68, I think. After we moved here it was
And, apropos "we," when you had something as staggering as the
thousand kiwis, did you take on some special additional help or
does it just mean that you worked harder?
Our daughter Nancy was working pretty near full time here at that
time while she was going to school. So she spent more time there.
We did have part-time help, generally high-school kids, for
cleaning up and mixing soil and things like that. One or two
people came in—they were going to Foothill College, and they had
to spend so many hours working in a nursery, so some of them came
down here and helped out doing different things.
56
Riess: But mostly you've defined your nursery business as a one-man
operation.
Carman: Definitely, yes.
Riess: Now, you were saying you went to New Zealand?
Carman: We toured both North and South Island. We stayed with Trevor and
Mary Davies in New Plymouth for two or three days. That's where
their big nursery was. They took us around the area there a
little bit, and we met his father, Victor Davies, who was one of
the founders of Duncan and Davies--several years later he was
knighted by the queen. And we met his sister.
Then we went to South Island and were with Trevor Griffiths,
who was an old rose grower — he had a general nursery at that time.
He was just getting into roses, and that was '72. He had been on
the nurserymen's tour too, so we had corresponded with him. We
told him we were coming down there.
What they did was take a holiday and got reservations
everywhere we were. When we got to the airport we were going to
get a car and Trevor says, "No, we'll take our car. Don't get a
car." He had just had a knee operation, so he told me I could
drive, and we were all in the same car. We had a great time. He
knew most everybody on the South Island. He was very widely
traveled, and he and his father used to go out and get Maori
artifacts and stuff like that.
We went to one little nursery in Christchurch when we were
there, and he had these Rhodohypoxis--it was the first time I had
ever seen them. We figured out that we could get them shipped up
to us. We were there in January, which is their summer, so they
were in bloom, and they couldn't ship until next May or November
or whatever it was—the seasons would be opposite.
So we got some in from them and built those up, and they did
a very good job, because we were the only ones that had them at
that time. They did great for us for several years until we had
that big '90 freeze. I never thought about it, but they didn't
like that sixteen degrees, so we lost 90 percent of them, I guess.
In the meantime, at Saratoga Hort there was a man who came
from England who was going to be director there. He was here a
little over a year--a year and a half, I guess—Philip McMillan
Browse, and then he got called back. He got a position at the
Royal Hort Society's Garden at Wisley as director. His family
hadn't even moved over, so he went back.
57
Riess:
Carman :
And that same year they were going to have trials there [at
Wisley] of Rhodohypoxis , where they get all the different
Rhodohypoxis and put them out in fields and try to get the names
straightened out, so I sent them something of everything we had.
That was '88 or '89--I'm not sure.
So in '90 when I lost all those plants--. Philip had gone
from the gardens [Wisley] because of a dispute [chuckles]. But in
the meantime a young fellow who had been over here who had a
nursery in southern England—and he had been to the [Carman]
nursery and enjoyed it- -he had closed his nursery and had gone to
Wisley in the rock garden department.
Well, I wrote to him, and in '91 or '92--one of those two
years --they sent me back a whole batch of Rhodohypoxis, so I was
back in the business. That's the Rhodohypoxis story. We've been
selling them ever since.
Now they're showing up in the markets in January, in little
pots, forced into bloom around Christmastime and the first of the
year, so they're becoming more available. Most people who get
them don't realize that after they die down they're going to come
up again next year, so they just throw them out like they do most
blooming houseplants. When they go out of bloom, why, they throw
them away.
Because if you get something in the supermarket, you never think
of it as being perennial.
Yes. Unless they get a hydrangea or something like that, which
they're selling there now. Anyway, they have two or three colors.
We have ten or so named ones.
Riess: Why didn't you go back to New Zealand as the source after the
freeze?
Carman: Because they were going to send them to me from Wisley for
nothing. I'd have to pay for them from New Zealand. And he
didn't have the quantities either. Wisley sent me, oh, sometimes
a hundred of one color, because they had multiplied, I guess. I
think they sent me around 400 that time. In one year I had what
took me six to eight years to propagate from the few I got from
New Zealand in «72 or '73.
Riess: And that was free?
Carman: Yes, because I had sent them some, and so they were sending some
back. And I'm sure that Alan Robinson had something to do with it
too.
58
Riess:
Carman:
So that was the second best and probably longest lasting
import from New Zealand, and every year we sell them- -we ship
those mail order, and we have them in rock garden catalogs.
How did you market them at first?
Just here at the nursery, actually. Then there was an article in
'79 or '80 in one of the first issues of Fine Gardening with
pictures of Mrs. Stewart, a lady in Marin County, showing pictures
of them in full bloom in pots, and we were listed as a source. We
got a lot of orders from that article, and we're still getting
orders from that; people have kept these old magazines, and we're
still getting inquiries from that. That was very helpful.
Riess: It's described as a "tiny flowering bulb." Can you buy it as a
bulb?
Carman: I doubt it. I don't think so. Generally they don't bare- root
them and pack them like they do daffodils or something like that,
because some of them are only that big. Some look like little
tiny ranunculus bulbs, with the kind of pointed ends of the bulbs.
They're fairly perishable. Except one shipment we got from
New Zealand- -it was gone, lost, for a month, I think, in the
mails. We finally called the postal center in Berkeley, or
someplace. Somehow I got ahold of someone out on the floor, and
she went over and looked in the bin, and there she found the
thing, in a bin. But they all survived. If they're put in
dormant and packed good, they survive.
Other Imports
Carman: So that was really the only two things that came from New Zealand
that were really productive.
Another thing we brought in which has not been a great
thing, but it's a novelty, is a Golden Monterey pine, which
occurred in New Zealand.
Riess: Is that Cupressus?
Carman: No, that's the Golden Monterey cypress. That's still being grown
a little bit. We have one plant left out here that hasn't been
killed by oak root fungus yet.
59
The Golden Monterey pine is like a Monterey pine, but it has
golden needles to it.
Riess: Do you have to work a little harder to sell things that are golden
rather than green?
Carman: Yes. It's something that very few people want—except collectors,
some collectors want it. We established one at the Strybing
Arboretum--it ' s fairly well established—and it's coning now. And
I've got cones from that. There's a certain percentage that come
true- -not all, fifty percent or something like that.
[looking at list] Oh, there was something else. "Kathleen
Mallard," that lobelia. Now that we found in on the North Island,
actually. We went to a park, and they had a little conservatory
there, and we found this blooming there. We had had that before
the war, we had gotten it from a little nursery over in Aptos.
Then I found out that one of the people we visited on the
North Island, John Anderson, who grew a lot of pot plants, he was
growing it. He agreed to send us some, and he sent us some three
different times before we got one that survived, because it's very
tender. We had that for years.
Riess: What kind of a looking lobelia is this?
Carman: You know what Cambridge Blue looks like? But this is a double
flower. In fact, there was a big half -page ad in Fine Gardening
last year about this "new introduction." We just got some back
from a nursery back east--Logee's Greenhouses --who had gotten some
from us several years ago. They're a large mail-order nursery in
Danielson, Connecticut, I believe. Kathleen Mallard has been out,
and her son was out last year on a vacation buying trip. They got
some plants from us too.
Riess: What are these additional names on the kiwi? The 'Bruno,' the
'Hayward. '
Carman: Those are selected fruit sizes. 'Bruno,' 'Hayward,' and 'Monty.'
That's the three that we got, plus the male when we first
introduced it.
The 'Hayward' is the one you get in the store; they call it
'Chico1 now- -or 'Hayward.1 That's the one that was introduced at
the Chico station. Somebody got it out of there and called it
'Chico,1 and then they figured out that it's the same as
'Hayward,1 and it probably was 'Hayward1 which was introduced from
New Zealand in the forties and it's been there ever since.
60
Riess:
Carman:
I got the three because the fruit shapes are a little
different. Some are long. Actually, 'Bruno1 is supposed to have
the most vitamin C, but as far as fruit goes, 'Hayward1 is the
best one because it has the most weight. So the other ones only
sell occasionally.
That's what 1 look for in a kiwi, something worth peeling.
Yes. I've heard of some restaurants that don't peel them, though.
I can't understand that. Yuck.
if
Carman: Jean likes them dried; I don't. She dries them. And I've seen
them in the market now, dried ones. But they come out kind of
gray rather than really green. She'll give you some if you want
to try them. They're kind of crunchy, they've got the seeds in
them. She used a marmalade recipe, and we make kiwi marmalade
which she sells out there for the benefit of Good Shepherd Home.
But that's the only thing we do with them. She eats them fresh.
I don't particularly care for them.
Riess: What is Epachris longifolia?
Carman: That's also from Australia, a real novelty. It's kind of a
straggly-looking small shrub, but with tubular red flowers with
white tips. It makes a nice basket plant.
This Dymondia margaretae is the only other really good one.
It's been fairly successful, actually.
Riess: From South Africa. What was your connection with South Africa?
Carman: We had been getting seed from the Kirstenbosch Botanic Garden in
South Africa for many years, actually. But this Dymondia was
brought to my attention by Lyle Pyeatt. He had been reading a
journal from South Africa and saw this thing described. It's
monotypic, meaning it's the only one plant in the genus, and it
had been discovered in one place in South Africa.
It's a pretty, flat groundcover with a green leaf which is
felted, or gray on the bottom, and the edges are kind of recurved,
so it looks like it's got a white edge around all the leaves. It
has a little dandelion-like flower when it blooms, which is not
very often. It makes a tight mat.
It works quite well in rock gardens or between stepping
stones. We saw a garden on a tour in Los Angeles several years
ago, and they had it between their stepping stones. It's spread
61
around pretty well all over California now. A lot of people have
sold much more than I have. It's very drought-tolerant.
English Connections, and Further Afield. 1975
Riess: You also have strong ties to England. Tell me about that.
Carman: We met Chris Brickell, who was the director of Wisley, when we
were over there in '75. We were talking to somebody else, and we
met him very briefly at that time. Then we corresponded with him
about something else, I guess. He was over here, visited us some
years later. He wrote a book on daphnes, he was one of the real
experts, he did a lot of traveling.
He described this Daphne Jasminea in some publication and
sent me cuttings in '86. So we grafted some and rooted some and I
have been growing it ever since, off and on. It's a really great
rock garden plant. I can show you one out there. I've got it in
a pot with a rock and it just grows right over the rock, it just
creeps over.
It has nice little white flowers but no fragrance, in spite
of the name. He maintained it did have fragrance in Europe.
Anyway, it's a great rock garden plant—or Alpine plant is what it
is, because it has miniature leaves, little tiny flowers, and it
blooms a long time. And it's relatively tough. We've sold that
off and on here. Siskiyou has it now, and I think there are
probably other people are growing it.
Riess: I think of daphne of being difficult and having drainage problems.
Carman: This one can wilt and pick up again. It's one of the few daphnes
that will wilt and still not die.
In '75 we went to England, to the Chelsea Show, which is the
only time we've been to that. We went to Kew, Wisley, and we've
been to the Cotswalds. We visited another friend and stopped at
Hillyer's.
I was on the Saratoga [Horticultural Foundation] board at
that time, so we were picking up cuttings at Hillyer's, and we had
made arrangements to meet him on the 30th or 31st of August, which
was a Monday. At that time, I didn't know anything about bank
holidays, which is a big holiday in England.
62
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
We called him—the night before we got a place in Winchester
and stayed there and called him. He had to come out the next
morning, so we went out and got to talking. And then he wanted to
show us a little bit around, so he got his catalog—which was
about that thick- -and we spent all morning touring this arboretum
which he developing where he had all these plants out of his
catalog growing.
Then he said that his wife was going to have lunch for us,
so we went in, and she had lunch, and she was kind of complaining
that it was a holiday [laughter]. We didn't realize this. Then
he was having a little bit of heart problems, so she said he had
to rest, and naturally we said that was fine.
After that he came bustling out fairly quickly, and we spent
the rest of the day touring this place with Mr. Hillyer, who was
the plantsman in England at that time, because his nursery had
been going on for—he was the second generation, I guess. They
were the biggest nursery in England. We didn't get away from
there until four or five o'clock at night, and we were supposed to
get back to London that night. He was very gracious, and that was
really the highlight of that trip, and probably one of the
highlights of my whole career, actually.
Tell me more about what made it special.
Here was this man who was one of the greatest plantsmen in
England- -maybe in the world— at that time, taking a day to show us
around. A backyard gardener from California.
And he had met you out here first?
He had spoken at Cal Hort, and I think we talked, but he wouldn't
remember me from anybody at that time. But I was getting the
plants for Saratoga, the cuttings, and so we got those. We never
even got into the little nursery he had there. We were at his
home, actually, and this has now since been given to the National
Trust. It's a National Trust garden. He was developing a big
herbaceous border at that time, which was going to be 700 yards
long or something like that.
Is there anything like it in this country?
Well, maybe back east there might be. I've never been back east,
so I don't know, but I don't think so. They had I don't know how
big an acreage of arboretum around it, plus the old historic house
there. There's so much history there in England.
63
One couple we visited on that same trip—they were living in
a little cottage that was 300 years old. You can't comprehend
some of that stuff. They think nothing of that, but I don't think
there's anything quite like it. The closest garden that would in
any way compare would be Filoli, and that's pretty small compared
to something like that.
Riess: Longwood Gardens?
Carman: I don't know. I've never been to Longwood. It's got quite an
arboretum, I guess, but I don't know what else.
Riess: Is there a great gardening tradition in New Zealand?
Carman: Yes. Still, like I say, it's hard to see how all the nurseries
make a living in New Zealand, because there's so darn many
nurseries compared to the people. There's only now probably three
million people in all of New Zealand, but there's nurseries all
over the place.
When we were in South Island, we visited this one couple and
they had about a two- or three-acre garden. They had a sheep
ranch there too, but they were taking care of this garden by
themselves. They had great big lawns and all kinds of shrubs.
Riess: So you went to England in '75. And where else?
Carman: Then we went to Denmark in '77. Jean's grandmother was from
Denmark- -her mother was born here, but lived in Denmark for a year
or so after school. So we went to Denmark and visited. We toured
the country and visited the island of Moen, where her grandmother
was born. There were white cliffs there, and she had always heard
about going down those cliffs to play at the ocean, but we didn't
make that trek.
Then we stopped in Hamburg, Germany, to visit the brother of
Gerda Isenberg, to visit her home there. He met us in Hamburg and
we drove out towards the Baltic Sea--almost back to Denmark, I
guess. We visited the home there.
Riess: It was her family home, and her brother had stayed on there?
Carman: The brother, her brother, had gone back, actually. He had come
over here and worked for years . He worked long enough so that he
started drawing Social Security.
He was living in Hamburg, actually, but drove us out there
to the family home. They had some beautiful specimens there—one
copper beech that was almost as big as this house.
64
We went from there to Holland, and we stayed in Boskoop,
which is the center of their nursery growers. We stayed right on
a canal there. We could look down on the canal and see the barges
coming in. Then we visited a friend—Abe Van Klaveran's brother
was over there at that time, so we met up with him. He took us
around a little bit there for a couple days.
Riess: To see the bulb fields?
Carman: No, the bulbs were out of season, because it was in August.
We were there for about two or three days and I was never so
sick in my life [chuckles]. We went to Rotterdam, I think it was,
and ate at a fast- food place of some kind. By the time I got
home, the next day, I had some kind of food poisoning. Boy, the
whole day I was out of it .
We went to Amsterdam and caught the electric train to the
Hook of Holland and took a boat to England, and then we went into
London. We stayed there for a day or two, and then we went to
Scotland and visited a rock garden in Scotland because Mr. Evans,
Alfred Evans, had been over the year previous and stayed with us
for one or two nights.
[tape interruption]
Carman: [referring to phone conversation about a former customer] All
through the years we got to know him, George Johnson lived in the
city. He collected--! couldn't believe how he'd collect this
stuff --he didn't drive, so he'd come down by bus, and he'd carry
two shopping bags, reinforced, and he would buy gallon cans and
put them in there and stack them up and carry these gallon cans on
the bus.
He did this all over California, I guess, because he was
also down south. He lived two stories up in a boarding house in
San Francisco, down by the Haight district. Five or six years
ago, maybe seven years ago, his landlady got mad because he had
his room full of stuff. Down below on the ground he had a plot
that was maybe twice as big as this room, stuffed with gallon
cans. I hauled two truckloads of stuff out of there that he gave
me.
Riess: You mean he called you and told you to come and get it?
Carman: Yes, and one-of-a-kind stuff.
Riess: And it was all in wonderful shape, probably.
65
Carman: [laughs] Well, no, it was pretty bad. After that he became
friends with somebody in Rio de Janeiro, and he went down there
every year, spent a month down there. To see him, you wouldn't
believe it. He was a big man, heavyset. Really heavyset.
I would call him once in a while and talk to him, but all of
a sudden I couldn't get him—this is a conservator I was talking
to. He's in a rest home up in San Francisco. He has some serious
problems, I guess. He was quite a character. A lot of people
knew him. He was big with the Succulent Society; he'd go to their
meetings in San Francisco. He had all kinds of variegated
succulents, but one of a kind. I've got some of them out there
that are still surviving; I haven't found homes for them yet.
Riess: Before the phone rang we were talking about Scotland.
Carman: Yes. We went to the Edinburgh Rock Garden, which is one of the
rock gardens of the world. They have all kinds of plants there
that they grow, with all these stone sinks with alpines in them--
it's really an amazing place.
Riess: Was that your inspiration for the stone sinks?
Carman: We might have started before that; I can't remember when we
started those.
Riess: The October 1979 article said you were famous for stone sinks.
Carman: Well, we must have tried it before that then [chuckles].
Anyway, we were in Scotland, and we went through the Lake
District. We were at a garden that was famous for topiaries, and
Jean fell at that time and fractured a rib and a vertebra. She
ended up in the hospital for two days, maybe three. That was just
north of Coventry, and I drove to Coventry one day to look around
there. That was a town that was bombed during the war.
We were going to meet Trevor and Mary [Davies] at Wisley
just before we came home, because they were going to be getting in
to England at the same time. We called Wisley and told them that
our plans are changed, and we were going directly to the hotel
right next to Heathrow [Airport]. We spent one or two days there
before we came home, because she couldn't really walk very well or
anything. Mary and Trevor came over there to see us that night,
and we had some tea and biscuits or something. They went on with
their tour and then we came home. So that was our trip to
England. That was our last overseas trip.
66
VII THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL SUBJECTS
Plant smen and Businessmen
Carman: We've been on some trips with Cal Hort. They go on overnight or
weekend trips. In '79 we went to Seattle with the Reiters--Victor
and Carla Reiter--a couple of times. We've been to southern
California on a couple of trips with Cal Hort. We went to Denver
three or four years ago with Carla, because Victor and Carla and
we were going to go to see another friend, Panayoti Kelaidis, who
is curator of the rock garden at the Denver Botanical Garden.
Panayoti [Kelaidis] is a remarkable young man. He's been to
South Africa twice in the last couple of years. A really good
plantsman. He graduated with a language degree. Somehow he got
interested in plants, and he came out here several years ago and
bought a bunch of rock plants for the garden. I don't know he got
to be curator of the rock garden in Denver, but now it's one of
the premier rock gardens in the U.S. His wife is the editor of
the Rock Garden Journal. She's a good plantswoman too, very
knowledgable.
Riess: What is a good plantsperson? Does that mean somebody who
remembers the names of everything or what?
Carman: Right.
Riess: That ±s_ what you mean?
Carman: Oh, yes. Like Dick Dunmire--he's the premier one around here, he
was at Sunset magazine. He's remarkable. People like Panayoti
too. I think they have photographic memories, or even if they
read a description they can remember it and relate it to a plant
when they see the plant, which is very difficult for me. I just
can't remember names or spelling or anything, really. I fumble
along.
67
Riess: It has nothing to do with a green thumb though.
Carman: No, no. A lot of them do grow things well, but a lot of them
don't grow things much. But most of them are fairly good growers
too, actually.
Riess: That's interesting. Is it a matter of training? For you?
Carman: I didn't have any training at all. All I had taken was a couple
of botany classes, I think that's all I took, after the war. I
was only there for a year when I decided I didn't think I could
stand to wait three or four years to do something.
I see now what I should have taken was a business course,
because I'm a very poor businessman. I think that's the trouble.
I like to grow plants, and after I grow the plant, why, I don't
know what to do with it. It's easy to grow the plant. Like I
tell everybody else, you can grow thousands of plants, but unless
you've got a market or can sell them, why, you've got a thousand
plants that are sitting there getting older every day. So that's
what happens here, I'm afraid. I just don't have enough
collectors coming in to buy the stuff I like to grow [chuckles].
Riess: The business course would give you legitimate reason to be more
hard-boiled or something like that.
Carman: It would have shown me how I could have made some money, maybe.
Riess: You probably know that.
Carman: Well, yes, I guess. I should have grown stuff people wanted
rather than what I like to grow [laughs]. That's what I should
have done.
Riess: It doesn't help that you were on the A list of best places to
visit, the best nurseries, the rarest--! mean, because you are on
all those lists?
Carman: Yes, I was. I think I'm getting on the tail end of those lists
now [laughs). There are younger people now who have got a lot
more of certain things, the "in" things. I've got a lot of the
things that are unusual, but not as much in demand, so that's the
thing. They're growing things that are in demand, and so they're
selling.
68
The Unusual. Micropropagation. "Disposability"
Riess: To pursue that Idea, you knew where you wanted to go when you went
to England and New Zealand by the reputation of the place, and it
sounds like people from New Zealand and England came here because
you had something very special.
Carman: Yes, we've had a lot of people come from all over the world to
visit us, because we were one of the only ones that had that
collection at that time. Well, I guess there aren't many still
that have it.
Like I say, younger people that are growing up here—it's a
lot easier to have unusual stuff now because of the way they
propagate with this micropropagation. You get a lab, you can
propagate some of this stuff by the thousands in two or three
weeks. Or in two or three months you can have 10,000 of these
things in little tubes. So it's a lot easier to propagate some of
these rare things.
There's a thing they call Starry Eyes—that's a little shade
plant— it was supposedly quite rare, but they're propagating it
almost by the ton up in Portland. If it sells good, if it gets
spread out, why, it's going to be all over the place- -in two years
it's going to be everywhere. In the past, plants that were a
little hard to propagate, or that were not very much in demand,
nobody fooled with them.
Riess: This is kind of disturbing. Some things should be rare.
Carman: That's what I think too. There was a thing that came out fifteen
years ago, Potentilla 'Red Ace,1 which was quite different at that
time. All of a sudden Monrovia came out with it, and they were
shipping it all over the country in one year or two years because
it propagates very easy.
But they were selling it in places where it's going to grow
but not perform, because everybody said, "Oh, it doesn't turn
red," because it had to be cooler. So that was one of the things
that they didn't tell anybody- -or nobody really knew at that time
— that it should be in a fairly cool spot to have color rather
than the hot, bright sun.
I still can't accept things like rock garden plants in
gallon cans. I was over at a big nursery in Saratoga the other
day, and there they had these lewisias, which are fairly uncommon.
They had I don't know how many of them, all different colors in
gallon cans, big lush things. They had come from Oregon, because
69
the people had called me up and wanted to know if I wanted to buy
them. I said that I've got those already. I don't have the color
selection they have, but I do have a lot of them. A friend gave
me a bunch of seedlings a couple years ago.
II
Carman: They're promoting everything like that [lewisia] if it's a little
bit unusual and it can be propagated, and they're selling them. A
lot of people don't know what they are. Some of them probably
won't have success with them, so they won't buy them again. But
they're in color, and that's still what sells. It's pretty hard
to sell something that's not in color unless people really know
what it is.
Riess: And there's the kind of mentality of all of this being disposable
anyway. I don't think you believe that, though.
Carman: I went to visit a nursery in Redwood City, and I saw four or five,
maybe six, flats of lace-cap hydrangeas in full bloom, the white
ones. Real nice plants. I said, "That's a pretty good size
batch." They said, "Yes, it's all one order. They're having a
party, and they're going to use it for decorations. As soon as
the party's over, they're going to dump it." That's the way it
is, you know: people who have got the means, why, they do that.
It's hard to comprehend sometimes that this can happen and does
happen all the time.
Catalogs. Perennials, Cycles
Riess: Do you, Carman's Nursery, have a catalog?
Carman: We had a list when we moved here--a two- or three-page
mimeographed list which we never kept up. Two or three years ago
there was a young lady, a customer, who became a friend, and she
kept bugging us about a catalog. She had a computer at that time,
so she came in and did a lot of notes and things and put together
a list for us. We printed up I don't know how many.
But soon as we print up a list it's out of date, because
some of the stuff didn't grow that year or is not available. So
we haven't kept it up, actually. We don't have a real list. I
have an old copy of this list, which is not complete; I keep
adding things to it, separate pages. [See further p. 130]
70
Riess: Apropos the business course, are you running the nursery in the
same way your father did business?
Carman: That was altogether different. Down there we were running a
small, general nursery. We were buying and selling things, all
the plants that were being used for landscaping at that time of
the big boom of building in the valley. It was a small, general
nursery—it had insecticides, fertilizers, soil amendments, fruit
trees, shade trees in five-gallon cans.
Riess: So you were really meeting a need.
Carman: Yes. We were selling the things that people wanted at that time,
instead of what we wanted to grow. On the side I was growing a
few things that didn't sell.
Then when we moved up here, that was in '70, that was when
the perennials were just really starting to come into their own,
there was a lot of push on perennials. So we went into perennials
and we did pretty good for several years. We were selling some
wholesale, distributing them to several nurseries. Then everybody
started getting the perennials. Now perennials, the last four or
five years, maybe more, have been the top thing all over the
United States. The big nurseries are selling them by the tons,
actually. They're really a big thing.
In the last few years water gardens have come in big. I
think perennials are probably going to be big still, but I think
the style is going to change, or the cycle is going to be
changing: it's going to go into succulents and cactus probably,
soon, which were big ten or fifteen years ago.
Riess: That's interesting that you can see those cycles. I don't know
what would predict them.
Carman: I don't either. Well, now, of course, the water thing has made a
big difference, in California especially. So [it is going toward]
native plants, or growing more Mediterranean things rather than
all this English stuff which takes so much water. That's made a
big difference in some people, not everybody, though. Most people
are still putting in plants that are going to take water to keep
going during the summertime.
But I think now gardening spaces are getting smaller. A lot
of people are living in townhouses or condominiums where they've
got a deck or a little patio, and two dozen plants is about all
they can put in the tub or pots that they have. And they change
them two or three times
selling good.
a year, and so that's where the color is
71
Wisteria Mysteries
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Wisteria is another plant you have specialized in.
get started?
How did that
Riess:
Carman:
I guess it started with Trevor again. It must have been in the
early seventies. Trevor was no longer with Duncan and Davies; he
has his own company.
Is he about your age?
Yes. He's seventy this year, I think. He was up here, and we
went to visit a garden over in Saratoga which had some of these
four-foot long purple ones, and nice big white ones. He wanted to
get scions from that, I think, and so then I got some too. Then
we started looking at the W.B. Clarke Nursery's old wisteria list.
That had been closed for several years but they were importing
wisteria about the same time that Mr. Domoto was. W. B. Clarke
was a major grower of wisteria from the '30s to the '50s.
We were looking for those, trying to get that list back into
production, because most people were selling blue, pink, white
wisteria with no names on it or anything. Then I sent back to
some other arboretums back east--Swarthmore and Arnold—and get
some scions from them.
Swarthmore? I didn't know they had an arboretum.
Yes, I'm pretty sure. I think Judy Zuke was there at that time.
She's now at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Then we started growing those and looking around the valley
here for different wisterias, trying to find named ones. So we
gradually built up a selection of those. Filoli has a big
collection, so we got scions from them and grew some for them.
They were planting out more, and they've got some new plantings of
them up there. And we just kept building up our stock plants.
Then Mr. Domoto gave us seed—that was in '88 or '89. I
planted a bunch of seedlings, and in three years some of them
started to bloom, and one of the first ones to bloom was a double
one, which I thought was very unusual— the flower looks like a
little rose. There was a big one at Filoli on the carriage house,
if you were to look there.
Since then I've had three or four more doubles bloom out of
that same seed batch. I don't know if Mr. Domoto could understand
72
what I'm saying now about it, if he has any idea of why this could
be. Anyway, we have one that's quite a different color.
Riess: But they were all from one wisteria?
Carman: As far as I know, one plant. He doesn't even remember what plant
it came from, I don't think. That plant, I'm sure, now is dead,
because most of his plants are really suffering over there.
Four years ago Hillyer, son of Harold Hillyer, wrote from
England about this deep purple double 'Black Dragon1 wisteria,
which he said they had at one time. He sent to Japan for it
several times and had not been able to get it since then.
Then I wrote to Beth Chatto, and Rosemary Verey, I think.
(I corresponded with Beth fairly frequently.) Rosemary, I think
it was , put me in touch with another lady who said she had gotten
'Black Dragon' from Germany. She sent me some scions, and then I
got some from Cannington College [Sommerset, England], which has
the national collection of wisteria.
I got some scions from them, and they bloomed this year, but
it's the same as the one that we have. So the one that we have
may be 'Black Dragon,' I don't know. That's what Trevor and I are
trying to determine. But the picture in the wisteria book looks
much lighter than 'Black Dragon.' I have to go up to Filoli and
check it out with that one and see how it looks, because that one
that Filoli has may be a 'Black Dragon.'
The words, characters, in Japanese can mean more than one
color, I understand. There's supposed to be a red wisteria, but
the character for red could mean pink or rouge or lipstick—it
could mean any of those colors. I got one three or four years ago
in Fresno from Mr. Matsubara, who brought it from Japan,
supposedly from a red plant. It bloomed a couple years ago, and
it's a good deep pink, but it's certainly not red. We're still
looking for this red one and for this 'Black Dragon,' if there is
such a thing.
Riess: Mr. Matsubara?
Carman: He had a nursery there for quite some time. I didn't know that
until—he was over here one time, I guess, years ago, and he had
an interpreter with him. He didn't speak much English. I didn't
really connect things. He's done a lot of work with persimmon
trees, hybridizing persimmons. When we were there, he had been
working on grapes, hybridizing the big grapes to send to Japan for
gifts. He showed us some that big! [gestures] They use fruit a
73
lot as gifts in Japan. They'll spend ten dollars for a couple of
apples, I guess.
Riess: The only way you and Trevor can ascertain that you're dealing with
a named variety is by sight?
Carman: Yes.
Riess: You're not doing tests.
Carman: You can't do any tests, you've got to see the flower. I've sent
Trevor scions, and he's gotten scions from a man in Australia who
wrote the book on wisteria, Mr. Peter Valder. He had a big estate
in Australia with original—some of those original plants came
from W.B. Clarke in San Jose, and those were small trees. They
had trunks that were like this [gestures] on these tree wisterias.
They were old and well established and the names were valid names
on them. He's gotten some from that.
Trevor has grown a lot of plants and determined whether
they're true or not from the descriptions that are in some of the
literature. He's got the best collection now, probably in the
world, Trevor does. He's growing, and shipping to England, a lot
of the bare root dormant wisteria. I've got one or two stock
plants of each of these, but that's all I've got. And we're
growing some. We're growing mostly the double one, which is in
demand, and the real long one is in fairly good demand, and the
white one.
Riess: It's like talking delicious food: the more you talk about them,
the more I want one.
Carman: You could grow it in a tub, it would make a nice container plant.
You could make a multi-stand tree form. I've seen some in
containers about this big that were about that high and that
broad, and they're a nice sculpture when they're out of bloom. So
there's a lot of things to do with them.
But I've gotten stuff from back east that most of it now has
turned out to be something else from what they sent me .
Riess: They gave it a name, whatever it was.
Carman: Oh, yes, they had a name. They gave me a list, I sent for the
name, and they sent me the stuff that was named, but when it
finally flowered it wasn't that name. Trevor says he thinks you
have to go to the plant, look at the plant while it's blooming,
and mark the stem that you want [laughter], and that's the only
way you're ever to going to get what you expect.
74
Riess: Does that mean that they revert?
Carman: No, it was just that the plants might have been growing together
or something, and they just picked off the wrong plant, or the
labels are wrong.
I got scions from the Royal Botanic Garden in Ontario--!
don't know how I got touch with them, I think through Lucy
[Tolmach] , but I'm not sure—and they have a garden with some
wisteria there. He sent me a plant from one- -it's a named one
supposedly, it came from England at one time- -and that bloomed
this year too.
Also, there was a nursery in Vancouver that got a bunch of
wisteria in from Japan. They listed a 'Black Dragon,' but they
didn't want to send me one, or it was too much trouble. So I had
them send it to the botanic garden in Ontario, and they planted it
and sent me some scions. Did they send me scions or not? I can't
remember now. Anyway, that was supposed to be 'Black Dragon'--!
don't know if that's bloomed yet or not there. I should write to
them and find out.
Riess: This is a case where you're just pursuing something because you've
become completely intrigued, but it's not a business venture?
Carman: I hope to sell some, yes--I'm selling them. A lady came from
Danville the other day. She had ordered one from one of the big
nurseries up there. I don't think she ordered right, but she said
she wanted a Japanese wisteria. She got a Japanese wisteria, but
it isn't the double one she wanted. So she came down here and got
one of our double ones.
Riess: How was she led to you?
Carman: I think she called Filoli, and Filoli gave her our name because we
deal with Filoli, we sell them wisteria if they're short. They're
growing some of their own, but if they need some we sell them some
too. They resell them there at their garden shop.
Riess: You talk about perennials becoming popular. I'd think anyone who
gardens, what they'd want is perennials. That's the magic of
gardening, it seems to me: something that every springtime
reappears. Maybe that's more of an East Coast thing, though.
Carman: I think it's more of a place where you don't have gardening year
round. See, on the East Coast, from May until November, I guess,
is your gardening season. The rest of the year, why, there's
white stuff or water or something on top of the ground. Here,
every month of the year you can have something blooming if you
75
want to give it water, and get the right plants. So when they
talk about perennials blooming all summer, they're talking about
six weeks to two months, maybe.
Here "all summer" is six months at least, and they're not
going to bloom that long. So you've got to put some annuals in
with them if you want color year round. You cannot grow
perennials and have color year round, because in the wintertime- -
even here- -they 're going to go dormant, and there will be nothing
there unless you have some snaps or petunias or stock or something
else, annuals, that's coming up to take their place.
And generally, perennials take up more space than annuals.
Petunias are going to get that big whereas an achillea is going to
get that big. And an achillea is going to bloom for four months,
and you're going to cut it off, and you can't put anything in its
place. A petunia's going to bloom for six months, you jerk it
out, you put some primroses in for the winter and they're going to
bloom for three or four months. So you've got ten months of bloom
there.
They're compatible in that you have to have some of the
annuals in with the perennials to keep a colorful garden in
California.
Riess: In fact, you ended up teaching classes about perennials. Aren't
horticultural societies more geared towards perennials? I can't
imagine a horticultural society being interested in petunias.
Carman: They show them sometimes. Or they [the members] may not show
them, but if they're going to have the color [in their gardens]
they're going to have to use them. That's the way I feel, at
least.
Riess: [tape interruption] You were talking about Mr. Domoto's miniature
wisteria.
Carman: He imported it from Japan and had it for twenty years, I guess,
before it bloomed. When it did bloom, there happened to be a man
from Japan visiting him, and he couldn't believe it, because in
Japan it had never bloomed, I guess.
They took pictures of it and sent them back to Japan to show
them in Japan that it really does bloom [laughter]. I think the
Japanese name is 'Hime1 [spells], which means "blind" or
something, because it never has any flowers on it. His bloomed,
I've seen it blooming, and mine has bloomed a couple of times.
But it's very unpredictable as far as blooming goes, and it's
76
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman;
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
difficult to grow. It's going to be a real collector's item
[laughs], if I ever get enough growing to sell some.
I grow two or three a year, and one or two die, so it's one
of those things that's really hard to keep up.
Why would it die?
It's in the genes, I guess. It's not a very strong grower. The
stems of it, the biggest one would be that thick [gestures]. It's
really very thin, it's like wire. His [Mr. Domoto's] big plants
have died. He had some before that were about that big and that
wide [gestures], and they were at least fifty years old, I guess.
Do you have bonsai wisteria too?
bonsai, doesn't it?
Wisteria does very well as a
Oh, yes. I had a nice one until last year when it drowned. The
drain hole plugged up in the bonsai pot, and I didn't realize what
was happening. It was an old one: thirty-five or forty years old.
It had a nice trunk. I've got it in the pot out there--! '11 keep
it as a ghost plant or something [chuckles].
Have you done your own bonsai?
I took a course years ago from Mr. Yoshimura from the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden. We did several things at that course—it was a
two-month course. That was just before we moved here. When we
moved here there were no fences, and we had them all stacked out
there, and one night they just walked away and I never saw them
again. Nothing left in that group at all. That was twenty years
ago.
Maybe this blind wisteria is like propagating a runt.
Something like that, yes. It's a dwarf.
It's rather touching that one would want to do it.
If it ever bloomed, it's great. A tiny wisteria plant with
flowers that long. Leaves and flowers in scale, a natural bonsai.
You were talking earlier about Beth Chatto and Rosemary Verey,
both well-known names.
Rosemary's a remarkable woman. She travels all around the world
giving speeches, she comes to California, she goes to Washington
to their shows. I don't know how she can do it, besides writing
books .
77
Beth Chatto has a garden in east England and is another
really great plant swoman. She has written several books and has a
remarkable garden. She stayed with us, several years ago, for two
nights after speaking at Cal Hort.
Riess: Both of these plantswomen are also great gardeners?
Carman: Beth does more gardening than Rosemary does. Rosemary is more of
a P.R. person: she likes the speaking and the book writing and
things like that.
Rosemary has a great garden- -Nancy went there when they were
in England, though Rosemary wasn't there, and it was raining- -it's
written up in all the books, and it's in all the magazines and
stuff. Beth actually is out working in the garden, doing the
plants and helping the crew.
Riess: Back to being a plantsman and learning the names. For you, you've
just learned along the way?
Carman: I haven't [laughs].
Riess: But you deal with plant material all the time.
Carman: I know I do, but I can't remember the names. 1 just picked it up,
I guess. I read a little bit and associated with people who knew.
But I don't remember, really, I have a poor memory.
As long as you can remember somebody who knows the name,
you're all right [laughter]. There was an article in the San Jose
Mercury with a photo of a vine on a wall, and this man said it was
a gold coin plant. I looked at it and thought, What the heck is
that? I forgot about it, but then Joan Jackson, garden editor of
the Mercury, called up one day and asked me what the name of that
plant was, and I told her I'd have to think about it. I finally
got the picture, and again I looked at it, and realized what it
was.
In the meantime I told her to call Dick Dunmire. I guess
Dick and I both thought about it at the same time, so I called her
back and left a message. It was a Thunbergia Gregory, a plant
that we grow out here, but because it was on a great big wall it
looked different. So we both came up with the name at the same
time.
it
78
VIII HORTICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND PEOPLE
[Interview 3: April 14, 1997] ft
Western Horticultural Society
Riess: Tell me about Western Horticultural Society.
Carman: Western Hort [icultural Society] was organized by Bill Schmidt, who
was a premier plantsman on the peninsula at that time. He had
Schmidt Nursery in Palo Alto on Lambert Street. He was also a
member of Cal Hort. He envisioned Western Hort as being an
umbrella organization: it would have Cal Hort and Southern Hort
and other western hort societies under its wings.
It never did develop that way. There was not enough
interest on the peninsula to get Western Hort going as strong as
Cal Hort. Cal Hort is thirty years older, and it had a lot more
prestige behind it and a lot more members because the members
would come from Marin County and the East Bay and all around.
Their membership was three times as much as Western Hort. So
Western Hort was basically a peninsula organization going from San
Mateo down to San Jose. That's roughly where their membership was
located—in the Palo Alto/Los Altos district.
Riess: The program was modeled on the program of Cal Hort?
Carman: Yes, definitely. The same type of organization—board of
directors, president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and so
on.
Riess: And presenting plants at the meeting.
Carman: Yes, the program was practically the same: a horticultural
speaker, then a plant discussion, and lately a plant raffle.
Well, Western Hort always had the raffle; Cal Hort's raffle just
79
started in the last two years, actually, as a way to raise more
funds .
Riess: A raffle among the members?
Carman: Cal Hort does fair, I guess, because they've got more members;
they do a little better than Western Hort does, I think.
Riess: Cal Hort had started thirty years earlier. In 1933?
Carman: In '32 or '33. There was a big freeze in 1932 in the Bay Area,
and a lot of plants were devastated, I guess. A lot of big plants
were killed, and so a group of gardeners got together in San
Francisco and had some kind of informal meetings to try to discuss
and find out what was killed and what wasn't killed. That evolved
into the Cal Hort Society.
Riess: You say "a group of gardeners?" Professionals?
Carman: I think there were gardeners from estates and probably a few
nursery people back in "32 when they started. It wasn't really a
professional group ever, I don't think, in the beginning. They
were interested gardeners, I think is what it was. By '63 the
estate gardeners were few and far between and most of those
wouldn't have been coming to the meetings. It would be the
homeowners who were coming to the meetings.
Riess: But they are all amateurs.
Carman: Oh, yes, they're all amateurs, but actually some of the amateurs
are more expert than the professionals in their field. They focus
on one thing. One young lady who comes to Western Hort grows
orchids, and she brings in all kinds of orchids. She's the expert
on orchids. Another man grows South African bulbs--Lachenalias--
and he has the best collection in the county of Lachenalias.
That's the same at Cal Hort.
There are very few professionals at Cal Hort--I mean, there
are a lot of designers and things like that, but there are very
few professional nursery people that go to Cal Hort or to Western
Hort. It's mostly all amateurs and interested gardeners who are
interested in plants.
As I say, Bill Schmidt started this, and he called a group
together, and they were mostly in the nursery industry. The
original board of directors was Bill Schmidt, John Edwards, Ralph
Bernstein, Johnny Coulter, Its Uenaka, Dick Dunmire-- there must
have been three or four others. They acted as the first board of
directors until it got going, and then in a year or two, whenever
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Riess:
Carman:
the terms came around, then they got more of the so-called
amateurs in.
Bill, I think, was the first president, and John Edwards was
the second, I think. I've got a list of them someplace, but not
with me. From then on, there weren't too many professionals
either as the president or on the board- -one or two here and
there, but not a great many. It was mostly all amateurs and
homeowners, which is, I think, the way it should be. The society
has to have a lot of variety, and that's the way they would do it.
And instead of being an umbrella group, it's a parallel group.
Right. It's one of the four groups that sponsors Pacific
Horticulture.
Riess: You've been a member of Cal Hort.
Carman: Yes. I didn't join until '73, after we had moved here, because I
had a school board meeting on the same night that they met. There
was no way to get either one of them to change [laughs].
Riess: You would learn something by going to each of these meetings?
Carman: Yes. They have speakers from all around the world. They have
speakers from England—especially at Cal Hort.
And then you have speakers who are focused on one thing,
like drip irrigation, or organic gardening, and stuff like that.
Bob Kourak, who has a lot of drip irrigation systems, he's spoken
several times at Cal Hort and Western Hort. You should learn
something every time you go.
Times Change
Riess: When you look back at the organizations, is it possible to
chronicle change in taste and style?
Carman: Yes. I can see it most markedly in Cal Hort, because I guess
that's the oldest one. When I joined there was a group of
gardeners, let's call them, that were in their fifties and
sixties--! was a little bit younger. They were serious gardeners.
Some of them had fairly large gardens, so they could bring in
unusual things, and big chunks of a plant or something like that--
I wrote a letter to the awards committee just recently about this,
81
We would have these tables set up, bigger than this [dining
room table], out there in the rotunda of the Academy of Sciences,
and they would have two tables full of these things. Now they
have one table with a few little things on it. Now the people who
are bringing in the material are living in smaller areas, they
don't have the space, and so they have a lot of pot plants.
It's quite changed, in the amount of material and the kind
of material that's coming in. Of course now you're seeing things
that are new to these people, that were brought in thirty years
ago by the other people. So it's going around the circle again
[chuckles] .
Riess: Why would something be rediscovered?
Carman: They just go out of favor. They're not being grown for a while,
and then all of a sudden they're available again. They bring them
in, and they're new to the people that see them.
Riess: You wouldn't be able to say that it represented climatic changes
or anything like that .
Carman: No, it's just fashion. Things change. Right now perennials are
the hottest thing over the U.S. --and England, of course, they
always have been that way. Water plants have been very highly
promoted over the last two or three years. You get these
individual pools and a few water lilies and things like that. I
think probably succulents and cactus are going to be coming back
in. They were big ten or fifteen years ago. They more or less go
in cycles, I think.
Riess: It's interesting to think about who makes these things happen.
There's an economic drive behind it, isn't there?
Carman: That, I think, and conserving water. There's a big push on
drought-tolerant plants now too, for a lot of areas. The last
speaker at Western Hort was talking about plants to make a
California garden or something, and he showed a lot of native
plants and things that were similar that you could use in a garden
around the house. But I don't know how many of these things will
be accepted, because they're not very showy [chuckles].
Promoting New Plant Materials
Carman: The people that are doing this are very enthusiastic about it, but
to get a new plant accepted is very difficult. I've talked to
82
Ernest Wertheim about this—and some of the nurserymen, we used to
grow some different things, and they'd tell me they've got every
square foot allocated to some plant. If they bring a new one in,
they've got to move something else out. Unless they get a call
for it, they're not going to be the ones who are going to put it
there to sell it.
One nursery [Redwood City Nursery] does a lot of unusual
things. He gets things from a lot of little growers, and he has
the best selection on the peninsula probably. It's a very small
nursery, but he has stuff packed in like you wouldn't believe.
Riess: But you won't get a call for something unless people know about
it.
Carman: And you've got to get an architect to use it someplace where
people can see it. And to get them to use it, they've got to see
it. So it's kind of a vicious circle that you can't break into
sometimes .
Riess: One way people learn about things is in catalogs.
Carman: What's happening now, of course, is Monrovia Nursery and Hines
Nursery and some of the other big nurseries, they have enough
money to grow something and promote it and sell it just on their
promotion. They get all their customers to take some, and that way
it gets spread around.
Sometimes it keeps going, sometimes they grow it for two or
three years, and then if it doesn't sell they just drop it.
They've made the money on the first go-around on it. To them it's
more of an item, rather than a plant, but it's a little different
plant, so they promote it.
Riess: And new stuff gets written up in magazines?
Carman: Yes, it gets into some of the magazines and publications.
American Nurseryman is one that does a lot with new plants. They
have one page dedicated now to plants that people think are worthy
of being grown more, and some of those things are very good, and
some of them I think are dogs .
Riess: And is there a page dedicated to plants that you ought to get rid
of?
Carman: Brooklyn Botanic Garden brought out a whole handbook just recently
about exotic pests over the U.S. You'd be surprised what's on
that list. It's a big list, and some very good plants are on that
83
Riess :
Carman:
list, but in places they're really pests, depending on where
they're being grown.
There's a melaleuca on there which is taking over the
Everglades in Florida. And of course in the Santa Cruz and
Watsonville area, the pampas grass down there is an exotic pest.
And the Cytisus [broom, C. scoparius] along Highway 17, and I saw
some up on Highway 80 last year, almost up to the summit. They
seed prolifically, they come up, and they'll do in very poor
conditions.
There's stuff up in Marin County--! don't know what that
weed was up there that the [California] Native Plant Society was
trying to control. I can't think of what it is now. There's
things all over that are like that, that are gradually encroaching
and crowding other natives out.
Were new things introduced at Western Hort and at Cal Hort?
Oh, they had already been introduced someplace else. The nursery
would be growing it, and then they would be being sold someplace,
somebody would buy it, grow it, then they'd bring it in and show
it.
Nurserymen would already have known about this plant,
probably. But not necessarily. Sometimes people would grow
things from seed or they were sending away and getting something
that's not being grown by any of the wholesalers or the big
growers.
Saratoga Horticultural Foundation
Riess:
Carman:
Saratoga Horticultural Foundation was formed the same year, 1963.
Why 1963? Why were things happening then?
Coincidence, I guess. Ray Hartman is the one who started Saratoga
Hort Foundation. He was the owner of Leonard Coates Nurseries at
that time. He had a piece of land over in Saratoga and he donated
the land and some stock plants, I think, to start out.
on a perilous footing ever since.
It's been
Saratoga Hort was formed to introduce new and desirable
plants for the home landscape. That was their mission, to find
new and improved plant material for the home gardens.
Riess: Selfless?
Carman: Yes, that's supposedly what it was. But then there was a lot of
opposition to it by nurseries, thinking that Ray was getting a
special price or a special deal from Saratoga or something like
that. So there was jealousy or non-support from the very
beginning. There was some talk about them selling directly from
there to landscapers and things like that, so there was a lot of
misconceptions and suspicions at that time.
Riess: Are there parallel organizations in other parts of the country
that have been successful in doing this kind of development work?
Carman: The only people would be commercial nurseries, commercial
wholesalers—Monrovia or Hines. They've got people looking all
the time for new things, and they're interested in new things all
the time.
Riess: A horticultural foundation has a high-sounding name.
Carman: Yes. But they never got support. Well, they introduced a lot of
different things: the gingkos, magnolias, liquid ambers—but
there's been a lot of controversy about those because of the root
systems [chuckles]. They've introduced a lot of different things
that are still on the market.
Riess: Liquid amber I'm very fond of.
Carman: Terrible root system. I've got pictures of a tree planted in a
little parking strip like this, and I've got pictures of the roots
this big that are just cut off with a chainsaw at the curb. They
were used in the wrong place, for one thing. But people didn't
pay much attention, so they just planted it where they wanted it.
Riess: California didn't use liquid ambers in a big way before '63?
Carman: They were probably being grown, they were seedling grown, so
you've got all different kinds of colors. Saratoga, what they did
was select several colored ones and then grow them from budding,
from grafting, so they'd all be the same color. There were about
four or five that they introduced. One was a real dark red, one
more yellow. Then of course they were all female forms, so they
make those ball seeds, which are the insurance people's dreams.
Riess: Saratoga Hort had a lot of room to work with developing material?
Carman: They didn't have a great deal of room. They had two or three
acres over there, I think. At one time they had an agreement with
San Jose Water Works for planting out over at one of their pumping
stations on Williams Road. They put a lot of material out there
for it to grow up so they could see mature specimens of it. Now
85
they don't have access to that anymore, but they have a new plot
in San Martin now where they're doing that.
They also have agreements with some of the parks and
arboretums around the state to put out some of their newer things
which they're bringing in, to get to try out in different parts of
the state. That's what should have been done years ago, but it
never got off the ground. Just trying it in one location is not
very good policy.
Riess: How is it supported as a foundation?
Carman: It's supported by what they can grow and sell. Starting now,
they've got a wholesale price list, and they have one day a month,
I think, where they're open to the public down there where they
are now. And they have some grants.
They had an associates organization for quite a while and
they were doing quite well. Then when they moved down to San
Martin, why, the associates were all up here, so gradually--!
don't know what happened; that was absorbed into some sort of a
membership deal. I'm not sure how that's worked now. They have
two different- -one an endowment fund, and one a research fund.
They're getting a lot of material in now from China through
the arboretum up in Sebastopol, Quarry Hill. There's an
individual up there who is developing her own arboretum in a big
rock quarry. She's sending this man to China to collect seeds,
and they're sharing with Saratoga. They get a lot of stuff, some
new, and some things that had been introduced before, but they're
getting another seed source for some of them. Some of the things
will be different, some will be the same as has come in before.
But that's one of their best sources right now of new material.
UC Davis
Riess: Does UC Davis do the same kind of thing?
Carman: Davis does economic things. I mean, they'll have a collection of
olives, or a collection of peaches, and things like that to maybe
do some hybridizing on those. But they do very little on
ornamentals- -mostly economic things. They had that ongoing for
alstroemerias for at least twenty years; they've never gotten it
off the ground, as far as I was concerned. They were always
trying to improve them and get them better, and I don't think they
ever did get much on the market .
86
Riess: Why would they fail at that? Is it the plant or the institution?
Carman: Well, maybe what they were trying to do, they never did get the
results they wanted, I guess, and they just kept trying. There's
a lot of commercial growers now, they may have gotten some stock
from them, but most of the things that are growing now are the
Dutch hybrids, I think.
A lot of times commercial people will be doing the same or
parallel things, and of course if they find something that's good
they'll propagate it, put it on the market and sell it, whereas
the school will still be trying to find something better. They're
not progressing with selling it, with getting it out.
Riess: There's so much information to disseminate in the nursery
business. How do you keep up?
Carman: You have to read the trade magazines; that's where it's going to
show up as quick as anything. There was a state publication that
came out that had Davis information in it on California
agriculture, and Pacific Coast Nurserymen magazine, and American
Nurseryman magazine.
Riess: Is going to meetings essential for keeping up with the business?
Carman: Yes, in some ways. It would be talking to individual people
there, maybe finding somebody that has expertise that you're
looking for, or a speaker that's bringing new material or showing
slides of new material that you haven't seen before or new
techniques of doing something.
Then there's the International Propagating Society, which is
devoted just to propagation. Most of the time it's fairly
technical, but you can get a lot of information from that. They
put out a yearbook about that thick every year. Presentations are
given--! think it's worldwide now. They have sections in England,
the U.S., New Zealand, Germany, and Holland, I guess. There's a
lot of technical information there as far as how to do it. Some
of it's beyond the reach of small places, because they go into all
this lab stuff.
Riess: Would you have speakers from the industry, though, when you have
your Cal Hort or Western Hort meetings?
Carman: Not many directly, like Hines or Monrovia, not many from those
people. It would be more people that are doing plant hunting. Or
we might have the people from Quarry Hill or other arboretums and
things like that, or individual small nurserymen who are fairly
new.
II
87
Carman: Very seldom do you have somebody from Monrovia or Hines speaking
at a Cal Hort meeting, but you would have them sometimes at a
nurserymen's meeting. And at the nurserymen's meeting you would
have people from the irrigation specialists, commercial irrigation
production people, who would be speaking to the nurserymen's
groups. The conventions used to have more information; now they
have some statewide seminars where they have different speakers on
plants and irrigation and pest control and fertilizers—four or
five topics like that. They would be put on by the makers or the
producers of the different items that they would be speaking on.
Riess: You took a lot of executive positions in Western Hort over the
years.
Carman: Mostly in the last few years. I think that nurserymen should not
run the show at the societies.
Cal Hort, Awards, the Journal
Riess: You were awards committee chairman for Cal Hort for ten years?
What did you do?
Carman: We would give out the plant awards. Betty Rollins was the
chairman when I first joined it, and then she retired and I kept
on going. It would be about five or six members, and we would
review the plants that were shown during the previous year and try
to pick out some that were outstanding.
There was the merit award which would be a plant that would
be suitable for planting in the major part of the Bay Area, not
some specialty plant—it wouldn't be an orchid or anything like
that. It was something that could be used by most people in the
Bay Area.
Then we'd have cultural awards for a plant that was grown- -a
really good pot plant or something that was in excellent
condition.
Later we started education awards, where they would bring in
a series of ten or fifteen different ceanothus, all named, and
show those. Those were the three main awards. There could be
more than one cultural award, there could be more than one merit
award, if the committee decided that.
The award went to the plant, supposedly. The award was
given to the plant, then "exhibited by--" the person who showed
88
it, see. That list is on a computer now. One of the newer
members within the last five years has put it on computer. It's a
very impressive list. Pretty near all the plants that are being
grown in the Bay Area right now are on that list.
Riess: Does that mean that you can never repeat?
Carman: It really shouldn't be repeated. If it was given fifteen years
ago, why, the plant is still being grown—it shouldn't be given
again. It isn't an award that has to be given either, as far as I
understand.
Riess: There's got to be a lot of personal rivalry.
Carman: No, I don't think so. We'd pick out three or four things and vote
on them, and the majority of votes would get it. Or we'd discuss
it, and either we'd say this or that and decide which one is
really going to be the best one and that would get it. Most of
the time the committee didn't get an award, because it's one of
those things we didn't do unless it was really an outstanding
plant .
The awards weren't done until the end of the year, and we'd
go over the list. All the plants shown are written up in the
board minutes, they all come out with descriptions. So we go over
those lists. Some of the people might personally be thinking
about that when they show the plant. You could pretty much tell
when something was shown- -in your mind you would think that that
was probably something that was going to be on the list for an
award .
Riess: As you pointed out, one of the things that came out of all of this
was the magazine.
Carman: They created the magazine, yes. See, originally Cal Hort
published a journal which came out four times a year. In there,
they would have articles on various plants. Some of the people
who had grown them or knew something about them wrote them.
Then around '63 Cal Hort, Western Hort, Southern California,
and the group in Seattle- -Northwest Horticulture or something like
that- -those four groups then got together and put up some money to
get Pacific Horticulture started, which would then be the
quarterly published for all these groups. Membership in the
individual societies would give you a subscription to the
magazine.
it.
Then they went to color, and George Waters was hired to edit
He's been editor for the last thirty years now, it must be.
89
Owen Pearce, I guess, was editor for a while, and then George took
over. Owen was the original editor of the Cal Hort Journal.
Pacific Horticulture now does the same thing: they have
authors from all around the world now, mostly California, doing
stories on gardens and plants, with fairly nice color photographs.
It's supposedly one of the premier horticultural publications now.
Lester Hawkins
Riess: A collection of articles from Pacific Horticulture came out about
three years ago that included one of your articles.1 It also
included a number of pieces by Lester Hawkins .
Carman: Yes. Lester and Marshall Olbrich had Western Hills Nursery and
Garden. I first met them down at the other nursery when we were
down there. Marshall, at that time, had white hair. He was quite
young, and I thought, Gee, that guy must be old; he's got white
hair. They would come in and look around and buy a few things,
and I never did find out who they were.
They were developing that garden over many years , and they
grew a lot of unusual and new things that nobody else was growing
at that time. They went to Ray Williams in Watsonville, who was
importing a lot of seeds from Australia, and then they sent away
for a lot of seeds. They were really pioneers on introducing new
things, I would say. That's where Lester got all his knowledge
about these things: by growing them and putting them in gardens in
Marin County. He was doing gardening and landscaping in the area.
Riess: He was an unusual combination.
Carman: I think his degree was in literature or something. I think they
might have both been literature--! can't remember now. They were
well-educated, but they were kind of early-day hippies, I guess
you'd call them [chuckles] --without the long hair. They were very
knowledgeable, really, really good plant speople. Lester and
Marshall both. And Lester did write a lot.
Riess: You and they both had connections with New Zealand and Australia,
too. Was this something you talked about?
rp. 226, The Pacific Horticulture Book of Western Gardening, edited by
George Waters and Nora Harlow, David R. Godine, Publisher, 1990.
90
Carman: No, I really didn't have much contact with them. We didn't get up
there very of ten- -maybe once every two or three years we'd get up
there to talk to them, and we'd see them in meetings, but you
don't have much time to talk at meetings. We'd exchange plans
every once in a while, but we never did get up there and have any
all-night discussions like some people did who had the time.
Riess: How did they introduce these Australian plants? From putting them
in gardens? Or did they introduce plants in a more formal way?
Carman: No, it would be informal, because they didn't grow any amount of
things—they just would grow enough for gardens, or to sell at the
nursery there [in Occidental, California]. And I don't know how
much they were selling in those days.
Riess: Their impact is quite limited if they're not going to do a lot of
propagating.
Carman: Yes. It was limited except when he wrote about them; that would
get more people aware of them. That way they would make more of
an impact.
Riess: Elizabeth McClintock has been one of the writers over the years.
Carman: Oh, yes. She's been there for forever. She's quite a gal. She
was at the Academy of Sciences. Well, I guess she was in Berkeley
first. Then she was the botanist at the Academy of Sciences.
She's still writing for Pacific Horticulture, about the trees of
Strybing Arboretum.
Riess: And that's another connection, of course: the arboretum itself.
Carman: Strybing was started by members of the Peninsula Nurserymen: Juel
Christensen, Charlie Burr, and Eric Walther, who was a curator at
Golden Gate Park at that time. That story is in Charlie Burr's
history, actually. [See "The First Twenty-five Years", appended.)
Rock Garden Society. Bonsai
Riess: You had a role in a lot of other organizations. Perhaps you would
tell what their particular niches were and who hooked them all
together, which I think is really interesting. The [Western
Chapter, American] Rock Garden Society you joined early.
Carman: Yes. I don't know how 1 got interested in the Rock Garden
Society. What year did I join that?
91
Riess: In '73. Who brought you into that?
Carman: It was probably Victor Reiter, in San Francisco. He had a big
rock garden. That place was just spectacular—I've got some
pictures — really spectacular. That's probably how I got connected
with that, and I joined the society. Then you get the quarterlies
and you get seed lists, and you can start to go and get seeds and
stuff like that.
Riess: So that had a real impact on this nursery, that you would be
offering more plants based on the seeds that you got from the Rock
Garden Society?
Carman: Yes, and things that Victor gave me. We were growing a few things
down at the other nursery before we moved, I think.
When we moved we were going to drop all the common stuff and
just grow the unusual stuff, and that's what we did. We were
already doing more with perennials. Then it was perennials and
rock gardens, and then bonsais kind of crept in there someplace
along the way.
I think I told you I took a course, in the late sixties, I
guess, from Yoshimura, who was the bonsai master from Brooklyn
Botanic Gardens. He came out here to give a three-week course, or
something like that, up in Los Altos. Everybody did a plant the
same night. We had about eight or ten plants. Then we moved up
here, and they were sitting out in the ground, and they
disappeared one night, so I don't have any of those left now.
They went down to the flea market, I guess, in somebody else's
truck [laughs] .
Riess: What was it like to take that class? Is it that you stand in
front of the plant and wait for the plant to reveal its nature to
you, or something like that.
Carman: No. You cut it to make the shape is what you do. You take a real
bushy plant like this, maybe this high and this wide, and you end
up with something like that and like that.
Riess: And you decide what its nature's going to be.
Carman: That's right. You decide. You could take a plant that's straight
up, you can put wires on it and make a weeper out of it. You're
the one that develops the character of the plant. The tree
doesn't tell you; you tell the tree [laughter].
You ought to go to the some of the bonsai demonstrations.
They have dremel tools and drills and saws, and they'll take a
92
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman :
tree that's this big, and it'll end up about that high with the
top all shredded like lightning has hit it, with a few branches
sticking out. It's really remarkable what some of those people
can do with a five- or ten-gallon plant, a big rangy plant. They
come out with something that looks pretty good when they get done,
but it'll take about two years for it to really fill out, and then
it looks really beautiful.
I put a plant out in the front garden here one year. It was
supposed to have been a dwarf conifer, but it had the wrong name
on it, so within two years it was about that tall. Some bonsai
enthusiast came in and asked about it. She wanted it. I said,
"If I can dig it up." So she took it. She said in two years she
was going to be showing it. I've still got her name; I've got to
find out what it looks like now, if she still has it.
I grow small plants in four- inch pots and gallon cans for
people to make their own, but I don't have time to make them
anymore .
What's the definition of a rock garden? There's a pretty wide
range, isn't there?
A very wide range, yes. A rock garden doesn't have to have any
rocks, actually. A rock garden is a garden that's generally
mounding so you can get good drainage, mostly. But it's where
you're growing dwarf or alpine plants that are going to stay in
fairly small sizes. You can get five hundred plants in a space as
big as this room, or something like that. Rocks enhance it, but
it doesn't have to have rocks to be a rock garden.
The dwarf plants stay that size,
garden?
so it's not a high-maintenance
Oh, it's pretty high maintenance. You have to keep it weeded, and
you have to be sure the plants do stay small. Sometimes they take
pinching back. You have to take the dead flowers off. There's
quite a bit of work to it, I think. Mine is the weed patch out
here. Most of the weeds are out now, but they're getting back.
I've got to get out there. A lot of stuff has been overgrown, so
a lot of it has got to be replanted.
What is the tradition of rock gardens? Is it an American
tradition or does it come from someplace else?
It probably comes from England. It's been on the east coast for
many years more than out here, I think, but it's pretty
widespread. There's a big national rock garden society, and a
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quarterly. There's a small group in the East Bay that meets,
Northwest has a big and very active group.
The
Kiwi Growers' Association, and Photographing Plants
Riess: What I don't see in here is that you were a member of the Kiwi
Society, or the individual plant groups?
Carman: Didn't I put down the Kiwi Growers' Association? I was in that
for many years. They had a kiwi group that formed in the late
sixties, I guess, when the kiwis were all the rage at the time and
they were propagated everyplace.
This kiwi association was formed to promote sales and
culture of kiwis. It was headquartered in Gridley, in the valley.
We went to some of the meetings. It was more aimed for production
than propagation, and we were only propagating at that time,
although we did sell some plants for small plantings.
That [kiwi association] kept up until '80 maybe, and then it
kind of tapered off because everybody was pretty well set on
production, and they had their packers, and that was all pretty
much commercialized. I guess there's still a small group, because
somebody called last year from the association. They have a part-
time office in Sacramento.
Riess: Why did they call?
Carman: They wanted a picture of the male and female flower. They didn't
even have a picture of that in the office over there. And that's
the only way you can tell the plants, when they're blooming, when
they're in flower. I sent them some pictures of that. That's
what they called for.
Riess: That's been an important contribution from you to the business,
the picture taking.
Carman: Well, I take a lot of pictures.
I gave some to Fine Gardening for oreganos and rhodohypoxis.
I've given some to several publications, some books, Sunset. In
one of their old Sunset books they used a half-page ad with my
rock garden picture that I took in Oregon. Some of my pictures
are in their CD-ROM. I haven't seen it, but there are two or
three in that.
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
When you're taking a picture—for instance, the lewisias that I
was admiring out there- -do you really struggle with lighting, or
do you just take it?
Usually I pose them, yes. I take all the dead leaves off and
clean them up a little bit.
Perhaps pose them against a dark backdrop or something like that.
Yes. The photograph on the cover of Pacific Hort--actuallv I cut
the plants and stuck them together because they weren't growing in
the right space. But nobody knows that now but you. [laughter]
I think everybody does that to get a good picture. Some people do
it more than others, I think, as far as posing.
You were taking pictures for fun?
something?
Or did you need them for
I was taking them for fun. I've taken pictures ever since I was a
kid. I had a little tiny plastic camera that took a picture about
as big as a post stamp. Pictures of dogs and fish and stuff like
that.
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Shortly after returning from the service I bought a Retina
IIIc 35mm camera made by Kodak. Color film was becoming widely
available so I took slides of family outings and garden plants and
scenes. That was my first really good camera.
How are the slides holding up?
Pretty good, except in 1955 Kodak had trouble with a fungus—but
we cleaned up most of them. The lady across the street used to
work at Kodak, on Page Mill, and she took them up and they cleaned
them all off for me, except one I found recently of a historic
building in Los Gatos that had fungus. I took it up to the people
in Palo Alto, and they cleaned it and made a print of it for the
people in Los Gatos.
If you go to a lab that knows what they're doing, they can
clean them up for you. It looked like a light coloration in
circles. It was a fungus growing.
I've seen your photography in Pacific Horticulture.
Yes. In 1992 when we went to New Zealand I bought a 35mm
Nikkormat (poor man's Nikon) with a macro lens. With this I was
able to take real close-ups and general scenes. From then on I
have taken slides of all the plants we have grown for our files.
This camera has been on all of our Cal Hort trips and every place
95
else we have been since. Sunset used a shot of a rock garden
taken in Oregon, a whole half page! We have gotten requests from
various publications—one in Canada used a couple of slides. Some
have been used in Pacific Horticulture articles. And I have used
many of the slides for shows to various horticultural groups.
[laughing] I really have to get busy!
years to be put in file boxes.
I have a couple of
Royal Horticultural Society, and English Gardens it
Riess: The Royal Horticultural Society—why did you join that?
Carman: That we joined after a trip to England. In '75 we went to
England, to the Chelsea show. Also, we were corresponding with
somebody from at the Royal Hort Society for something. We went
out to the gardens, and he showed us around.
I've got some old slides of that, things which they probably
don't have now because they had a big storm there in the eighties,
and it blew down a lot of the big trees which are in my pictures.
He introduced us briefly to Chris Brickell, who was the director
there at that time. He went on to become the authority, is still
the authority, on horticulture in England.
Then we went up to Shakespeare country, and that's the year
we went to see Hillyer, who took us around for a day there.
Riess: Yes, I think you talked about that. The bank holiday day.
Carman: Right. So then we joined the RHS and get their publications.
We've traded plants from then on. They've sent things, I've sent
things to them. They're one of the premier societies. They're
getting a little bit commercialized now. Their publications are
mostly all ads [laughs], but I guess they have to do it to
survive.
Riess: The English always had the reputation of being the gardeners.
Perhaps it's that ideal atmosphere that they live in.
Carman: Yes, I guess it is. Probably part of it is their winters. Their
winters are lousy, I think, and so as soon as they get a little
bit of sunlight they get out there and get some color in the
garden. I think that's a lot of it too. Same way with variegated
plants: the English and the New Zealanders really like variegated
96
plants to color all that green. Here in the U.S. a lot of people
think those plants are sick or dead or dying.
We were in England that one year, in June. Everything was
green. Everything. We came home and drove down from the airport,
and it looked like a desert here. I couldn't get over the change
in that ten-hour flight, to come from that green to all the dry
grass, and it's hot and dry and just dead, it seemed like, after
leaving that green. I think that's part of it, why they garden
the way they do. And I guess they've had a little more history of
gardening than we have.
Riess: And when people came from the East Coast to California they tried
to plant the plants they knew from home.
Carman: Yes. It's difficult to duplicate things like that unless you have
unlimited water, and some gardeners. The only place that does it
really well is probably Buchart Gardens in Victoria. Filoli does
a good job, but they have fifteen or twenty gardeners and a lot of
help. It's a fairly limited space, too.
Riess: For me, it's hard to realize that some perennials will die in my
garden because they don't have a dormant period, a winter.
Carman: Yes, and there are certain things that probably wouldn't—oriental
poppies, for instance. Because they have a summer dormancy, see?
Here, I think that summer dormancy is so—they get so dry or they
stay too wet, they just rot and they don't come back again. I've
tried them several times.
Most people don't realize here that we live in a desert—
from now on until November, there's going to be practically no
rain to measure. Along the coast you can do much better, because
you get foggy days and stuff like that.
Saratoga Horticultural Foundation Directors
Riess: When we were talking about Saratoga Hort, I forgot to ask you
about Maunsell van Rensselaer. Was he an effective director?
Carman: Van was kind of hard to get to know, really. He was quite a
taskmaster, I guess. He selected quite a few things. Some of
them-- [laughs] they say that they took a picture of one of the
gingkos they introduced looking into the wind, because if you took
it crossways it was leaning!
97
Van was the first director, and he was there fifteen or
twenty years, I guess. Then they had Richard Hildreth for just a
short time—that's when I was on the board. Richard came from
Davis. He never did get things together, I don't think. I was
board president at that time, so I had the great task of telling
him that his services were no longer needed. I don't think he's
thought much of me since then.
Then we had Dennis White. I think he was a friend of Mai's
[Mai Arbegast]. He took over for a while, and he was a promoter.
He was supposed to raise a lot of money for the board, and he
didn't raise anything, I don't think. Then Lou Schenone, who was
Pacific Nurseries, he was acting director when we moved to San
Martin. Then I think maybe Philip Browse came.
He came over from England, and he was commuting back and
forth. Then his family came over. They never did get into a
house, I don't think. She didn't like it here, and I don't know
about the two girls, whether they did or not. But he got a call
back within a year that the directorship at RHS Wisley was open.
Of course that was too good a thing to pass up, so he went back.
Also then they had that big storm in 1987. It blew many,
many immense, 200-year-old trees down. And he had a disagreement
with the board of directors on how to go about re-doing the
garden, so I guess he left because he didn't get support from some
of the board.
Lowell Cordes came after Philip, I believe. And then after
Lowell left, I think Joe Solomone was acting director. Two years
ago, I think it was, Cathy Hesketh came in as executive director
and Joe is research director.
Riess: That's a lot of people trying to make their mark in a short
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
period, isn't it?
Well, Lowell was here for about four or five years, I guess,
was one or two. Van was the longest tenured there, and he
introduced most of the liquid ambers and the gingkos and the
magnolias at that time.
Lou
Under the others, were there particular highlights?
introductions?
Particular
No. Philip was working with some wisterias, and he had a big
collection of cistus, which he thought, and I think too, would
have been a good thing to work on, but it was a long-term project,
hybridizing those things. I would have to look at the list to see
98
what has been introduced since then, but there have been a few
things that have come along since then.
Riess: If Philip Browse was offered the directorship of Wisley that means
that he was a pretty high-powered person, doesn't it?
Carman: He knew Chris well and moved in the same horticultural circles, I
guess. Actually, he had been a teacher at the Brooksby
Horticultural School, he was in a teaching position. So he came
here from Brooksby and really did know his plant materials.
International Plant Propagators Society
Riess: That same year, you also joined the International Plant
Propagators Society.
Carman: I guess maybe Don Dillon--he is the owner of the Four Winds Citrus
Growers in Fremont—he or somebody talked me into that. He was a
big man in the International Propagators Society.
We attended one of their gatherings in Vancouver about ten
years ago, where they had a two-day meeting with presentations
during the day and an awards dinner and stuff like that. Then
I've been to one in Sacramento and one other one. Every three or
four years, if you don't go to a meeting, you have to write a
paper for it. So you could never go to any meetings and just
write papers forever if you wanted to. Or you could go to
meetings all the time and never propagate a plant and still belong
to it. But like I say, there's a lot of good material that comes
out of those meetings and the publications.
Riess: You skim through to see if there's something relevant.
Carman: Yes. I saw something in there by Philip last time, where he was
talking about growing palms. He's in southern England--! don't
know how many palms he's growing in southern England [laughter].
Santa Cruz Arboretum
Riess: And in 1976 you joined the Santa Cruz Arboretum,
your connection with Santa Cruz.
Tell me about
99
Carman: It's been very slight, actually. I joined in '76. Let's see, one
time before that Saratoga got in some plants which were to go to
Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz didn't take them or something, so I potted
them up and kept them here for a while and then they got them.
Then I joined this, and even though it's just over the hill, I've
gotten there very seldom, actually. I didn't get to any of the
meetings, so it was just getting the publication and sending in
the dues . Then a very good friend gave us a life membership in
1990. I get over there once in a while, but I really haven't
gotten much from them as far as new things.
Ray Collett is director and guiding light there; he's a
history teacher, I believe, and a pretty good plantsman. He had
been the guiding light. I guess he could have retired several
years ago, but he stayed on so he could keep the arboretum going.
They've gotten some fairly good endowments. One man left
money for the New Zealand collection, and they got a grant from
the Stanley Smith Foundation for some houses or something. So
they're getting some funds in, but not enough so that they can
live off the interest on the endowments, I don't think.
They have a propagation scheme where they're growing plants,
and they have a sale a couple of times a year. I think the Lanes
[Sunset magazine former owners] gave them money to put up a
horticultural building. That's up now. Johnny Coulter, a retired
nurseryman living on Oregon, just gave them a complete collection
of the Cal Hort journals and Pacific Horticulture from the
beginning, up to date. So they have that in their library. Like
most places, they're going door to door to keep going. Brett Hall
is the manager there.
Their collections of New Zealand and Australian plants is
the best in the United States.
Riess: Did it come about because the landscape has been so important in
the perception of that campus?
Carman: I don't think it had anything to do with the landscape of the
campus. They didn't landscape with those plants.
Riess: I know, but why a major arboretum at UC Santa Cruz?
Carman: For one thing, it's got an ideal climate for those plants, and the
South Africans too. All the proteas and leucospermums--they've
got one of the biggest collections outside of South Africa of
those two, I guess. So it's really a big collection of plant
material. It probably should be utilized more.
100
Nevin Smith at Wintergreen, who is now at Suncrest, has
gotten a lot of things out of there, and he's propagating them and
getting them on the market. And I think Jeff Ahorne from Sierra
Azul is too.
Riess: Is it right on the campus?
Carman: Right at the edge of the campus, yes. Have you ever been there?
Riess: No.
Berkeley has some fine specimen trees on campus.
Carman: I think most of their real big collection of plants is up at the
Botanical Garden.
Riess: It surprises me that Santa Cruz would have it unless there were
academic support for it.
Carman: There was university support for it until last year or the year
before—then they started cutting back 50 percent a year. I think
within the next year or two there will be no more support from the
university. Like everything else they're cutting back--I don't
know where the money's going.
Alpine Garden Society
Riess: The Alpine Garden Society sounds like a rock garden society.
Carman: It's headquartered in England, of course. They have different
material because they grow a lot of more interesting and almost
impossible-to-grow-here things, that they grow there.
Riess: Why were they more interesting?
Carman: Just because they're hard to grow. Like anything else—you go to
Fiji and the people are trying to grow roses, which don't do down
there. It's like trying to grow English gardens here where you
can't grow them. [laughs] It's the same way all around the world,
gardeners are crazy. [Carman gets the Alpine Society journal.]
It's stuff like that, see? [shows picture] That's not in
color, but you've got those things in a six- inch pot.
it's great to be able to grow that.
Riess: We're looking at Draba dedeana.
I think
101
Carman: And there's all kinds of stuff from the Caucasus and from the
Alps.
Riess: This says the mountains of Spain here.
Carman: But when you see color photographs of things, where they're solid
blossoms, it just blows your mind at the perfection of it. And
then when you read about the trouble they go to to keep these
things --putting a glass over them in the winter and putting them
on the north side of the buildings and stuff like that—they're
really dedicated to growing these things.
And of course, there they have so many of these groups
around that they have these shows, and they have judgings for the
shows. You can get cups and plaques and stuff like that.
Riess: They are all grown in containers?
Carman: Yes, I would say that everything that they show probably is grown
in the container. That's why I think it's so interesting that
they can take the time and the effort to do this thing- -maybe five
years of time to get this thing to bloom at the right day, to show
it in perfection.
Like the plant I showed at Cal Hort last year: it was a
thyme, it had a pretty nice shape to it, and it had little white
flowers all over it, bracts. It was the first year it's bloomed
like that at the right day. It's going to bloom this year, but I
know it's not going to be the right day. So I may wait three to
five years for that to come at the right time.
You can't time it. Sometimes you can. By shading it or
giving it more light or more heat or something like that you might
be able to bring it up a little quicker.
Riess: That's the pleasure, control over these small things.
Carman: And to grow them at all. Sometimes these things grow naturally
where they get frozen under snow in the wintertime. So to
duplicate that condition without having the snow- -it takes a lot
of expertise. I think it's unusual and fascinating to be able to
do that.
Riess: I know you're a member of the Garden Conservancy, which was
started by Frank Cabot. Have you been to his place [Stonecrop] in
Cold Spring, New York? He is also a rock garden person.
Carman: I've never been east of Denver to see any gardens.
102
The Herb Society, the NCCP in England. Gene Pools
Riess:
Carman:
The Herb Society.
Society?
What is the definition of herbs in this Herb
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Herbs are plants that are used for cooking or medicinal purposes,
although they do not promote the medicinal use of any herb,
they're very strong about it. They have a culinary section, they
have a horticultural section, and they have a historical group.
The group, they all like to eat, so they have these fancy
dinners using all these different herbs and stuff. Then the
propagating people, or the gardening people, used to have sales —
I'm not sure if they do anymore or not. And promote the use of
herbs in cooking and decoration. All the cooking herbs are the
ones that are most widely used.
I was looking at an herb list that just came, and they have
people who have collections—like there's one in Texas, Madeleine
Hill, I think her name is, has a collection of all the rosemarys,
I think, all the named varieties of rosemarys. Another person
will have all the collections of thymes. Another has a collection
of basils.
Same thing as what's being done in England for all the
gardening plants—they have this National Committee for
Conservation of Plants, NCCP, in England, and they're trying to
get one going here in the U.S. now, starting back east. Some of
these large gardens or national trust gardens in England will take
on a certain plant and try to get all the named varieties.
ft
They keep them separate, and keep- -like a gene pool is what
they're doing.
Keeping a gene pool of some things, like corn and potatoes, seems
easy because you just keep the seed, or the potato. But how about
for garden materials?
You have to keep living plants. You have to keep propagating, and
you have to keep them true to name and not grow any seedlings. So
it would be quite an undertaking.
There's one college, Cannington College, which I got some
scions of the wisterias from. They supposedly had a good
collection of wisterias. I got some things from there—not what I
thought I was getting. I don't know. The name might not have
103
been understood. The communication sometimes with these people is
not the best. Some people communicate good, some never answer
letters.
Generally we've become much more concerned about gene pools
because of the hybridization of everything. You get hybrids which
are sometimes better—generally they're better as far as
production of fruit, but not being hardy to diseases. So if you
get one hybrid type of tomato or strawberry or something, and some
kind of disease hits it, you're going to completely wipe
everything out because they have no resistance to it.
There was a piece in the paper yesterday about some man in
Santa Cruz who has a big bean gene pool- -it showed a bunch of
beans he had collected. But the worst of it is, when that person
dies or something, then what happens to that? You've got to have
somebody to carry it on. That's the thing about an individual
taking care of a gene pool without having some organization. It's
a problem.
Riess: You think there's a limit to what the USDA can do.
Carman: The USDA is doing less and less, I'm afraid, because of cutbacks.
They had a big pistachio hybridizing program going in Texas,
and they were going to cut off funds from that. I couldn't figure
out why the pistachio association didn't take it over. I almost
wrote them a letter, but I didn't get to it. Supposedly the
pistachio industry's pretty big in the U.S. Here in California
it's big. Some of these associations should start taking care of
some of these things themselves.
Riess: And there's so much interest in old roses. And old apples.
Carman: There's a big antique apple organization in Marin County, and they
have 800 varieties, I think. Wisley has their pears and apples
and I think plums. Pears, I think they have 600; apples, I think
they have 900. So they've got a pretty good selection there.
A Review of the Route from Grower to Retailer
Riess: When your daughter Nancy came in earlier, she asked about the
tarragon?
Carman: We sell herbs to one nursery up on the peninsula. Tarragon is a
popular one, and this is the first propagation this year, and they
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want some, and they're late [chuckles]. I hope the roots are big
enough to move into pots.
Riess: Do you grow the other herbs?
Carman: Yes, we grow all the popular ones: rosemary, thyme, sages,
lavenders, oregano, and marjoram. We sell a fair amount here, and
we sell it to this one nursery on the peninsula.
In the fifties we were one of the first nurseries, down at
the other place, to grow herbs in clay pots—everything was in
clay pots--and we'd put five kinds to a flat and sell them to this
fellow who used to wholesale plants. We sold them to Nelson
Nursery, which used to be up in San Leandro.
Riess: This was that idea that everyone could grow herbs on their
windowsills?
Carman: Oh, no, I don't believe in that. These were pots to be sold to
customers to put in the ground. But you grew them in pots because
those were the only containers we had at that time. We would sell
collections of herbs, five of each kind, five kinds to a flat, and
then they'd sell them by the flat to their customers to be sold at
retail.
Riess: It's hard for me to understand the levels of your marketing.
Carman: At that time we were growing in larger quantities, so we did some
wholesaling. We were growing the ice plant they used on the
freeways, we were growing that in flats and selling it to Nelson.
We were growing boxwood cuttings and putting it in hundred count
flats and selling that at wholesale. We were growing certain
things in gallon cans and selling groups of that to him. He was a
big broker in San Leandro.
Riess: Nelson's a broker in San Leandro.
Carman: He was. The nursery's been gone for many years now. He was a
wholesale nursery, I should say. He would buy it wholesale, or at
a discount from wholesale, and re-sell it wholesale.
We would go up there and buy things from him too if we
didn't get them delivered. A few plants or whatever we needed.
He would grow some things, he would buy things in from all around
the state. He had a complete selection of all sorts of
ornamentals and containers for home landscaping- -in five gallons,
too.
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Riess: It's difficult to understand how many hands a plant passes
through .
Carman: It would be grower, wholesaler, retailer. Basically it would be
three hands. Except for instance we'd be a grower, and we'd also
be a retailer, so it would be only one place. Most of the garden
centers buy from a wholesaler, or from a grower; they buy from the
producer direct to the retailer, so it's only one away from the
one that grows it.
Riess: A retail nursery will sometimes have a place in the back where
things are not for sale.
Carman: Most of them don't any more. They can't afford the space anymore.
In fact, some of the retailers now, they buy their fruit trees
bare root, they have a nursery in Sacramento can them up, and they
order them in as they need them. So they bring in five every week
of whatever they need.
There's a small nursery in Redwood City, the one I know
there, they buy their roses in and can them up, but then they
stack them all over the nursery because they don't have a place to
put them—they've got them stacked three high sometimes. Some of
the other ones, they buy their roses, have a big wholesaler can
them up and hold them, and then every week they bring in a few.
The big places like Home Depot, they don't grow anything;
everything comes in on pallets and stacked up three high. They
buy direct from the producer, mostly. And they tell them what
price they're going to pay for it, a lot of the times.
Riess: Since I met you, I went to Orchard Supply for the first time. It
seemed like everything was half the price that it was at Berkeley
Horticultural Nursery, my usual place.
Carman: Well, Berkeley Hort, they have what you call a full-service
nursery, and they have consultations. You can probably get
advice, and they may even go out to the garden and look at it and
tell you what you should plant and things like that.
Orchard Supply doesn't. They have a plant to sell it, they
have people there who may know what they're selling, they may not
if they have not been trained, but they have units to sell. So
that makes the difference in 20 percent or 30 percent of the
price. That's what the independent seller battles these days.
They've got to really offer service to keep their customers and do
something different all the time.
Riess: What they need to do is have coffeeshops in the nursery.
106
Carman: They're a big thing back East already. They're advocating that in
some of the magazines. Some of the big centers have got a whole
coffeeshop where you can have sandwiches even, I think. Kathy's
ahead of the game--Kathy Crane up at Yerba Buena. She's got a tea
room now. I thought about it, but it's too much work.
Conserving Gardens
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
The most recent of the organizations, the Garden Conservancy, it's
interesting that there had been no way of really conserving
important gardens.
I think it's necessary, too. There's nothing much around here.
Ruth Bancroft's garden is nice, but it's very unique. It's mostly
all really drought-tolerant stuff. It's really out of this world
as far as most people are concerned. The other big garden that
people go to is Filoli, and that's the other side of the scale:
most people can't have that kind of a garden either because it's
so big and so labor intensive that you just can't do it.
But there's nothing else available that's being thought of
to be conserved, I don't think, around there. It should be. But
I don't know of any gardens—there are probably a lot of them up
in Hillsborough. But again, most of those, like most of the other
gardens back East, they're big old gardens which were built in
another time. They're not going to be built again. So it would
be nice to show people what has been done in the past, even though
they can't do it now. They could maybe take one thing from that
and do that .
And is that all the Garden Conservancy is aiming to do?
what has been done.
To show
I think that's all they can do, actually- -to conserve old gardens
and bring them back into their former glory, if possible,
depending on how far they've gone into disrepair.
It's problematic to conserve something that's growing.
Yes, it is.
What they do in England, they have this national trust
thing, and they're conserving big places. Acres. And big
castles, and big mansions and things like that. They're charging
for it, of course; that's the only way they can do it. That's the
only way they can do it here too as far as that goes, unless they
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can get a lot of endowments, which is probably going to be very
difficult.
Victor Reiter
Riess: What made Victor Reiter so exceptional? What was his niche in the
horticultural world?
Carman: Victor went to Berkeley, I guess, and I think he almost got a
degree as a doctor. I think his father was growing some plants
there, and then Victor got started in fuchsias first, I think. He
was a hybridizer of fuchsias, and he introduced quite a few
different fuchsias. I don't know how he got into rock garden
plants from there--! never did ask him about that.
Riess: Did he have his nursery right in San Francisco?
Carman: Yes, at 1195 Stanyon Street. He called it La Rochette, which is
"The Rock." I've got one of his old catalogs, and he had a very
impressive list of rock garden plants. This was before the war.
Then during the war he went to work at Hendy's, I believe,
and he met [Alexander] Poniatoff. Poniatoff was one of the
founders of that computer place [Ampex] on the peninsula, right
there off Bayshore, where we used to meet for Western Hort. Mrs.
Poniatoff got us in so we could meet there, and that's where we
met for years.
After the war, Victor got into rock garden plants. I don't
know how long that lasted, because 1 don't think the nursery
lasted much beyond the fifties.
Riess: The nursery closed in '70, it says here.
Carman: I'm sure it did before that.
Then he developed this whole rock garden up the hill there.
Victor was very gregarious, and after the Cal Hort meetings he
would invite people up to the house, and they had this great big
living room there with this fourteen- foot table, and they would
have these coffee cakes and serve coffee. And when the magnolias
were blooming, they'd have lights on them—the great big pink
Campbellii magnolia was just magnificent.
They would take flashlights and go out looking at plants in
the rock garden. And there 'd be discussions on plants and
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everything else at these get-togethers. That's why so many people
knew him, because he was a big contributor at Cal Hort, and also
inviting these people over so he could get to know the people
socially.
And then the nursery- -we have a friend here who got to know
him at the nursery. He used to get plants from him. That was
right after the war that they got stuff from him. He was very
sharing. He would give you a plant and give you information or
help you in any way he could--or seeds or anything like that.
Riess: Did they have children?
Carman: Yes. Victoria's the oldest, and then Charlie, and then Ginger.
Riess: But nobody took over the nursery?
Carman: No. Victoria lives about four houses up the street, Ginger lives
right next door, and Charlie lives someplace else in town. They
all live in town. The two houses, where Victoria lives, I think
that butts up to the nursery, and so does Ginger's. And of course
Carla's [Mrs. Reiter] . It kind of a pie-shaped piece of property;
it goes up to the transmission tower up there [Sutro Tower] in the
forest up there, so it goes right to the eucalyptus.
He wanted to develop it at one time, but the city wouldn't
let him put in housing there. He has an entryway up at the back
of the driveway to the top of the property, so he has access to
the top of the property.
Riess: When a nursery like that closes, what happens to all the plants?
Carman: Like Victor said, "When the gardener dies, the garden dies." And
that's what's happening. For a while the rock garden group, or
Ted Kipping, they'd get a bunch together and go over and weed a
little bit. But the last time 1 was up there it was pretty near
gone, because the blackberries had just come right down the hill.
Ginger's husband, he has a tree company or maintenance
company or something, and he was interested a little bit. But
Victor was out there at least four hours a day. He was taking
care of his stocks and bonds for four hours and working in the
garden four hours a day, and you could keep it down that way. But
without doing that four hours a day, there's no way you can do it.
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"You Can't Control Things After You're Gone"
Carman: And Mr. Domoto's, I was over there about a month ago, and I walked
out and everything out in the back- -the lath was gone, the tables
were gone, the plants were gone. There were a few sitting around,
but he's lost most of his bonsai.
Riess: They were gone as in dead? Or just removed?
Carman: I don't know whether they were dumped or what had happened to
them.
Riess: I'm upset, and you must be too. With all these organizations,
you'd think at the very least these plants could find homes.
Carman: There's nobody who has gone to see him, I don't think, to talk to
him about it. Nobody ever suggested anything about it. I was up
there one time, and some of the lath had blown down, but I don't
get up there very often, so I didn't realize that all this had
blown down in the last couple of storms we had up there.
The glasshouse is still there; he had some guy weeding the
plants in the glasshouse, but I don't know how much was in there,
really. So I don't what happened to all the crabapples and other
plants there that were partially bonsaied. It's what happens.
Riess: You've decided to be philosophical about it.
Carman: Yes. I've written a letter to Nancy, to tell her what to do.
Riess: And maybe a sign that says "Come one, come all" at that point.
Carman: That's up to her; she can do what she wants.
Riess: And that's what I'm really asking about Victor Reiter's place.
Carman: There was nothing there to—unless they go out and dig up the
plants and that would be kind of foolish.
Riess: Because everything's in the ground. We're talking about a garden
that ' s in the ground .
Carman: If it was plants that were in pots, it would be a different story
probably. Domoto's, I don't think anybody ever asked him about it
or thought about it. It's Just one of those things that somebody
thinks that somebody else is going to do it and nobody else did
it.
110
It's one of those things, you can't control things once
you're gone, you really can't.
[laughing] I went to a memorial two weeks ago of a friend of
ours. He had a little nursery down here, and he was a teacher,
and he did honky-tonk piano. If you'd ask him to play something,
he'd sit down and he could play it. He could play anything you
asked him. They had made some recordings or tapes of him playing,
and they were playing those at the memorial. That was the
greatest thing. He would have appreciated it [chuckles].
Riess: So you can control your own memorial.
Carman: If people will do what you ask them.
It's one of those things—you just can't control it.
Riess: That doesn't stop you from wanting to, though.
Carman: Yes, you would like to do something with it. There's no money to
do anything with it. You can't endow it--if you could find a big
endowment then she [daughter Nancy] could keep going. Haven't hit
the jackpot yet.
Top row: John Work, Dan Chambers.
Second row: Bob Schramm, Nancy Schramm, Trisha Work.
Third from top: Jenny Work, Julie Work, Diane Chambers.
Bottom row: Steven Work, Ed Carman, Jean Carman, Laurel Chambers.
Photographed on the occasion of Ed and Jean's 50th anniversary, 1994,
Ed Carman, 1995.
Photograph by Eugene Louie for the
San Jose Mercury News.
Ill
IX THE VIEW FROM LOS GATOS
[Interview 4: April 28, 1997] /I
Jean Carman
Riess: Today, before we tour the nursery, I'd like to fill in a few
blanks in your life story. Eleanor Jean Campbell was your high
school sweetheart?
Carman: Yes. We were in the same class, and Miss Clark was our librarian
and also the homeroom teacher, which they had at that time. We'd
go there a certain period during the day, and you could study and
use the library and things like that. She sat Jean in front of
me--it was alphabetical. That's where we really became
acquainted. It was our sophomore or junior year, I guess. Then
we just started going together, I guess. It never dissolved after
that [laughter]. I ended up as the senior class president, and I
think we were in the junior class play together too. That's a
long time ago.
Her family lived up on the hill in Los Gatos, and her senior
year her mother sold that place and moved into Willow Glen,
because her older brother and she would be going to San Jose
State. So in her senior year of high school she lived in Willow
Glen. I would deliver plants to a couple of nurseries in San Jose
before I would go to school in the mornings sometimes. She would
wait- -I guess her mother would take her over there and she would
wait at the corner for the bus with her girlfriend, and would wave
as I went by [laughs].
Then I got a car my senior year--I don't know how I got
that, and I don't know how much we paid for it. It was called a
Rockney, a little four-door sedan, like a little Chevrolet. It
was a nice little car. We would go places in that. We went to
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the high school dances, and I was on the track team, ran high
hurdles, and on the basketball team.
We graduated in June '41, and I started at San Jose State in
September '41 in an industrial arts major- -that's what I was going
to be eventually. She started in the teacher training courses.
After one semester or quarter she was fed up, she couldn't stand
the high pace or something, so she quit and went to Healds College
and took an accounting course.
She graduated from there--! think it was a two-year course--
and went to work for a title company in San Jose on North First
Street, and worked there until--oh, let's see, '44 we got married
and she was still working there, and I came home in '46. She quit
in '46 after she was pregnant with our oldest daughter. We were
living with my folks down at the old place.
I went one year to San Jose State, so that would bring us
into June of '42. And I told you earlier about the war years.
Staying on in Los Gatos
Riess: After you married you have always stayed in Los Gatos?
Carman: Yes. I couldn't think of going anyplace else, because I didn't
know anything. I had no craft or anything. The nursery, I guess
I liked it--my mother always asked if I didn't think I would like
to go into teaching.
Riess: Why teaching?
Carman: Something away from the nursery business, I guess.
Riess: Many people moved to the Bay Area right after the war because they
had been here during the war and discovered how wonderful it was.
Carman: Oh yeah, I know, the nurseries started popping up like toadstools
all around Santa Clara Valley. Forty or fifty of them, I guess,
at that time. Then they started developing just down the road
from us, Cambrian Park, started subdividing and building houses.
What my dad and I built up was a small, general nursery.
But the worst of it was, I wouldn't delegate or hire people to
work. I wanted to do it myself, I
think we never did grow in size.
guess. That's the reason I
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Riess: Did you recognize that at some point?
Carman: No, I just recognize it now [laughter]. It's a little bit late to
start over again.
Riess: Are you serious?
Carman: Yes, after talking to all these other people who started out with
nothing and built these rather large nurseries. [referring to his
project of updating histories of peninsula nurseries for C.A.N.]
Part of it might have been growing up in the Depression,
because we built this house on the property down there, and we had
to save up enough money so we could buy the stuff to build a
house. There was never any idea of borrowing money to do
something. That may be part of it. But you can't look back,
they're gaining on you [chuckle].
Riess: There was the GI Bill.
Carman: I never gave it a thought, because there wasn't that much cash
flow in the nursery at that time. We were paying off the property
there, we were still making payments on it. And there was nobody
else to work in the nursery.
Riess: Your dad didn't hire anyone either.
Carman: We had part-time help. We had a lot of people part-time, a lot of
high school kids, a lot of young fellows. It was all part-time.
They were just doing the chores. Two or three people came in to
help with sales sometime during the years.
I was never an aggressive salesperson or a businessperson,
but I've had a lot of fun.
Riess: Jean was your businesswoman.
Carman: She was an accountant, actually. She kept the books and did it
very well. And she's still doing it.
Riess: When I talk about staying in one place, California is full of
people who came here and said goodbye for good to wherever it was
they came from.
Carman: Yes. There's that three or four or five or six foot of white
stuff every year back there in most places. And a lot of people
didn't like that after they had been out here and seen the
climate.
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The Other Fellows in the Business
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
One nurseryman over here, he and his wife and two daughters were
living in Cleveland. He was working in a foundry. They came into
southern California, and she said that when he saw the trees there
he said, "I found where I want to stay." They moved up here and
bought an acre and a half. He never went back to Cleveland,
except one time, in the forty years that he lived here. They came
here for vacation and never left.
This guy had had no experience in the nursery business?
Not a bit. He was a foundryman. He worked at Hendy's for a
while.
How did he think he could possibly run a nursery if he didn't know
anything about plants?
A lot of the other people did too. A lot of the Japanese were the
same way: they learned as they went along. One of them was a
truck farmer, more or less, in Mountain View. Now they've got a
big bedding plant nursery.
One fellow on the east side came up here to help his friend
with a roadside fruit stand. He was going to go to UC Berkeley
for a degree, but he worked so much in the fruit stand that he
couldn't do it. Then they widened the street, and they couldn't
have an open fruit stand anymore because they were in the city of
San Jose, and there was a nursery going out of business a little
ways away, so they started to open a nursery there. He learned as
they went along. He's got a very successful nursery; he's trying
to sell it now because he wants to retire,
that.
A lot of them did
There's only one, over in Santa Clara, that I know got a
horticultural degree in southern California; the other one was a
builder and his brother, and they were growing field-grown pansies
and digging them and putting them in baskets and selling those,
and delphinium and things like that. Then they got more of those
and decided to open a nursery.
These people must have a natural limitation on what they knew
about horticulture. Don't they have to learn about propagation,
chemistry, stuff?
No, most of them don't, actually. As soon as they open the
nursery, then they go buy the plants and just resell them. Buying
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and selling is all they're doing. They got started in a nursery
in a small way by growing a few things, maybe.
This one man started with growing Transvaal daisies. It was
the Daisy Garden Nursery at that time. They added a few things at
a time, and pretty soon they had all kinds of things. Then they
added fruit trees — they wouldn't grow them, they would just buy
them in. The salespeople told the customers about them, or they'd
have catalogs which would describe them--"This plant's going to
get to be about three-by-three, it's going to have purple flowers,
put it here."
business .
That's all they have to know. So then they're in
Riess: And often that's all the landscape architects who bought the
plants knew.
Carman: A lot of the architects are reading about plants in books — this
looks good, let's put it in. But when people would come looking
for it, it's not available, and that's because the architect
specified something that looks good in the book but it's not being
grown.
The Vanishing Experts
Riess: I would expect if I went to Berkeley Hort Nursery with a mottled
leaf they would be able to tell me what to do. I expect a lot of
expertise.
Carman: Is there a lot at Berkeley Hort?
Riess: It's pretty good. Or they say, "Our rosarian is in on Thursday."
[laughs] Or they say, "Go see Bob Raabe," like he's the only
plant pathologist.
Carman: He is. And when he quits, we're going to be really lost, because
nobody is taking his place. Nobody. He's got fifty years of
experience. You can show him a symptom and he can tell you what
did it— he doesn't have to see the plant. He's a marvel. He's
only working part time now. He's retired. Like I said, he's the
last one that really knows anything. I think that position he had
is gone now. Maybe up at Davis there are some people.
A lot of these people, they get to selling plants, and
they're selling all the fairly run-of-the-mill things, so they
don't come in contact with anything unusual or different, so they
don't know it. It's especially true now of the young salespeople.
116
Very few of them could identify anything that's really out of the
ordinary, even though they do have these courses on plant ID, but
plant ID is only on the most-used things, I believe.
Riess: And the most-used things would all turn up in the Sunset Western
Garden book.
Carman: The Sunset garden book has a lot of things that aren't that most-
used, either. Everything would be in the Sunset garden book
that's most used.
Riess: What about everything that's out in your nursery? It's not going
to be in the Sunset garden book, is it?
Carman: Some of it isn't; a lot of it is.
Our mix really started after we moved here in '70, actually.
Because when we were down at the other place we had general
things. Although I was getting interested then in different
things like rock garden plants, and perennials, because the Page
Mill Nursery had phased out about that time. They were the big
source of perennials on the peninsula in the late forties and
early fifties. Two women up there, Margaret Truax and Peggy
Stebbins, ran it. They were friends of Elsa Uppman Knoll from
Sunset. In fact, they went to the gardening school that she ran
at Stanford.
I called Elsa the other day and talked to her.
Riess: What did you talk about?
Carman: I was asking her about the girls at Page Mill, but she's a little
bit fuzzy on her recollections, I guess, because I talked to Dick
Dunmire and he was much more up to date. One of them passed away,
but they closed the nursery before her death.
Community Volunteer Since 1946
Riess: When you got back from the war in 1946 you were a volunteer
fireman, scout master, men's club.
Carman: It seemed like it was the thing to do. Being a fireman was kind of
exciting: you would run out and jump on the tanker. Old Slim
Bartlet would drive out to Lone Hill, a little isolated hill about
100 feet high toward Almaden, and we'd put out the grass fire.
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Riess: Were the phones in the houses? How did you get the alarm?
Carman: When they first had the fire station it was down at a dehydrator
just beyond where the old nursery was, and you could hear the
sirens when they would start out. So if they were coming by, if
you could get out there quick you could hop on.
it
Carman: Later on they had the little radios that you could get. I never
did get one of those, because it was it was in the fifties or
sixties when I had too much to do to go chasing fire engines.
Riess: Are fires a very big danger for nurseries?
Carman: No. See, there were no fire departments around when that was
started, no way to get help, except the California Department of
Forestry, and that was up at Alma, up in the hills. So the
volunteer fire department was started by a friend down in Cambrian
Park where we lived, that's where they started it. Then they
built a fire station right across from the nursery [at Union and
Bascom] , which is still standing there, but it's used for
something else now.
The Cambrian Men's Club, they were sponsors for the scout
troop, and so I guess when I was asked to be the scout master I
joined the men's club. Maybe I joined before--! 'm not sure. They
were working for the school, different activities at the school.
The school was the center at that time, in the forties-
there was only one school in the district, and that was the center
of all activities. They had the Cambrian fiesta where they had
all these booths that the men's club would put up. The different
organizations would run games and things or sell something to eat
and make money that way for the school or the organization.
Riess: After the war were there a lot of fatherless boys?
Carman: No. They only were fatherless because their fathers were doing
something else. They had fathers, but they weren't there.
Riess: But not killed in the war.
Carman: No. These would have been born during the war probably, because
they were ten or twelve years old. But they were not orphaned,
no. There was only one mother, Mrs. Sopher--! think his father
wasn't around, and I don't know where he was, whether he had been
killed or they were divorced.
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Riess:
Carman:
Two of the boys, the Morris twins, they were real
intelligent, and they went on to become the highest they can get
in the National Park Service. One's in Hurricane Ridge in
Anacortes, and the other one is in Arizona at the Grand Canyon, I
think. Dave and Doug Morris. The Morris' mother lives not too
far away; I talk to her once in a while.
The Williams family, they had five boys, so they kept the
troop going for quite a while. He was a father that was there.
He worked up at [Kaiser] Permanente as a mechanic, and he was a
real hard-working guy. He was always there. Whenever we'd go on
a trip he was there. His kids all came out really good.
You were pretty free to do things with your work schedule?
Yes. When you don't have to be at a certain place at a certain
time--I could always leave early or do something else, because Dad
could take care of the nursery.
School Board
Riess: The school board, was that when your daughters were in school?
Carman: They must have been in school. At least one or two of them. I
was asked to fill a vacancy [in 1958]. I was on that for thirteen
years.
This was when they first had short skirts. They were
supposed to be at the kneecap. This one gal came to school with
it above, I guess, so the principal sent her home [laughter]. It
came up before the board, and there was a lot of press there--!
have a clipping of it someplace. The woman asked if I wanted her
to parade up in front of the board, and I said no. How it
resolved, I guess we upheld the principal.
The main thing about that period was the expansion. They
were expanding: building schools and building schools. We built
four or five schools at that time when I was on the board. Since
then they've torn one completely out and put in low- income
housing, and one is being rented out as a preschool. The old
Cambrian school area has been completely torn out, and that's
high- income housing. The other one, Houge, is still operating as
a school,
operating,
That's where the board meets.
I think.
There's one other school
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Riess: Is Los Gatos--or was it up to a certain point—quite a homogeneous
community?
Carman: Yes, up until about the early fifties it was pretty much a sleepy
little town. After that it started growing and getting upscale.
Now it's really upscale. If you have a Los Gates address, you've
really made it. It's crazy.
Riess: It's never had a large population of Hispanics or blacks?
Carman: It doesn't now.
Riess: Did it at some point?
Carman: Well, maybe in the 1800s it had quite a few Spanish, I would
guess. Practically no blacks. There would have been a lot of
Italians, probably, rather than Spanish. But they would have been
immigrants and they were staying. Los Gates—for one thing,
there's not much housing. The housing that's there is very
expensive, so that precludes a lot of people coming in at all.
Some way with Saratoga.
After the late seventies enrollment started to slack off,
and then these other things happened, so the school has compressed
a little bit now— the amount of students is less, although it's
growing a little bit now. The only reason I left [the school
board] was because I moved here, and then there was a faction in
there that wanted to get some new blood on the board, so they
mounted a big election campaign. I wasn't about to go out and
electioneer.
Charlie Sartorette and I were both off the board at that
time. He was an old-timer. He used to work for the electric
company in San Jose. He had a house on Bascom, and he was part of
the men's club too. We used to go up there for their big meatball
feed every summer on the back patio. The house was quite unique.
Joanne Herz and her husband bought the house and moved it onto
White Oaks and refurbished it. She's got every room refurbished
in the style of the thirties. She belonged to the County Historic
Commission or something. It's really quite a showplace.
Moving Houses Around
Riess: Moving houses around sounds like a popular solution down here.
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Carman: It was a big business in those days, because there were places you
could put them. Now there's no place you could put a house. You
can't take an old house and move it someplace and bring it up to
code and everything and still have an old house, because it just
isn't allowed anymore. Sometimes you can move them to south
county.
They've moved quite a few historic houses around. The
Ainsley place in Campbell was moved. That was the home of one of
the old fruit growers and processors—the house used to be down on
the corner of Hamilton and Bascom. It was moved west on Bascom,
over the f reeway--there are pictures of it sitting on top of the
overpass on the freeway—down through the side streets, and it's
in Campbell now by the library, and it's been refurbished back to
the thirties. They've got all the original stoves and everything
in there, I think. They built a little annex building there,
where they have a museum set up with a lot of artifacts from the
time. They've redone the garden fairly well; it's not like it
used to be, but they've done fairly well. That was a big project.
Riess: How was moving this house? Was it a big project?
Carman: This one? Not too bad. They cut it across right here. It was
cut in half. They moved this half down first, I guess, and two or
three weeks later they brought that half down. They went down
through the orchards and came back up here. There are still
leaves in the attic up there where they brushed against the trees.
Riess: What did you have to do about foundations?
Carman: They put just a regular foundation on it, concrete, like it was
before. They raised it up, then they put the foundation in, then
they lowered it down. They bolted it down. It went through the
quake fine.
Riess: The houses here don't have cellars.
Carman: No, they're too expensive. You've got to excavate, and you've got
to put all the reinforcing around. So there are very few cellars.
Across the street, the old house there had a cellar. The heater
was in the cellar. The old place we had down there built in the
1880s had just a dirt cellar. In fact, we brought the—that
little structure at the side of the garage was the door into the
cellar of the old house. You walked down about four steps, ducked
your head under the rafters. It was a dirt cellar.
Riess:
Carman:
Riess :
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
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More on Writing the Peninsula C.A.N. History
I realize that often you answer me out of your knowledge of the
history of the profession because of your interviews with other
nurserymen around here. Tell me more about the book you will be
getting out.
The first chapter will be pre-war—as far back as I can remember
in the thirties, up to the war. Then the middle chapter will be
Charlie Burr's "First Time Around," plus some of the recollections
on the "Second Time Around."1 The last chapter will be the demise
of the nursery industry, so to say. I will talk about the people
who weren't mentioned in there, tell when they started, a little
bit about them, and if they closed, when they closed, or who's
doing it now. That's the way 1 am thinking of setting it up.
With C.A.N. as the publisher?
wider interest.
It sounds like it might have a
It might. I was thinking we would get it all together, see how
much it's going to be and put a copyright out for the nurserymen.
Maybe that's not practical. They could sell it at one price to
the nursery people and one price to the public or something like
that. I don't know if that's ever going to work out.
Are you going to include pictures?
No. There's nothing to take pictures of, actually. Some of the
interesting nurseries are all knocked down, and that would raise
the cost pretty high, even black and whites.
Is it also a kind of rallying cry to save any of these places or
to save anything? Do you have a mission like that?
No. My mission is, like somebody said, "If you don't know where
you've been, you don't know where you going." Some saying like
that. If you don't know past history, present history doesn't
mean much. This is just to give the younger generation some
insight of what went on before. That's all. And a little bit of
history of some of the people who weren't mentioned in that book,
because there are very few nurseries mentioned in that part of
Charlie's--f ive or six or seven.
Riess: Are you writing a couple of pages about each?
'Both of these publications are included in the Appendices.
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Carman: Oh, no. Some are only going to be a quarter page.
Riess: And in each case you've gone to the original source if you can
find somebody there.
Carman: Yes.
Riess: You've been driving around doing this?
Carman: Some of it. I've just sent out a bunch more questionnaires. I
call people and tell them I'm going to send them a questionnaire.
I got one back the other day from a young fellow whose
father started at the California Nursery—actually Hans was born
on the property of the California Nursery, I guess. Then his
father went to work for the 1939 Exposition on Treasure Island,
and when the war came on, he went to work at Hendy's or someplace
like that, all the while he was starting a nursery up in Redwood
City. It goes on to where the nursery closed in the fifties.
Riess: The son wrote and told you all this?
Carman: Yes. He's got a lot of history. He sent me a clipping of his
dad. He was in the paper for his fiftieth anniversary or
something. He said it brought back a lot of memories. I've got
several others which haven't replied yet. I've got to call them
up and get them going. I've got a lot of typing to do yet.
When I get
what you think.
it typed up I might have you look at it and see
The Future of Small Nurseries
Riess:
Carman:
What is the future of the small nurseries?
up?
Are there any starting
The small nurseries are going to keep doing what they're doing,
and the big nurseries aren't going to change. There are a lot of
small nurseries. There's a gal over at Cal State Hayward. She
teaches horticulture there, and she's got a little nursery over in
Martinez. She's in contact with another nursery down someplace
else. They're going to keep doing what they're doing, actually,
regardless of what happens. But the big nurseries like
Woolworth's and places like that, they're not going to change.
They can't change.
123
Most of them are offering unusual plants, stuff you can't
get at Woolworth's and places like that. So that's why they
exist, because of their personal interest in it. If she finds out
that she can't make a go of it, she's going to do something else.
There's another young lady from Cal Hort who does consultation
work. She grows plants, and I don't know how she does all she
does.
Riess: Maybe the smaller ones need to wear two hats, nursery plus the
design. And plant pathology, too!
Carman: Some of them are doing design, probably. Pathology, I don't think
they worry about that. There's so much information out there
about how to grow plants: they can read it in a book, they can
read the label on the bottle if something's dying.
Riess: "They" being the buyer?
Carman: No, no, the people growing it. The homeowner, after they've
bought the plants, it's up to them to keep them alive. And I know
that they're growing some that aren't going to survive very well.
Some people, they get on a thing about bringing these
Australian or South African things in—they're great plants where
they come from, but whether they're going to adapt here is another
question. Everybody has to go through this. 1 did [laughs]. A
lot of the stuff I brought in never made it out of the nursery
door.
Continuous Arrival of New Plants
Riess: On the garden tour I took this weekend I ran into a person who was
originally from Ireland, and he had a lovely weigela that he had
brought from Ireland. It was a special, pretty thing.
Carman: What's his name? He might be in the Rock Garden Society.
Riess: Richard Sullivan.
Carman: Tall, thin guy?
Riess: Yes.
Carman: Yes, I know him. A good plantsman. He's given me a couple of
things which I no longer have.
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Riess: He told me that when he brought it back he took it up to Western
Hills and they propagated it for him. Then it became available.
Would that be a kind of common scenario?
Carman: Yes, in a lot of cases. They're not supposed to bring plants in
without a permit, but a lot of people do, and if it's not on a
prohibited list, I see nothing wrong in propagating it.
Riess: I didn't think there was anything wrong, it's just that I didn't
realize that Western Hills would propagate anybody else's stuff.
Carman: Oh, well Maggie Wych goes over to England and brings back stuff
every year. If there's something they didn't collect, she's
collecting it now and bringing it up and propagating it. She's
bringing in things every year now.
Riess: Nurseryman magazine sometimes will have articles about new
perennials. Would they know about the same new perennials that,
for instance, would be available through Western Hills?
Carman: They could be the same things. Western Hills probably could have
had them years ago, and they're just getting them now. There's a
lot of stuff in those magazines that isn't really new—there are a
lot of really new things popping up in the trade in just the last
few years.
Riess: In those magazines a nursery in Arkansas, perhaps, will suddenly
have three or four things that you can only get from that nursery.
Carman: Yes, sometimes they would be the only ones that have it for the
time being. As soon as a few nurseries get it, unless it's
patented it's going to be spread around pretty quickly. Patenteds
are not supposed to be propagated without paying a license fee.
"Choose Horticulture?" ft
Riess: On your resume it says that you distributed a video called "Choose
Horticulture" in 1992. I don't know what the video was, but I
wonder if you've continued, in the spirit of horticultural
education, to lobby for people going into the trade.
Carman: That video was put out by the C.A.N., and our chapter bought
enough to send one to each of the high schools that had a
horticulture program in the Santa Clara Valley.
125
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
That had a program in horticulture? That's not a common high
school program though, is it?
Quite a few had it, yes. A lot of them we sent also to the
counselors to try to get the students interested in horticulture,
so they'd have something to view and give them an idea of some of
the opportunities in horticulture. It gave a little resume of
nursery work and landscape work and things like that in this
video. The chapter authorized getting these, and I organized
sending them all out to the different teachers.
The chapter as a whole was trying to do that, but it's
difficult now because there aren't many- -although right now
enrollment is picking up a little bit in the horticulture classes.
Foothill College in Los Altos is the best one around here. In the
seventies they were really filled up with students. Horticulture
classes were overflowing, and everybody was into it. It's kind of
slacked down, but now they say it's picking up again a little bit.
Things go in cycles.
Like there are a lot of people who come in here that had
been working in electronics. They've gotten fed up with
electronics and they want to do something else. They just quit
their jobs and go take some classes in horticulture or go to work
at a nursery or stuff like that.
Horticulture would follow a good economy, wouldn't it?
of those optional things.
It's one
It does make a difference, yes. If the economy's good,
horticulture sales are good. Although I think it was still strong
in the Depression days because people were growing things to eat.
It wasn't ornamental horticulture, but it was survival.
Have there been people you would think of as your students who
have passed through this nursery or who have worked for you?
There's one lady who went to Foothill, I think. She was coming in
here weeding in exchange for plants. Then she started growing
different plants. She was a pretty good grower. She started
growing things and doing ceramics, going to the local Farmers'
Market and selling all her creations. She always wanted to get
into a nursery- -now she's working at Yamagami's Nursery over
there.
There's one high school boy that worked for a while, and he
was working at Woolworth's for a while, but I've lost track of
him, so I really don't know. Other than that, I can't think of
any that have stayed in it after they left. Most of them are high
126
school kids that worked here,
paycheck, most of them.
They're just looking for a
Well, and there are some people who started in the nursery
business who got a lot of small plants from us when they were
starting out. They would come in to buy stock plants. Several
nurseries have gotten started with some unusual things that way.
One fellow in Santa Barbara, he sold out and the person he sold to
came and got a few things for a while. But once they get a start
they don't have to come back if they're good growers.
Riess: Do young nursery people come and make an appointment with you and
walk around and learn from you?
Carman: No, not really. There are mostly some customers who come in who
are knowledgeable. They come in and buy things and talk a bit. I
was thinking of doing some propagation classes, but like other
things, I never got it off the ground.
Riess: Propagation classes for the local school?
Carman: No, for individuals. People in the Western Hort Society. A
couple of them asked one time. We have had classes in making
concrete troughs. But that's about all that we had classes in.
Riess: Maybe you should do that. I just have the feeling that people
aren't going to know enough [tape break].
Victor Reiter's Rule of Three
Carman: [talking about the nursery] I probably now have more labels of
dead plants that I have had than I have live plants [laughs].
Riess: What are we going to do about that?
Carman: Like I told you before, like Victor said, unless you keep three
plants, you're going to lose it. I've done it. I've lost several
that way. I had the double lobelia which we got from New Zealand
after many years. It's a good thing I sent some back to Logee's
Greenhouses in Connecticut, because they sent me back this year
plants which I've got to take some cuttings of now. That's it.
Unless you share things and get them spread out, they're
going to be lost. I've lost a lot of stuff that way. Some of it
I can't get back, because nobody else has it. I got some seed
127
from a friend who's in New Zealand, but I don't know if it's going
to grow or not. It's a nice little rock garden plant.
Another Phyteuma [P. comosa] , that one I grew several years
and finally didn't propagate it, and didn't have the three plants
like Victor told me, it's gone now. But those things are beyond
most people's interest. That's the thing. There's not enough
interest in it, there's not enough people growing rock garden
plants.
Fanatics and Novices
Carman: I don't know if you looked at one of those Scottish rock garden
books there. Those people are fanatics there. They've got these
glass houses with frames, with stuff in pots, and they devote all
their spare time to that. We don't have that here, actually. Our
growing conditions are different, for one thing. Some of those
things just wouldn't make it here; no matter what you did you
couldn't keep them alive for very long. And you don't have the
burning interest to do it.
The West, I think, is still pretty much of a beginner as far
as gardeners go. There are a few really good gardeners who are
interested in it and devote all their time to it. I'm not one of
them, because I don't really have a garden. I think the eastern
U.S. has more of a history of gardens and big estates than the
West does.
The only notable gardens now are the wineries. People have
got a lot of money to put in these instant gardens—within two or
three years they've got a great big place with allees and arbors
and forty-five wisteria in a row and stuff like that. There's no
really old gardens—the only place that's really old that's open
is Filoli. There are a lot of other old estates on the peninsula
but none of them are open. The people that have got them have got
the iron gates up with electric fences.
There's the one garden in Santa Barbara, what do you call
it? Lotusland. It's a famous one, and it's open, but it's having
a hard time keeping going. I don't know how many gardens are open
in southern California, either.
I just got a list of the Garden Conservancy open gardens for
some time in May. That'll be interesting probably to see some of
those because some of the gardens around Carmel are pretty nice.
They have enough money to do what they want and do it first-class.
128
Riess: But that is different from struggling against the elements to keep
Alpine plants alive. Does it make sense to be struggling against
the elements?
Carman: Well, sometimes it doesn't make sense, really. I think that's a
gardener's goal: to grow something that can't be grown. They want
to do it, and they're going to do it if they possibly can. I told
you we stopped in Fiji to see this friend of our New Zealand
friend, and there they were trying to grow roses in the tropics,
and they don't do that good. The citrus was looking fairly good,
but even citrus don't do that good in the tropics, I don't think.
They're always trying to grow that thing that won't grow there.
There are people that want to grow mangos and papayas and
stuff like that around here, and they just can't do it unless you
put up a hothouse and keep it above fifty-five degrees.
Riess: Back to the magic three plants. The lobelia. What happened?
Carman: I had a lot of plants last year, but I wasn't paying attention to
get some cuttings off them when I should have. All of a sudden I
found out there was only four or five left, and they were in such
condition that they weren't really good for cutting. And I tried
to get some inside to get them to grow to make cuttings, and they
just didn't respond. So there it was gone.
Riess: Why were they in such a condition?
Carman: They didn't get cut back. When they get into pots they get
overgrown, and unless you repot them and get some new roots on the
stems they just kind of wither away. They might have gotten dry
or they might have gotten too wet, because they just withered
away.
129
X WALKING THROUGH CARMAN'S NURSERY WITH ED CARMAN
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Do you have your nursery divided up-- [laughs] sort of like a
hospital, with various emergency rooms where you practice traige?
It's all triage [laughter].
Let's take a tour of the nursery. Can we do that?
Sure.
Do you want to start out by talking about how you have it set up?
There's no rhyme or reason.
We are in a glasshouse.
Yes, well, we have a propagating house, a glasshouse, where we do
most of all the propagating. The next, plastic house is supposed
to be a transition from the glasshouse to the outside. Then from
the plastic house they go out underneath the lath or into
containers out in the field. So it's a progression of moving on.
As they get bigger and hardier they move from one environment to
the next environment, and then outside. It's supposed to work
that way. Sometimes they get stuck in one place and never move
until they silently pass away. [laughter]
Are you in one area at one time of year and in another at another?
I mean, does it follow the seasons?
No, because we propagate almost all year round on something or
other.
Right now we should be doing some grafting on wisterias. I
have done some, and I should be doing some more of those right
away. Then pretty soon the new growth will be in the stage where
we can do cuttings of it. That will be later on this summer.
130
In the meantime, we're growing things from seed. We're
growing other things from cuttings , and so we propagate what we
think should be done when it's right to do. That could be any
month of the year if the plant's in the right condition. Most of
our plants are softwood cuttings, so they should be taken as the
plant is growing and just kind of stops growing before it flowers.
That could be any time of year for most things.
Some of the conifers and things like that are only taken in
the fall- -September, October, November. They're rooting now.
Some of those probably could be transplanted now, they've probably
got roots on them, but they haven't gotten done yet. If we wait
too long, then they're going to silently pass away before they
even get done. A lot of things, they get into one stage and then
they get stuck there, I don't get them done, there's so much other
stuff to do, they just sit there for six months too long.
Riess: Do you label the pots by date? I know that you can't have gotten
this far without having some--I don't want to hear that there's no
plan! [laughter]
Carman: By golly. No, I'm sorry to say there is no propagation schedule
written down. There should be.
Riess: Is there an inventory anywhere?
Carman: Three or four years ago one of our customers who became a good
friend insisted we make a list. She came every week and got a
list of plants that in the meantime she wrote down. Finally she
got it onto a computer and made a list for us. That was the first
list we've had since we moved here in 1970. And that list that we
had in '70 was just a list of material that we were growing for
wholesale. We have a master copy and one other copy of that list.
But it's like I said earlier, as soon as this was printed it
was out of date, because some of the stuff wasn't available, or
some of it we just didn't have at that time because it had been
two or three months since the list had been made up. Lists are
difficult to keep current, especially with the material that we've
got.
Riess: How would you know where the thing was in the nursery?
Carman: Ah, that's the question.
There are some things that are more or less put together. A
lot of the two-inch conifers are on one side of the nursery, and
rock garden plants are more or less in one place, the bonsai
materials are more or less in one place. The stuff that's not for
131
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
sale is in one place—the stock plants. So it's more or less
organized, but not in a real formal organization.
When you go out there are you ever seized with an attack of
forgetfulness about the name of something or other?
More often than I'd like to admit. Those "senior moments" come
all too often. What I do is stop thinking about it and do
something else. Then at two o'clock in the morning or five
o'clock that night maybe I think about it.
But the other thing you could do is go to your inventory.
Sometimes I can do it that way, yes.
it, I can't look it up [laughs].
But if I forget the name of
Riess:
A nice part of the nursery story, of course, is Nancy's role.
All the girls grew up in the nursery. They all had jobs when they
wanted money. There was a job out there, "Go do something
outside," and they got paid for it.
Nancy's the youngest one. I think she has the time and
inclination to do a garden. She has a big vegetable garden at
home. Diane, the second daughter, is the one that really could
grow house plants. Her room when she was living here--I don't
know, she had a hundred plants in there or something. She had an
egg case of praying mantises hatch in her room. She had to take
everything outside so the young ones could get off of the plants.
It took her a week or something like that to get them out of
there!
Now she's working full-time as a director at a nursery
school, from seven to six or something. So she has a couple of
house plants left, but that's about it.
The oldest daughter is really handicapped with climate.
They live up in Plumas County, and they have frost in June and
frost in August, so their growing season is between those two
frosts. They do grow pretty good root crops, and she's done that
in the past, but now she's working pretty much full-time during
the school year. They've done a lot of work getting their land
leveled off, so they might get back to it this year. Her vinca
are doing well, she has her pansies blooming—last night we talked
to her.
Maybe you should give each daughter a starter set of twenty-four
rare plants. Like a gene pool or something like that.
132
Carman: They wouldn't have time to take care of them now, actually, the
two older ones. Nancy's the one that I hope will take care of
some of the things. There are a couple of things which I would
like to see her carry on, because they would be easy to take care
of, and something that she could sell, besides keeping going.
Riess: That's nifty. But they remain unnamed?
Carman: Yes, for now, I guess [chuckles].
The girls were a great help over the years as they were
growing up. I'm sorry to say they probably missed some outings on
week ends because the nursery was open. And Jean has kept the
books all these years as well as doing the countless reports. My
family really deserves the credit for our nursery keeping going
over the years.
[tape interruption]
Riess: The praying mantis reminds me--I want to ask you about your
approach to pesticides and organic gardening. Where have you
stood on all of this?
Carman: We use snail bait like mad. We buy it in fifty-pound bags.
Expensive stuff, too, but it's really good. It's Deadline
granules, a common snail bait. It comes in a squeeze tube
sometimes, so you can make a line around the plants, and also they
have it in pellets. But the granule form is much better, because
you can't see it when you put it out, but pets can't easily pick
it up. We use that and we use earwig bait. I've got to put some
more of that out.
Riess: Do you just draw a line around the entire nursery?
Carman: No. The granules we scatter. Just broadcast it everyplace. For
snails and slugs. Otherwise, we have a little bit of Malathion
which we use occasionally for aphids. We had some scale last year
on our nursery inspection, and it was on an Abutilon, which is
their favorite resting place. We cut that off and discarded it,
we got rid of the scale that way. Otherwise, I really don't
spray, except for weeds—we use Roundup and several other weed
killers, pre-emergents in gallon-can size containers, to keep some
of the weeds down. We didn't get as much done as we should have,
so we've got a good weed crop again.
Riess: Can you apply any of these pest controls or weed killers right
through your watering system?
133
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Carman;
Riess:
Carman:
The only thing we use through the watering system is a 30-10-10
fertilizer, which we dissolve and put on with the Hozon [trade
name for the proportioner] . It's an attachment that goes on the
hose, you put it onto the sprinkler. That we do too little,
actually- -we should do it a little more often.
Once you've fought back the snails and slugs one year, and maybe a
second year, where do they come from the third year?
You don't get them all. I'm sorry to say you don't get them all.
You can't create a snail- free environment.
We almost could, probably, if we'd really clean up under all the
benches and everything. If we got everything cleaned up we
probably could do it. We just don't have the manpower to do it.
Sometimes they live in the foliage,
my orange tree.
I think they're breeding in
Yes, they go up and stay up in trees for a long time sometimes.
But they have to go down to lay eggs. They have to go underground
to lay eggs. I know customers or friends who have small gardens,
they go out every night at ten or eleven o'clock with a flashlight
and pick everything. Within two weeks they've got practically
everything gone. In a small garden, that's a quick way to do it.
it
[walking through the nursery] This is a pot of lapageria seeds
coming up. There are maybe a hundred in there. As soon as you
start transplanting seeds, then you run into trouble because your
space multiplies a hundredfold, maybe. Those are willow cuttings,
ten or twelve there. As soon as you move them up, you've got ten
pots instead of one. So that's the thing with seeds: the
multiplication is very rapid there.
The big nurseries now all have seeding machines. They're
all run by machine. They have vacuums, and they run them right
over the plug trays and the thing goes down and puts one seed in
each plug, and the tray lifts up. It does it automatically. For
bedding plants that's the whole answer, yes.
Now this is a lot of wisteria for one small pot.
two-foot wisteria in a two-inch pot.
This is about a
That's one wisteria. We grow the wisteria seeds and put them in
either this size or larger pots. These are then used to graft as
understock, to graft a known variety onto this, to make a named
134
variety. There are a lot I can show you.
tugging on some of the little plants]
[walking through,
Otherwise there are some hardwood wisteria cuttings --some
are making roots, some are not. [pulls on plant] This has a
little root there, this has a root. These will go into gallon
cans and go out under the shade arch as soon as we get time to do
it. A lot of these are not rooted, of course.
Riess: They are in foam blocks.
Carman: Yes, with tubes, with holes in them, one cutting per hole. They
make very good root systems though.
That's a weeping cypress that's rooted now, probably. I've
got to get that transplanted now too.
Those are seeds from strawberries, 'Alexandria' strawberry,
f raises de bois, the woodland strawberry. Real soft fragrant
berry. They use them in some of the very fancy restaurants.
Riess: Who are you growing them for?
Carman: A couple of the nurseries on the peninsula buy them, and
homeowners .
Most of the things are cutting-grown in here, sage,
tarragon, decorative oreganos. This oregano is the one that has
the four-inch bracts, kind of showy.
These are caper plants here. There's a big one over there
with the flower on it. They bloom in the evening. They're just
about past now—see, there's one. After they flower there's the
seed, and there's the caper that you pick. But that's too old.
You have to pick them before they break into flower so you're
picking the buds.
Riess: Has Jean ever processed them?
Carman: No. A friend in Los Altos does it, gets about a pint a year from
two or three plants.
There's my lobelia, and that's ready to take cuttings of
now. Here's a daphne that we got in England several years ago, a
nice little plant, but no fragrance to it.
Riess: You're growing a tremendous variety of things here, including
geraniums, tomatoes, cosmos. Not exactly what I expected to find
here.
135
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Riess:
Carman:
Yes, that cosmos, that should have been out. That was grown for
an order, but they didn't do very good.
Why cosmos?
This person wanted to put them out in her garden. She wanted
white ones, and she couldn't buy white herself.
The tomatoes and peppers and squash, and the melons, those
are for personal use.
What's this?
Well, these are all cuttings. I just put them in rows in the
flats. We grow only a few of some things, so you can't devote one
flat to each thing. There's about six or eight different things
there in a row, different Chamaecyparis, and they've already got
roots because they're starting to grow, so they've got to get out
of there. That's a Picea 'Little Gem.' It makes a tight, bun
type of plant. That's a golden yew there, weeping yew.
Variegated boxwood. These are more Alberta spruce there.
What do you put them in to root them?
What we use mostly is Dip and Grow. It's a liquid, and you dilute
it down 1 to 4, or 1 to 5, or 1 to 10, depending on what you're
growing. Some things don't use it at all. For most of the herbs
we don't use it at all.
What's the part that takes the most expertise about propagating?
Timing, probably, is the most important thing, to decide when
you're going to take the cutting, when the plant looks right to
take a cutting. I'll show you here. This lemon thyme, one of the
variegated thymes, these are just about right to take the cutting
now. It's fairly new growth, but it's not flowering. They'll
root very quickly. Here's another oregano, and that's just right
now, just right to take. Same way with these sage here. When
they're a little bit longer we can take a tip cutting on that.
And the sage look ready to sell, too.
from a plant you're about to sell?
You might take a cutting
Yes, we could take tip cuttings off these. Sometimes it's easier
than growing a bunch of stock plants, although we try to keep some
of these in a gallon can someplace because sometimes you run out.
136
Here's that introduction from South Africa, the Dymondia
margaretae, that's made the greatest impact on California of any
of our introductions because it's fairly widely used now.
[moving through the nursery] This is called the plastic
house—it's made out of plastic. This is where they come after
they come out of the glasshouse. They come here to harden off, or
to continue to grow.
Here are some wisteria that were grafted. This is the stock
that has been cut off, and this is the graft that is starting to
grow already.
This is the miniature wisteria from Mr. Domoto. I have a
pretty good crop of those coming along this year. If it would
only bloom better, it would be a great plant. But they sometimes
don't bloom that well.
You know what a pawpaw is? From back east? This is the
plant. These are some grafts here and they're just starting to
grow. This is the scion here. Got to keep this pinched back.
Some of those have already got leaves on them. Soon as the graft
starts to grow, then the top is cut off. See, the graft is
starting to grow here.
Riess: How often do you check them?
Carman: Well, I try to watch them as I come through, and see if they're
starting to grow.
Here's a ficus tree that we picked up the seed of in Hawaii
years ago. Odds and ends. That's variegated Bougainvillea over
there in that basket. That was given to me twenty-five years ago
by a man, Paul Hutchison, who used to be at Berkeley, and it was a
very popular thing at that time. In fact we sent some to a
nursery in Australia--! don't know whether they ever got it into
production or not.
That's the purple- flowered bottle bush.
A friend in Monterey gave me a whole flat of seedling
cyclamen, hardy cyclamen. I've got to transplant them. These '11
take two years to flower, probably. Time is what you're dealing
with.
This one is a variegated baby tears that a man from Michigan
sent me in exchange for another plant—one of those rare things
that only a variegated fanatic could love. [laughing]
137
Riess: Here comes a variegated ivy.
Carman: That's 'Gold Heart1, that's really a nice variegation.
Here's what the wind did the other day. [surveying fallen
pots]
Mostly these are cooking herbs, and a few other things mixed
in with them. We've got the plastic to keep some of the sun off--
we'll put some shading on this pretty soon to keep the hot Rummer
sun off. In the wintertime we just keep the rain off of them.
Riess: Shading?
Carman: Yes, we spray it on with a sprayer, and the rain washes it off in
the wintertime.
Now, there are some of the strawberries that are ready to
go. They make a mound, they don't trail, they're just a clump
type.
Riess: This is a variegated lavender?
Carman: Yes, that was given to me by Saso's [Herb Garden] Nursery over in
Saratoga. As you see, you've got to be very careful, in
variegations, to keep the green off. This variegation's not going
to do very good. You've got to pick out what's going to survive
[when you're propagating], with the right balance between the
green and the variegation.
Riess: Wonderful to be around it. Wonderful smell.
Carman: This is a type of [Lavandula] dentata, or French lavender, and
it's more fragrant than the other ones.
Riess: You're sort of touching everything as you go.
Carman: There's something over here that's really tactile.
[stopping at the tarragon] See, if you're doubtful about
tarragon, you can taste it. It has a little licorice flavor to
it.
Here's one of the thymes, T. membranaceus . That's the one
that won an award last year at Cal Hort. It has a white bract and
a white flower, so when it's fully opened it will be solid white- -
it's quite showy. I think I got it from Victor Reiter, I'm not
sure. I've had it so long I can't remember now.
138
Riess: Have you been propagating that?
Carman: Yes, it's a little difficult, so I only have a few plants at a
time.
Here's the wisteria after it gets bigger.
This is the lath, or shade part. And here are some of the
wisterias we got last year from New Zealand. These were grafted
last August, I believe. They are all coming along pretty good.
Trevor's going to be up in June, so I'll have to show him what his
stock looks like. Another two years before they bloom.
Riess: What about this area? Is there something happening here?
Carman: That weed patch, you mean? It's mostly weeds. I've got to go
through it, and if there's no plant, then it's one of those things
that goes out to the dump pile. It's hard to keep the weeds out
of the four-inch pots except by pulling, and you never get them
all out at a time, so you've always got some in the pot coming
along.
That's a little Arenaria, one of the rock garden plants that
makes a really tight mat.
Riess: Does the rock help give warmth to the plant? Is that the idea?
Carman: Well, it gives it warmth and gives it drainage. It has less
tendency to rot off or die off because of water around the crown.
Most of the slower-growing rock plants we use the small crushed
granite as a mulch. These are a lot of the small plants that
could be used for troughs, or small plants for rock garden areas.
Riess: "Two-and-a-half- to three-inch pots, $2.50 each, or as marked."
"Four-inch pots, $3.00." You know, I'm always here on Monday, but
I haven't seen the place the rest of the week, Tuesday or
Wednesday.
Carman: It's about the same. [laughs] People might come in. Most people
come in and look around, and then if they've got questions they
come back and ask us. A lot of the people that come in are quite
knowledgeable. Some people that come in know nothing and they
don't know what they're looking at. The ones that are fairly
knowledgeable, they enjoy looking around and seeing all this stuff
that don't see someplace else.
Here's one you shouldn't miss.
Tasmania.
Scleranthus biflorus from
139
Riess: [feeling plant] Oh, my goodness, how soft and nice! We're now at
one of the troughs. I want to take a picture of you here. [tape
break]
What we're standing in front of now is a combination of
bonsais and tufa sinks.
Carman: These aren't bonsai, these are just dwarf conifers, actually,
which haven't been trained in any particular manner. They are
just slow- growing.
Now, this is the other introduction we talked about that's
done quite well, Rhodohypoxis baueri, from South Africa. A South
African bulb. A very tiny bulb, and very long-blooming. This
will bloom for three months, the longest bloom of any really small
bulb.
Riess: Have you worked on the color variation?
Carman: Oh no, no. There's some that they've been working on for years,
and there's a lot that are the same color with two different
names, I think. They are showing up in markets now. Pot plant
growers are growing them and forcing them, so they are showing up
in some of the markets. But most people don't realize that
they're going to last, even when they go out of bloom. They could
keep them for another year, but they probably just throw them out
like they do with any other house plant that goes out of bloom.
They make very effective container plants, especially in a nice
big bowl.
Riess: What other nurseries would have them?
Carman: Not many. Siskiyou would have a few. And I think Miniature Plant
Kingdom has some, also two of the growers in the Watsonville area.
They are becoming more available.
These are our stock plants of rhodohypoxis , and these we
keep and divide them every year, multiply them.
Riess: [tape break to take a picture] Do you mix all your soil?
Carman: Yes.
We have sawdust and sand, and then we recycle some of our
soil, and we use some recycled soil. So it's 60% sawdust and 20%
sand and 20Z recycled soil.
Riess: And how do you sterilize it?
140
Carman: We used to use methyl bromide to sterilize it, but now we can't
use that anymore, so we just have to let it set now.
Here are some Lewisias which we got from one of the seed
exchanges. Seven kinds have come up there. These we have tried
to keep marked.
Here's a New Zealand plant called the bush daisy, because it
makes a big bushy plant with a daisy on it. It grows on the east
coast of the south island, on the coastal bluffs there, I
understand.
Riess: Pachestegia insignis? And it has a thick juicy leaf?
Carman: Yes, a very heavy leaf to withstand the conditions.
This one plant, we only grew it one time, from seed. It's a
New Zealand alpine, celmesia, not sure which one. It has a white
daisy flower on a stem about ten inches high and silver leaves.
Riess: Here are your water plants.
Carman: Yes, we don't fool with them much now because everybody has water
plants. Once everybody starts handling them, then it's not
practical for us to.
We have a bunch of bonsai material here, different conifers.
Dawn redwoods which we grow from seed. Japanese maples which we
grow from seed. We use those for grafting.
Here are some older Lewisias. Some of these are mixed, so
we can't tell what colors they are until they bloom. Generally
I'm trying to pick out some odd colors and put them away for seed
stock.
Riess: Plants in such small containers must need practically daily
watering.
Carman: Yes, these should get watered now, they didn't get watered
yesterday. When the real summer comes they do get watered every
day.
Riess: You don't have an overhead watering system here.
Carman: No, we had one at one time but it didn't work out good. We do
have overhead on most of the other tables .
[added later]
141
Riess: Ed, here the tape ended. Can I ask you to add anything you want
by way of a finale? For instance, I can lead with the question,
"In a fire or earthquake, what's the first thing you'd grab from
the nursery?" And why?
Carman: I guess I would grab the card file of plants that we are growing
or have grown and lost. Then I would take the guest book of
people who have visited the nursery. From personal experience in
an earthquake you just hang on "til it is over, then pick up the
pieces !
Riess: And from the house?
Carman: The nursery records would come first. Then probably the boxes of
slides- -there are about ten thousand flower and plant slides and
five thousand family slides. The slide boxes would be easy to
grab.
Most of the collection of things around the place have
sentimental value only to me--for instance, a brass lock to my
grandfather's wine cellar. But Diane and Nancy seem to have
inherited some of the collecting genes, so they will possibly
appreciate some of the more exotic items.
But to me, the most valued collection is in my memory, which
is hard to share and almost impossible to pass on to others. Over
the years we have had customers turn into good friends, and met
many generous nurserymen and Hort Society members. We have been
fortunate to visit some of the leading nursery people in England
and New Zealand. Everyone in horticulture that we have met over
the years has been unfailingly the most friendly you can imagine.
Planting seeds that sprout and can become trees, rooting
cuttings of herbs or flowering shrubs, watering and fertilizing to
see them mature — and all the while they never complain or talk
back! What more fulfilling way to spend a lifetime?
Transcribed by Gary Varney
Final typed by Caroline Sears
142
TAPE GUIDE--Edward S. Carman
Interview 1: March 24, 1997
Tape 1 , Side A
Tape 1, Side B
Tape 2, Side A
Tape 2, Side B
Interview 2: March 31, 1997
Tape 3, Side A
Tape 3, Side B
Tape 4, Side A
Tape 4, Side B
Interview 3
Tape 5
Tape 5
Tape 6
Tape 6, Side B
April 14, 1997
Side A
Side B
Side A
Interview 4: April 28, 1997
Tape 7, Side A
Tape 7, Side B
Tape 8, Side A
Tape 8, Side B
1
11
22
33
41
50
60
69
78
86
95
102
111
117
124
133
APPENDIX
A Biographical sheet provided by Ed Carman 143
B "Carman's Nursery", by Marshall Olbrich, Pacific
Horticulture, Winter 1991 148
C "Perennials for Western Gardens", by Ed Carman, Pacific
Horticulture, Summer 1994 152
D "Ed Carman's award caps 49 years in nursery trade", by
Joan Jackson, San Jose Mercury News, September 21, 1995 156
E "The First 25 Years, 1950-1975," by Charles Burr,
Peninsula Chapter, California Association of Nurserymen 158
F "2nd Time Around, 1950-1986," by Charles Burr, Peninsula
Chapter, California Association of Nurserymen 171
1 A-> ED CARMAN
16201 E. MOZART AVE.
LOS GATOS, CALIF. B3032.
Ed Carman APPENDIX A
16201 E Mozart Ave
Los Gatos Calif 95032
1922 Born 28 June 1922, Los Gatos, Calif
1937 Graduate 8th Grade Lexington School, Alma, Calif
1941 Graduate Los Gatos High School, Senior Class President
1943 - 1941 San Jose State College
1944 Married Eleanor Jean Campbell, San Jose Calif
1946 - 1943 80th Infantry Division, Third Army, ETO
1946 Entered Nursery business with father, Hugh Carman
Bascom Ave and Union Ave
Children: Three daughters, Patricia, Diane, Nancy
1970 Moved nursery and house to present location at
16201 E Mozart Ave
144
ED CARMAN
I«OI E. MOZART AVE
LOS GATOS. CALIF. 83O32
California Horticultural Society
1997 - 1973 Member Calif. Hort Society
Awards Committee Chairman, Calif. Hort Society
Executive Council Member, Calif Hort Society
Calif Hort Society 'Annual Award for Contributions
to Horticulture in California'
1993 - 1984
1987 - 1984
1978
Western Horticultural Society
Charter member WHS
President Board of Directors
President " "
Vice-President Board of Directors
Plant Discussion Chairman
Board of Directors
- 1963 Charter Member, Board of Directors
1997 -
1963
1996 -
1995
1995 -
1994
1994 -
1993
1997 -
1987
1983 -
1980
1966 -
1963
1994 - 1986
1993
1988 -
1894 -
1976 -
1973 -
1963
1972
1967
1963
1964
Advisory Committee, Central County Occupational
Center, Landscape Nursery Program
Toichi Domoto Oral History, Co-Chair Funding Comm.
Saratoga Hort Board of Directors(President two terms)
Advisory Comm. Ornamental Hort, San Jose Metro.
Judge, San Mateo County Fair
Instructor 'Garden Maintenance &. Landscaping
for Homeowners' San Jose Metro Adult Ed.
Designated Subjects Teaching Credential - Life
1971 - 1958
1970
1960
1959
1951
- 1946
- 1946
- 1946
Board of Trustees, Cambrian School District,
Chairman three terms
Cambrian Men's Club, Secretary 15 years.
Volunteer Fireman, Santa Clara County Central Fire
District.
Scoutmaster, Troop #34, Cambrian
Assistant Scoutmaster, World Jamboree, Irvine, Calif,
145
Peninsula Chapter California Association of Nurserymen
ED CARMAN
16201 E. MOZART AVE.
LOS GATOS. CALIF. 9SO»i
1997
1997
1997
1950
1989
1990
1992
1992
1988
1986
1983 -
1982
1975
1974 -
1972
1972 -
1971
1971 -
1967
1967 -
1965
1964 -
1963
1963 -
1962
1962 -
1961
Charter member
Board of Directors
Chair. Chapter Awards Comm
Pacific Coast Nurseryman Award
Chair. Comm to distribute 'Choose Horticulture
Video1 to all high school in Santa Clara County
Chair. Comm to install 'Charles Burr Memorial'
at San Jose Mercury.
Recipient, Outstanding Achievement Award'
Recipient, 'Chapter Nursery Service Award'
Co-Chair, Strybing Arboretum Demo Garden replant project
Treasurer
Recipient, 'Award for Continued Dedicated Service 25 yrs
State Director
President, Board of Directors
Treasurer
State Director
President, Board of Directors
Vice-Pres, Board of Directors
Board of Directors
Horticultural Organizations
1997
- 1991
1997
- 1980
1997
- 1980
1997
- 1979
1997
- 1976
1997
- 1976
1997
- 1976
1997
- 1973
The Garden Conservancy, Charter Member
The Herb Society of America, Western Region
Honorary Life Member
The Scottish Rock Garden Club
Alpine Garden Society - England
U.C. Santa Cruz Arboretum, Charter Member
Life Member 1990
International Plant Propagators Society
The Royal Hortcultural Society - England
American Rock Garden Society
ED CARMAN
16201 E. MOZART AVE.
LOS GATO3. CALIF. 85O3Z
Publications
1990 ' The Pacific Horticulture Book of Western Gardening'
Pg 226 - Perennial Plants, Planning, Preparation and
Choice.
1989 'Successful Perennials for the Peninsula'
Western Horticultural Society, Palo Alto
pg 35, 53, 72, 78, 86, 99.
1989 'Old, New, Unusual: Without Hormones, Heat or Mist'
IPPS Combined Proceedings Vol 39, Pg 93.
1987 American Nurseryman - Field Notes
Pg 162, January 15th, 'Dyraondia margaretae'
1986 'Propagation of Flowering Plants of Metrosiderous
carminea'
The Plant Propagator IPPS, Vol 32, No. 1, Pg 6
1980 'Propagation of Actinidia chinensis by Hardwood cuttings'
The Plant Propagator, Vol 26, No. 4, Pg 14.
1974 Consultant - Sunset book - 'Ideas for Hanging Gardens'
1972 Consultant - Sunset book - 'How to grow Herbs'
Photo Publications
1993 'Annuals for the Praries', Edgar W. Toop
University of Alberta, Canada
Pg 53, 65, 72, 115.
1992 The Herb Companion, Feb/Mar
Pg 24, 25, 26.
1987 American Nurseryman -Field Notes
'Dymondia margaretae' Pg 162, January 15
1980 Pacific Horticulture Vol 41, No. 4, Winter 1980-81
'Physalis peruviana' - Front Cover
1979 Sunset New Western Garden Book
Rock Garden - Pg 116
1A7
ED CARMAN
16201 E. MOZART AVE.
LOS GATOS. CALIF. >SO>Z
England
England
Plant Imports
1993 Wisteria 3 named varieties
1993 Wisteria 1 named Canada
1992 Rhodohypoxis 12 named varieties
1986 Daphne jasminea England
1979 Coprosraa kirkii variegated New Zealand
1978 Epacris longiflora New Zealand
1977 Hypericum aegypticum England
1976 Dymondia margaretae South Africa
1973 Rhodohypoxis 10 varieties New Zealand
1973 Cupressus s. "Swains Golden1 New Zealand
1970 Lobelia 'Kathleen Mallard' Re-introduction
1968 Coprosma r. 'x Coppershine' New Zealand
1968 Actinidia chinensis (deliciosa) Bruno, Hayward, Monty females,
1 male form, New Zealand
1966 Coprosma prostrata New Zealand
New Zealand
!
1
*
I
f.
148
from Pacific Horticulture.
Winter 1991.
Carman's Nursery
MARSHALL OLBRICH
Marshall Olbrich sent this article to Pacific Horticulture about hm u-eeks before
his sudden death in July In the accompanying letter he said of Erf Carman: "He is
a connoisetir's nurseryman. He is the one who has the blue ginger or Russellia
equisetiformis listen yon can't find it."
A few years ago, writing an obituary for
plantswoman Nova Leach of Stockton, I
used with full feeling the expression "a saint of
horticulture." This is not a phrase lightly used,
and it came to me first, and surely to others, in
reflecting on those arch saints of horticulture,
Ray and Rose Williams of Watsonville. To be a
saint one properly should have passed to one's
reward and have one's miracles attested. Also,
though one is allowed, in Baron von Hugel's
phrase, minor sins of accident and surprise,
one must have a single-minded devotion to
plants. With Ray Williams the miracle is there
to see: his last great work, the grounds of
Gavilan College in Gilroy, which surely will be
recognized as the most important pioneer dry
garden in California (I can use that absurd
neologism "xerophytic" no more than I can
use the redundant "plant material"). Beatifica
tion can happen only to those who, in St
Cyril's phrasing, have fallen asleep before us,
but in warmth of feeling we can allow our
selves the appellation "living saint" or "living
proto-saint" (or up and down the scale) for
Gerda Isenberg, celebrating her ninetieth birth
day, for Rose Williams, and for Ed and Jean
Carman.
Plantsmen can be adventurous, like Forrest,
Fortune, Wilson, Douglas, Rock, Comber, the
present-day Archibalds, and the rest of those
at this moment vigorously extending our gar
den world. They can be chroniclers, like the
great W.J. Bean, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Ernest
Lord of that magical, early Shrubs and Trees for
Australian Gardens, or the mysterious W.
Arnold-Foster, who wrote the classic of das-
8 / Pacific Horticulture
149
sics, Shrubs for the Milder Counties. Plantsmen
can be conservators, like the directors of Kew
and Wisley, Eric Walther of San Francisco's
Strybing Arboretum, Lawrence Johnston at
Hidcote, Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, or
that buccaneer-plantsman, the late Don Stry-
ker on the coast of Oregon. Finally, they can be
those whose gift to us is to make plants availa
ble: those nurseries of the past— Veitch,
Vilmorin, Robinson's Hardy Plants; and those
of the present— Hillier's, Paul Picton, Elizabeth
Strangman of Washfield, Don Mann of the
Forge Nursery, A.C. Leslie and Joe Sharman of
the newest and brightest Monksilver Nursery,
Beth Chatto and all too many others in
England; Eschmann of Emmen in Switzerland;
and Forest Fam, We-Du, Canyon Creek, The
Woodlanders, Montrose, the new Herons-
wood Nursery, and too many others to men
tion in this country.
Here belongs Ed Carman and also what I
shall describe as the myth of Ed Carman.
Unlike our explorers, his adventures have
been mainly with the plants, growing up in his
father's nursery on Bascom Avenue, a rather
tinny street in greater San Jose, and moving a
few blocks away to the pleasantly named
Mozart Avenue, a quiet residential street
where he and wife Jean guard their treasures.
More than thirty years ago, when Lester
Hawkins and I started our garden, we visited
Carman's nursery, then at the old location.
Like a snake shedding its skin, there were
vestiges of the old— sacks of manure and peat
moss, junipers and leptospermums. But the
new creature was emerging: a block of plants
—I have forgotten whether epimediums or hel
lebores, but definitely not to be found at the
supermarket— were roped off with criss
crossed ribbons and "sold" tags. "Oh, what a
sale!" I thought, and then realized they hadn't
been sold at all but were being kept as stock
plants. The situation has not changed in all the
subsequent years.
Carman's Nursery / 9
150
Ed is, perhaps, the finest plantsman of us
all, but there is a special puzzlement and
charm to his nursery. First, like any truly inno
vative nurseryman, such as Don Stryker of
Langlois, Oregon, where one parted the
weeds to see the rare black daphne (Daphne x
houtteana), which Brian Mathew thought
extinct at the time; or Paul Hutchison of Escon-
dido's Tropic Wforld, or Bernard Acquistapace,
Darylly Combs, and Mark Bartholomew in
Santa Barbara, the present-day mecca for plant
buyers; in short, like anyone introducing and
growing his own plants, Ed has too much to
do. So the unknowing outsider, seeing weeds
in the far forty perennial area, will find, as he
approaches the throbbing heart of the enter
prise—the propagating house and associated
tables— that disorder progresses to an almost
crystalline neatness.
But my myth is not through. Any nursery
man growing his own plants, which often are
to be found nowhere else, ferociously and with
his life protects his stock. The sneaky, knowl
edgeable buyer, drawn by forces beyond his
control, inevitably goes to the new and rare,
whereupon, like Albrich protecting the trea
sure against Siegfried, a head pops up and a
voice thunders "You can't have it!"
As a small nurseryman in much the same
position, I went a different way, hiring assist
ance in the form of a splendid nursery and
garden staff. But means outgrow ends in this
bad world, so while I still have the weeds, I
feel 1 have lost some of the charm that Ed and
Jean's totally deliberate and self-conscious
determination to stay small has enabled them
to retain.
Finally, I mention another topic— that nur
seryman's ailment that dares not say its name.
This is the inevitable paranoia a person feels,
when he has gone to some trouble to intro
duce and prove the value of a plant, upon
seeing his child, seduced by a popsicle, wan
dering off to other growers. As Beth Chatto,
who had just returned from Germany,
exclaimed: "But all I saw were my plants!"
I honestly believe that Ed and Jean, like Ray
and Rose Williams, have never been troubled
by such thoughts. As a less nice person, I can
think impure thoughts for them. I have always
Marshall Olbrich
thought that they got far too little credit for
their introductions and contributions to our
gardening. As an example (which I remember
because my devil-tempted soul would have
frothed at the mouth), through their friendship
with Trevor Davies of the famous New
Zealand nursery, Ed and Jean have given us
many new plants from that part of the world,
including the shiny, brownish green Coprosma
'Coppershine'. Like Beth Chatto 's plants, this
was surely Ed's plant, and yet, when another
person exhibited it and received an award at
the California Horticultural Society's annual
dinner, I recall no credit given.
Dymondia margaretae, Erigewn karvinskianus
'Moerheimii', Helichrysum argyrophyllum,
eleven cultivars of Rhodohypoxis . . . there is little
point in going down the long list of their intro
ductions here. This is what we owe, and for
this we give thanks. ^
10 / Pacific Horticulture
151
Marshall Olbrich, 1920-1991
In 1941 Marshall Olbrich came to California
from Wisconsin to do graduate work in philoso
phy at the University of California, Berkeley,
and, after nearly twenty academic and urban
years in San Francisco, he and his partner Les
ter Hawkins did what virtually everybody in
those days talked about. They moved to the
country, built a house with their own hands,
and started a garden.
Western Hills, the idiosyncratic and distin
guished garden they created in Occidental,
about sixty miles north of San Francisco, is a
romantic paradise and a tremendous plant col
lection, a demonstration of the best sort of
plantings for this area and a nursery, developed
by Marshall, of good and rare plants. As the
garden evolved, through drought and deluge
and devastating frost, Marshall Olbrich became
one of the foremost plantsmen of this country.
He had a world-wide correspondence with
other gardeners and plant enthusiasts and col
lected plants and seeds from everywhere. He
grew plants from every Mediterranean climate
and dispersed them with an eye for excellence
and usefulness and, for a nurseryman, a lunatic
generosity. He was a major figure in the Califor
nia Horticultural Society, exhibiting plants and
serving as its president as well as writing (all too
little) for this and other horticultural publica
tions. With his discriminating plantsmanship
and enthusiasm for the best plants, he was an
irreplaceable resource to his peers and to innu
merable younger gardeners.
All this only partially accounts for the feeling
of loss 1 have, despite his having arranged that
the nursery and garden at Western Hills con
tinue, because, in my mind, Marshall Olbrich
was an American aristocrat, an example of the
best sort of person our country produces, and
because for me, and a lot of others, Western
Hills was more than just the finest garden in
California or an unparalleled source of satisfac
tion for our horticultural needs and greeds.
What Marshall and Lester created in their three
acres of rare plants was a focus of activity in
horticulture and the art of garden design, a
haven of rational discourse and good garden
talk supported by extremely hard work.
I met Marshal] somewhere in the middle of
the garden's thirty-year growth into the unoffi
cial status of living national treasure, a reputa
tion that he viewed with amused resignation,
and I think my experience was shared by many
others. The "family" that lived and worked at
Western Hills and the group of friends that
gathered there accepted an obsessive interest in
plants and gardening as normal. Our common
fascination with plants was the starting point
for an endless conversation that covered every
subject. Somehow, without pompousness or
pretension, it was assumed that art and ideas
were important and that what we were doing
was significant, that conventionality was less
important than human consideration, that rea
son and imagination were as much garden tools
as shovels were, and that excellence and hon
esty really mattered.
This liberal atmosphere of cultivated people
cultivating plants, a combination of shop talk
and salon, encouraged a lot of us to believe that
perhaps we too could create good gardens and
live lives we chose. It was also a salient lesson
to see the brutal hard work, sometimes primi
tive conditions, and menial jobs required in the
beginning to support this life of the mind in the
midst of a garden. When things didn't seem to
be turning out that way in our own lives, visits
to Western Hills gave us heart and provided a
refuge among glorious plants and ideas.
The inspiration of Marshall's avid scholarship
and gleeful enthusiasm for good plants and his
discrimination in selecting them are as much a
legacy to his friends as his plant introductions.
His last letter to me ended: "The garden has
never been more photogenic! Boy! The plants I
got. Come up and see!"
In realizing how much I am going to miss his
generosity and playfulness, his honesty and
wicked sense of humor, I am coming to see how
much of my validity as a designer and horticul
turist is due to that endless conversation, how
often my satisfaction at getting a new plant, or
at getting something right is set in terms of
"Marshall would like that." I suspect a lot of
people feel the same. We don't need to go up to
Western Hills to see what Marshall Olbrich
meant to California horticulture. We need only
step through the garden door.
Chris Rosmini
Los Angeles
Marshall Olbrich/ 11
152
APPENDIX C
from Pacific Horticulture.
Summer 1994.
Perennials for Western Gardens
ED CARMAN
Wherever Iperennials] are planted their effect depends on their suitability for a
particular position in the garden, and on the careful juxtaposition of different plants
(now very much an 'in ' subject called plant associations). Most modem suggestions
for successful plant associations depend on producing harmony of color, combined
with contrasting leaf textures.
Phillips and Rix. Perennials
Rnts and garden styles often appear in
ne area, increase in popularity, and
spread rapidly across the country before giving
way to a successor. For the past several years
interest in perennial plants has been gathering
momentum and is now at a peak not seen in
many years. Magazines and books show us
gardens filled with perennials in full glorious
color. On the West Coast wholesale growers'
lists bulge with new items every year. In some
cases these are plants that were considered
rare or hard to find only three or four years
earlier.
Many perennial plants new to the nursery
trade are first seen in Washington and Oregon.
The climate in the Northwest permits almost
any perennial to flourish. Enthusiasm for
plants is high, and there are several strong
perennial plant societies and many avid collec
tors and small specialty growers.
Further south along the Pacific coast, where
there usually is no rain from May to Novem
ber, perennials must be chosen with the drier
climate in mind. Even here areas with plentiful
water and microclimates favoring lush growth
of perennials occur, but most gardeners must
consider drought tolerance in their choice of
plants.
Gaining favor for the past several years are
salvias, which are now at the crest of the fash
ion wave. Three nurseries in the San Francisco
Bay Area each list over thirty varieties of sal
vias. Red-flowered Salvia greggii is an old
standby giving reliable performance in hot, dry
situations. Plants introduced from Texas and
Mexico have resulted in hybrids with flowers
in several colors, including deep red, white,
coral, pink, orange, yellow, and lavender.
These woody subshrubs have stiff, closely
branched, upright stems from two to six feet
Perennials for Western Gardens / 19
153
Group of hostas
may reach eight feet in height with hundreds
of small, fragrant white flowers. Crambe is a
summer bloomer that needs room and sum
mer water. It is a spectacular specimen in a
large lawn.
For gardens with filtered sun and plenty of
water there are forty species of Hosta with hun
dreds of cultivars. Grown primarily for the
form and texture of their leaves, many hostas
have white or lavender flowers on tall stalks in
summer or fall. They are enjoying great popu
larity, and keen amateurs as well as profession
als are raising new ones every year. One
grower in Michigan lists for sale eight hostas
with blue leaves, seven with yellow to gold,
seventeen with cream to gold margined, ten
with white margined, and ten with green.
These herbaceous perennials are completely
hardy but must be protected from snails and
slugs, which are a constant menace to them.
Gardeners unable to provide a moist, woodsy
location, and unwilling to protect hostas from
pests, may like to try the august lily (Hosta
plantaginea), which seems more tolerant of sun
and dry soil and less attractive to slugs and
snails.
In 1978 the leading nursery in New Zealand
listed only ten selections of native flax (Phor-
mium tenax) in a small range of colors, just last
season one of the leading growers in southern
California listed twenty-five phormium culti
vars from two to eight feet in height and in a
wide range of leaf colors. Most of the compact
plants have rather narrow leaves with pleasing
upright or arching growth. Recent selections in
the three- to five-foot range are multi-colored,
and some are being grown to provide leaves
for florists. P. colensoi 'Cream Delight' has arch
ing leaves two and one-half inches wide, with
a yellow-cream mid-stripe, green margins, and
a red edge. P. colensoi 'Maori Sunrise' has
three-foot arching leaves with mixed tones of
rose to pale pink and bronze. P. colensoi 'Jack
Spratt' has upright, twisting, maroon leaves
about two feet high. Other selections have
combinations of green, yellow, red, apricot,
pink to green, green and cream, and bronze to
scarlet. The most intense color develops on
new leaves as they mature. Some selections
occasionally revert to a single color, so any
offsets that differ from the original plant
should be removed when first noticed. All of
the New Zealand flaxes do best in a sunny
exposure with well drained soil and some
summer water. The largest plants can be over
bearing, so must be sited with care. The dwarf
and mid-size plants deserve a place in any
border with space for them. j£
22 / Pad/if Horticulture
154
Iris 'Upper Echelon', a recent
introduction among many
hybrids of Pacific Coast native
irises now available with
flowers in a wide range of colors.
Photograph by George Waters
Salvia mexiama.
Author's photographs
except where noted
Phormium 'Smilin' Mom'
/21
155
tall. With shearing they make attractive
hedges. The flowers, produced on new
growth, attract hummingbirds all summer.
Most salvias need good drainage and full
sun. Cold tolerance varies, depending some
what on soil and exposure. As with many
plants, it may be necessary to try several loca
tions before finding the spot where they do
best.
Salvia develandii and S. leucophylla grow six
feet high and eight feet wide, and when estab
lished will survive without summer water. The
woody stems carry rough-textured leaves that
are fragrant when crushed. The flowers are in
whorls along the stem, pale blue on S. develan
dii, rose-lavender on S. leucophylla. The cultivar
S. 'Allen Chickering' is a hybrid between these
two; it makes a dense shrub four by five feet
with deep lavender flowers.
Salvia azurea var. grandiflora is a tall, spindly
grower to five feet with true blue flowers on
narrow spikes at the tip of each shoot. This is a
rather lax plant best grown among others that
give it support for summer and fall bloom.
Probably the most unusual salvia is Salvia
discolor, with arching, hairy, white stems to
four feet tall. Its three- to four-inch medium
green leaves are white and hairy underneath,
giving a variegated effect. The nearly black
tubular flowers have white, woolly calyces.
Many hybrids of Pacific Coast native irises
thrive under average garden conditions. Plants
are now available with broad-petaled flowers
in white, yellow, maroon-purple, blue, and
several multi-colored combinations. Plant
these in sun to part shade in well drained soil
for spring and early summer bloom. They
make a hardy groundcover and are somewhat
drought tolerant after becoming established.
Several native coral bells (Heuchera) also do
well with moderate watering, and hybrids of
these plants give reliable summer color. Intro
duced from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gar
den, Heuchera 'Genevieve' has deep pink
flowers on thirty-inch stems. H. 'Santa Ana
Cardinal' has red flowers on three-foot stems.
From the Channel Islands comes H. maxima, a
tall plant with pink and white flowers on
three-foot stems. One of the most striking coral
bells is H. 'Palace Purple', which was found by
chance at Kew Gardens among plants from
seed sent from the United States. This compact
plant has such rich plum-purple leaves and
stems that the small white flowers are barely
noticed.
Almost unknown in gardens a few years
ago, ornamental grasses have invaded the
West Coast in great numbers and in many
sizes and shapes. Grasses are available that
grow from a few inches to ten feet tall and in
many colors. Blue fescue (Festuca glauca), an
old stand-by, provides color obtainable from
few other plants. One of the most striking
plantings of blue fescue is seen in the blue
garden at Lotusland in Santa Barbara, where it
is used as groundcover. Carex buchananii, a
native from New Zealand, is dump forming
with upright bronzy orange foliage. Japanese
blood grass (Imperata cylindnca) forms a dense
clump of vertical leaves, green below and
blood red above as the plant matures. Another
elegant grass from Japan is Hakonechloa macro
'Aureola', a slow-growing, clump-forming
grass with flat yellow leaves that have thin
green and red stripes from base to tip. It does
best with regular watering and in part shade.
Stipa tenuissima, with the finest texture of any
grass, does well in most soils but will not
tolerate standing water. The old leaves turn
golden brown in fall.
Some plants seem never to go out of style.
One long-time favorite is Gypsophylla paniculata
'Bristol Fairy', which was given an award of
merit at the 1926 Chelsea Show. This hardy,
drought tolerant perennial is still popular for
its masses of small, double white flowers that
are cut for bouquets and dried for long-lasting
arrangements. In flower the airy stems fill a
space some three by four feet. After flowering
the stems should be cut just above the foliage,
which will sometimes produce a second
bloom. At the end of the year it is best cut
almost to the ground, leaving about three
inches of woody stems. This will produce a
compact plant with strong flower stems the
next season.
Crambe cordifolia, a member of the cabbage
family, appears from a distance to be a giant
'Bristol Fairy'. A large rosette of broad leaves
forms a sturdy base for the flower panicles that
20 / Pacific Horticulture
156
APPENDIX D
from San Jose Mercury, 1995
Ed Carman's awar,d caps
49 years in nursery trade
BY JOAN JACKSON
Hemiry Ncwi Gtrrien Editor
LOS Gatos nurseryman Ed Car
man got into kiwis — the fruit,
not the flightless birds — before
most California gardeners knew how to
spell the word, let alone recognize the
fruit.
The owner of Carman's Nursery had
made a lot of nursery friends in New
Zealand and exchanged plants with
them, so he brought the kiwis to Los
Gatos and began selling them in one-gal
lon pots in the early 1980s — just when
kiwis took off as a trendy food.' / v .K*i
He became — and remains.!, '••'" *•'*•'
to this day — the top expert
on kiwis in California, just an
other feather in the Carman
cap. His specialties also in
clude unusual herbs and rare
alpine plants.
But what Carman may be
best known for is helping his
customers, even if it means
sending them to a competitor.
So it makes sense that Car
man, nurseryman extraordi
naire, has been named Pacific
Coast Nurseryman of the
Year. The award by California
Association of Nurserymen is
the highest honor, the profes
sional organization awards to
anyone in the horticultural field.
A native of Los Gatos, Carman, 73,
has been in the nursery trade for 49
years. He and his father, Hugh, opened
the nursery in 1946 at Bascom and
Union avenues and in 1970 moved the
nursery and house to the present loca
tion at 16201 E. Mozart Ave., off Bas
com near Good Samaritan Hospital.
The CAN award recognizes Carman's
lifetime dedication to the nursery indus
try.
'A writer and photographer, he has
written numerous articles on introduc
tions of plants, served as consultant to
<-.; '. ' . , ,f • '• ;;- See CARMAN, Page 4D
An echeveria at Carman's one-acre nursery waits
for a customer to take it home.
• CARMAN
from Page ID
Sunset Magazine for the Western
Garden Book and other Sunset
specialty garden books, and was
a founding director of the West
ern Horticultural Society..
He has been a leader of the
Peninsula chapter of CAN since
the chapter's founding in 1961.
His affiliations range from the In
ternational Plant Propagators So
ciety to the Royal Horticultural
Society in England. Volunteer
fireman, scoutmaster, fair judge
— he's done it all.
If you are looking for a plant
and can't find it anywhere, Car
man probably has it And if he
doesn't, he will send you to a
competitor who does. If you bring
him a picture of a flower or a tree
and ask tor its name, he probably
can identify it. And if he can't, he
will find someone who can.
"He is a plantsman par excel
lence, the nurseryman's nursery
man," says John Chiapelone,
president of California Associa
tion of Nurserymen and owner of
Burlingame Garden Center, who
presented the award to Carman
last month. "He actually forms a
bridge between the old guard in
the nursery industry and the new
Carman says spending 49
year* with his hands in the
soil has been a satisfying
157
career.
incoming people in the industry.
He listens well, and when he of
fers advice, it is very well done."
But if you ask Carman, "How
do you see yourself," he answers
simply, "Having fun.
"This is like a big private gar
den," he says about the one-acre
nursery that surrounds the fami
ly home where he and his wife,
Jean, raised three daughters.
Carman says spending 49 years
with his hands in the soil has
been a satisfying career. "I've
met a lot of wonderful people,
met some big names, people from
other countries, so I don't think I
could have done any better at
something else."
His best accomplishment, he
says, "has been helping other
people with their problems, iden
tifying plants and answering
questions that others aren't able
to answer."
He's not talking retirement, ei
ther. "If I retired, Fd still do the
EUGENE LOME - kCRCURY NEWS
Los Gatos nurseryman Ed Carman has been named
Pacific Coast Nurseryman of the Year.
same thing," he says. His daugh
ter Nancy works three days a
week at the nursery. "If it wasn't
for her help, I probably wouldn't
still be open," he says.
The -future of nurseries like his
is something that worries him. "I
think the golden age of the nurs
ery business is over. The biggest
change has been the move from
individual owners to the chain-
type operation and the discount
stores like Home Depot and Or
chard Supply Hardware," he
says.
"The only way small owners
will survive is to specialize and
maybe do mail order. Land is not
available for new nurseries. It's
too expensive for young people to
enter the nursery business in
most places."
His own nursery, he says, will
close when he is gone. But right
now, lucky for all of us, it's busi
ness as usual at Carman's Nurs
ery.
Write Garden Editor Joan Jackson at
750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jott
95190; or fax (408) S71-S786. Or call
the California Relay Service, (800)
7S5-S9SX, and tell the operator thai
you. wish place a TDD call to Joan.
Jackson at (1>Q8) 9SO-S518.
158
APPENDIX E
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Ray D. Hartman,
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>wn — the
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location and
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Formation of the Strybing Arboretum Society (Contini
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Juel, to get something done about it! When Juel approa
board of directors for support, he was promptly made c
Strybing Arboretum Committee. Between Juel and Eric
group of laymen, botanists and nurserymen was assembi
Walter Heil, director of the DeYoung Museum. He was
Park politics. Chapter participants included John Edwa
Bill Schmidt and Charles Burr, the latter keeping the mi
ling such correspondence as was necessary.
After several meetings in San Francisco, an organiz
was called for November 17, 1954, in the DeYoung Mus
a temporary slate of officers and constitution and bylaw
bing Arboretum Society was adopted: Owen Pearce, ed
ifornia Horticultural Journal, president; Elizabeth McCli
at the California Academy of Science, secretary; and Bil
urer. In February, 1975, a permanent slate of officers a
over and in 20 years the membership has risen to nearly
Juel Christensen and Charles Burr were among those orii
members honored at a 20th anniversary celebration.
In those 20 years Strybing Arboretum has become
standing arboreta in the world. John Bryan, present din
friend of the Chapter and receives its continuing supporl
later).
The Saratoga Horticultural Foundation:
While the Peninsula Chapter was getting on its feet,
chapter member and president and general manager of L
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quality. He had settled on Saratoga as the most desirabi
purchased the property that is still occupied by the Sara
tural Foundation.
Ray Hartman enlisted the aid of industry, finance,
stitutions and the nursery industry in backing his dream,
Saratoga Horticultural Foundation became a non-profit
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LEADERS IN HORTICULTURE: W.B.Clarke (Continued}
had already bloomed and were chosen for distribution.
In addition to ornamental trees, shrubs and vines, the Clarke Nursery
became a prime source of roses for retailers in northern California. W. B.
encouraged Rudy Anninger, his traveling salesman, to enter into a part
nership with Frank Molena for the purpose of growing roses for whole
sale. He obtained membership in AARS, giving Rudy and partner first
year access to All America introductions. The combination of a well-
known source and a well-grown product made the enterprise hugely suc
cessful!
W. B. Clarke took an active interest in nursery trade associations
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RAY D. HARTMAN
It is difficult to disassociate Ray from California Natives, and his
enthusiasm for them often clouded the greater scope of his organization—
The Leonard Coates Nurseries. The main office, florist shop and retail
salesyard was located in San Jose on The Alameda at the Santa Clara
city line. There was a large container-growing operation in Morgan Hill
and a field-grown ornamental growing grounds in Santa Cruz. Deciduous
fruit, flowering and shade trees were grown at Brentwood.
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Ray was active in CAN and was president of the state association
in 1934-35. Even with his busy schedule he managed to attend many of
Peninsula Chapter's meetings during the formative years and actively sup
ported Chapter projects.
The Leonard Coates 48-page catalog of the Thirties gave California
Natives the first five pages in the book, listing a total of 1 10 varieties.
Considering the difficulty of propagation in those years and a rather
lukewarm reception by the public, this was an amazing enterprise! Prob
ably the first real break-through came with trial plantings made by the
California Division of Highways. H. Dana Bowers, the first person to
head a department of highway planting, had his problems with the high
way maintenance people looking after plantings after installation. He
worked out native plant lists with Ray Hartman, using varieties as near
their type locality as possible, which exposed the public to the beauty
and utility of natives on the state's highways. Of course, natives needed
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arke (Continued}
tion of Prunus blieriana
elf discovered Helen Bor-
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LEADERS IN HORTICULTURE: W. B. Cl
W. B. was responsible for the introduc
(P. mume & P. cerasifera pissardi) and hims
chers flowering peach and Thundercloud fl<
duced two varieties of P. mume (Rosemary
as many flowering cherries, which he dearly
exceptional form of Crataegus lavellei with
fruits, which he named Autumn Glory. As
away from naming new introductions after
Rosemary and Peggy Clarke, Clarke's Red (
(a lilac) were exceptions. He liked to name
descriptive of the introduction's character -
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less space and insured flower production w
Another parallel to Domoto's was the
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oga Horticultural Foundation.
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ILLIAM E.SCHMIDT
Of all our Peninsula Chanter plantsmen, Bill is probably the most
dely known - internationally, as a matter of fact! In an area of
avy competition among hybridizers in many lands, Bill, the perfectk
, tops them all!
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Bill is responsible for many zonal geranium introductions, ten vari
», of which three are semi-dwarf. These were introduced between
W. and 1964. His ivy geranium introductions total eleven, which i ri
de four that sported from previously introduced varieties.
The Schmidt Nursery introduced many varieties of fuchsias from
ious hybridizers, and seven of Bill's own crosses. At one time, he tri
hand at camellias, resulting in a double pink that Bill named Sonata
;re is a large plant of it growing in the Huntington Gardens, but Bill
er got around to developing it commercially.
Bill discovered a Tulbaghia violacea (society garlic) with white
egated margins on the leaves which he called Silver Lace. This is stil
ilable from Ed Carman, as is the Schmidt strain of Scabiosa caucasia
ch the Schmidt Nursery grew and sold until it closed in 1968.
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care, too, so that only the most persistent forms survived u
sites were specially prepared to rigid specifications and auti
tion provided. Now we see a happy combination of both n
exotics in our freeway planting, a tribute to Ray's enthusia
Let's take a look at other material in the Leonard Coa
the Thirties. Coates was the best source of Eucalyptus in tl
were being widely planted as windbreaks and as screens alo
and even in large gardens. You got a flat of 100 for $3.50.
tralian natives included Callistemon (one variety), Acacias (
and Melaleuca (5 varieties). Coates listed 17 varieties of Co
both upright and spreading, 1 1 varieties of Heathers, 7 varie
mus, 7 varieties of Privet and 12 varieties of Veronicas (this
proper name before the advent of Manual 32 and Hebe).
Prices were about the same, or a little lower, than thos
the California Nursery catalog of the time. This was becaus
liarity we called the "farming area syndrome" - that you c<
the same prices obtained in the metropolitan areas. The Ca
sery catalog prices had to be adjusted a little for the benefit
Sacramento, Modesto and Fresno branches!
This is as good a place as any to comment on salesyard
terns. There weren't any. If the customer came in without
paid in the range dictated by the kind of car he drove up in!
remembers that many of the Hillsborough residents buying
nursery he worked for borrowed a Ford or Chevy before goi
chase plants. Naturally, this policy changed with regular me
nurserymen.
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LEADERS IN HORTICULTURE: Clyde Stock
although George Haight is the present owner ar
Clyde was a regular contributor to the "Proof c
the American Rose Society Annual, and develo
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Clyde introduced two roses, seedlings of c
Adams, a local rosarian: Prosperity, a yellow h
note when there was not much prosperity arou
Adams), a nice pink, a tremendous grower that
grandiflora by present-day standards.
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Avenue) in order to make some necessary impt
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occupied with residences.
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Chapter display. He selected distinct clones fr
best seed sources in his nursery. Offered in 4-i
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own. All were named, and each distinct in its
Mr. & Mrs. Meerly retired to Shingle Spri
later moved to a motel (Villa Montreux) they
Tahoe before closing their nursery.
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LYDE STOCKING
A name synonymous wit
'owing endeavor. After leavi
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he tomatoes were a total loss
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ing with Duncan & Davies, New
fornia and operating probably
sphere. He has provided them
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3thers. Ed has introduced a
:rom New Zealand. Hisintroduc
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fruits.
a showy groundcover, with its
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industry a tremendous favor!
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EDWARDS. CARMAN
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Nursery at the corner of what is now
bell. Ed became a charter member o
twice been president and treasurer fo
moved the nursery to its present loca
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named varieties of Actinidia chinensi:
prise in California (the fruit is known
have three daughters - Patricia, Dian
Ed has a plant variety exchange
Zealand nurseryman well-known in C
the largest nursery in the southern he
with original stock of Rosemary, Pho
Prunus, Abelia, Ceanothus, Garrya an
formidable list of plant varieties, man
tions:
Coprosma species: C. prostrata,
pecially adapted to coastal California,
shrub form of varying habits and leaf
Corokia hybrids: unique plants '
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Cupressus species: C. sempervire
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Daphne odora varieties: 1 f these
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t), was offered some empty gallo
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try some In place of pots. The
m more disastrous than J.V. had
ber quietly talking over the posi
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Leonard Coates Nurseries had i
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May 1998
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 vmbelll ferae; 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.
189
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. 19A7-1990. 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.
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.
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.
190
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, Germano 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.
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.
191
FLEMING, Jenny (b. 1924), 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.
192
INDEX- -Edward S. Carman
Ahorne, Jeff, 100
Alpine Garden Society, England,
100-101
American Nurseryman, 82, 86
American Rock Garden Society,
Western Chapter, 90-92, 108; rock
garden plants, 100-101, 126-128,
138
Anderson, John, 59
Arbegast, Mai, 49, 97
Bancroft, Ruth, 106
Berkeley Horticultural Nursery,
105, 115
Bernstein, Ralph, 79
bonsai, 91-92
Brickell, Chris, 61, 95, 98
Brokaw Nursery, 53
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 76, 82-83,
91
Browse, Philip McMillan, 56-57, 97-
98
Buchart Gardens, Victoria, 96
Burr, Charles, 6, 48, 90, 121
California Academy of Sciences, 90
California Association of Nurserymen
(Peninsula Chapter), history: 6-
8, 13, 28ff-38, 112-115, 121-122;
membership, 38; Pacific Coast
Nurseryman of the Year award, 39;
participation, 40; Strybing
Arboretum, 90; "Choose
Horticulture," 124-125
California Horticultural Society,
participation, awards, 39-40,
87-88; travel, 66; 78ff-82, 86-
87, 107-108; Pacific
Horticulture, 88-90, 94-95
Campbell, Eleanor Jean. See Carman,
Jean.
California Native Plant Society, 93
California Nursery, Niles, 29, 122
California Packing Company (CPC) , 8
Campbell, Alvin, 21
Cannington College, 97, 102-103
cans, pots, 10-12
Carman and Weltz families, 1-5, 15-
20
Carman, Ed: Army, 80th Infantry
Division, 22-26; photography, 22-
26, 93-95; community volunteer
activities, 116-119; education,
22, 27-28, 67, 112; house, house
moving, 33, 119-120; travel,
55ff-65, 96; troughs, 11, 138-139
Carman, Hugh, lff-14, 27ff-55
Carman, Jean, 26, 55ff-65, 111-113,
132
Carman's Nursery, Bascom Avenue,
5ff-14, 27ff-40; catalogue, 69,
130-131; marketing, 45, 52;
Mozart Avenue, since 1970, 41ff-
77, lllff-141
Chambers, Diane, 131, 141
Chatto, Beth, 72, 76-77
Christensen, Juel, 90
Church, Thomas D., 33, 42, 46
Clarke, W.B., 71, 73
Coates, Leonard, Nursery, 6, 29, 83
Collett, Ray, 99
Cordes, Lowell, 97
Coulter, Johnny, 79, 99
county agricultural commissioner,
35
Crane, Kathy, 106
daphne , 6 1
Davies, Trevor (Duncan and Davies,
New Zealand), 32-33, 41-42,
46ff-53, 56, 65, 73, 138
Dennisen, George, 4, 15
Dillon, Don (Four Winds Citrus
Growers, Fremont), 98
Dodd, Dorothy, 15, 20
Domoto, Toichi, 17, 34-36, 71ff-76,
109
193
Dunmire, Dick, 31, 66, 77, 79, 116
dymondia, 60-61, 136
Edwards, John, 79-80
Evans, Alfred, 64-65
Filoli, 71, 74, 96, 106, 127
Foothill College, 125
Garden Conservancy, 101, 106-107,
127
genetic diversity, gene pools, 102-
103
Golden Monterey pine, cypress, 43,
58-59
Goldsmith Seeds, Gilroy, 54
Griffiths, Trevor, 56
Hall, Brett, 99
Hartman, Ray, 83-85
Hawkins, Lester, 89-90
Hayward, CA, 3, 16-17
Herb Society, 102; herbs, 102-104
Herz, Joanne, 119
Hesketh, Cathy, 97
Hildreth, Richard, 97
Hill, Madeleine, 102
Hillyer, Harold, 61-62, 72, 95
Hines Nursery, 82, 84, 86-87
Home Depot, 105, 123
Hutchison, Paul, 136
hydrangea, 69
Ingerson, Frank, 4, 15
International Plant Propagators
Society, 86, 98
Isenberg, Gerda, 63
Jackson, Joan (San Jose Mercury) ,
77
Japanese Nursery, 36
Japanese nurserymen, tomato growing,
8-9, 12, 36-37
Jio, S.H., Nursery, 36
Johns, Marjorie, 15, 20
Johnson, George, 64-65
Kaplan, Frieda, 49
Kelaidis, Panayoti, 66
Kipping, Ted, 108
Kitazawa Nursery, 36
kiwi, 32ff-55, 59-60
Kiwi Growers Association, 52, 93
Knoll, Elsa Uppman, 32, 116
Kourak, Bob, 80
Lane, Bill and Jean, 99
lewisia, 68-69
Lexington, and Alma, California, 3,
15-19
liquid amber, 84
lobelia, 59, 126-127
Logee's Greenhouses, 59, 126
Los Gates area, 2ff-19, lllff-120;
High School, 20-21, 111-112
Martin, George, 33, 42ff-47, 50-51
Matsubara, Mr., nurseryman, Fresno,
72
McClendon, Betty, 18
McClintock, Elizabeth, 90
McDonald, Mamie, 18
Monrovia Nursery, 43, 82, 84, 86-87
Morris, Dave and Doug, 118
National Committee for Conservation
of Plants, 102
native plant growers, 14, 70
Nelson Nursery, San Leandro, 104
Northwest Horticultural Society, 88
nursery business, World War II, 8.
See California Association of
Nurserymen, history
Oka, Sam, 37
Olbrich, Marshall, 89-90
Onishi, S., Nursery, 36-37
194
Orchard Supply, nursery, 6-7, 30,
105
Pacific Coast Nurseryman, 86
Pacific Nurseries, Colma, 29, 97
Page Mill Nursery, 32, 116
Pearce, Owen, 89
Peatt, Lyle, 60
perennials, 70, 75
pest plants, 82-83
pesticides, 13, 33-35, 132-133
plant propagation, 68-69, 129ff-lAl
Poniatoff, Alexander, 107
Quarry Hill Arboretum, Sebastapol,
85-86
Southern California Horticultural
Society, 88
Stebbins, Peggy, 32, 116
Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco,
90
Sullivan, Richard, 123- 12A
Sunset magazine, 31, 93-94, 116
Tanaka Nursery, 36
Tevis Estate, 3
Tolmach, Lucy, 74
Truax, Margaret, 32, 116
Uenaka, Its, 79
University of California, Davis,
85-86
Raabe, Robert, 115
Ratcliff, Evelyn Paine, 4
Redwood City Nursery, 82
Reiter, Victor and Carla, 66, 91,
107-108, 126-128, 137
rhodohypoxis , 55-58, 139
Rider, Marie, 1, 15, 18, 20
Robinson, Alan, 57
Royal Horticultural Society, Wisley,
56-57, 61, 95-96
Santa Cruz Arboretum, 98-100
Saratoga Horticultural Foundation,
56, 61, 83-85, 96-97
Sartorette, Charlie, 119
Saso's Herb Garden Nursery, 137
Schenone, Lou, 97
Schmidt Nursery (Bill Schmidt),
Palo Alto, 48-49, 78
Schramm, Nancy, 25, 55, 77, 109-
110, 131-132, 141
seed companies, 13-14, 54
shipping, 44-45, 50-52, 58
Sierra Azul, Nursery, 100
Smith, Nevin, 100
soil, 54-55, 139-140
Solomone, Joe, 97
Valder, Peter, 73
van Rensselaer, Maunsell, 96-97
Van Klaveran, Abe, 64
Verey, Rosemary, 72, 76-77
Walther, Eric, 90
water gardens, 70, 81
Waters, George, 88-89
Wertheim, Ernest, 82
Western Garden Book, 116
Western Hills Nursery, Occidental,
89, 124
Western Horticultural Society,
78ff-82, 86-88, 126
White, Dennis, 97
Williams, Ray, Watsonville, 89
Wilson, J.H., 38
wisteria, 46, 71-76, 97, 102-103,
133-134, 136, 138
Woolworth's, 122-123, 125
Work, Tricia, 131
Wych, Maggie, 124
Yamagami's Nursery, 125
Yerba Buena Nursery, Woodside,
Yoshimura, Yuji, 76, 91-92
Zuke, Judy, 71
106
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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