Some previously unpublished photos of Luther Burbank's Farm in summer -- For "Summerpics"

I have been saving a small cache of photographs that I took at Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Farm (registered in the "National Register of Historic Places") in Sebastopol, Sonoma County, Northern California, where I volunteer as a member of the Advisory Committee, where "The Plant Wizard" (as he was called) carried out most of his larger horticultural experiments on perennial-flowering plants and crop-bearing trees and I thought now was as good a time as any to trot them out to take advantage of Gather's "Summerpics" promotion.

Burbank was a plant breeder and hybridizer whose name was considered to be one of the most famous in the world during his time (mid-to-late 1800s to mid-1920s). Burbank counted among his many friends and admirers: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, Helen Keller and the Paramhansa Yogananda (author of "Autobiography of a Yogi").

I hope that you enjoy taking a peek at some of my previously unpublished photographs of Mr. Burbank's wonderful and amazing plants wearing their "summer frocks"...

Enjoy!

The "Cottage Garden" is a fairly recent addition to the Farm where, in a labor of love, volunteers continue to plant flowering perennials either known to have been hybridized by Burbank or known to have been commonly used in Burbank's time.

One of the most endearing of these is the old-fashioned "Bleeding Heart" -- or "dicentra":

Another is "digitalis" or "foxglove", the dwarf variety of which, "Shirley Mix" is widely accredited to Burbank:

Also present in the Cottage Garden is one of only three known plants (out of the 400 or so bred over his lifetime) which were developed by Burbank to actually bear his name -- the curiously drooping growth-habited "Burbank Rose":

Between the Cottage and the street is a large bedding of another of Burbank's edible hybids, an "alpine" type of strawberry called "everbearing" because of its year-round ability to bear fruit:

On the other side of the Cottage, a pleasantly meandering path leads past a row of another of Burbank's hybrids, the "pseudocydonia sinesis" or "Chinese Quince" which bear huge, nearly football-sized, golden-skinned fruit which ripen in the dead of winter.

In Burbank's time, much of the jams and jellies that graced Victorian tables were made of one type of quince or another...

Here are three photos which show the marvelously mottled bark of these quince trees:

And here is a shot of the row of Chinese Quince trees (left) and path from the point of view of looking back toward the Caretaker's Cottage:

The more commonly known and familiar type of quinces ("malus" types) are collectively called "European" quinces and Burbank worked with these, as well. Particularly, a variety that he called "Van Damen".

European quinces resemble "shrubs" more than they do trees and the fruits are round rather than oblong like the Chinese variety.

Here are some of the delicate "salmony-pink" blossoms of one of the "Van Damen" quince trees at the Farm:

Going back to the row of Chinese quince trees, on the other side of the path, you can find one of the two Chinese wisterias that grow at the Farm. 

It is known that Burbank was breeding wisteria to maximize both the color and scent. Each of the wisterias at the Farm blooms at a slightly different time of the year.

Between the two wisterias on the same side of the Cottage path, we can find some of the surviving Burbank hybrid blueberry bushes...

A comparative rarity in Northern California, it is thought that nostalgia for these luscious fruits stemming from his childhood was what spurred Burbank to try and develop varieties that would withstand our very "Un-New England like" weather...

On the opposite side of the path from the blueberries, we find a row of "trifoliate [or "three-leafed"] orange" trees. A native of Japan and frost tolerant to -40 degrees F., Burbank was developing these plants -- not for their virtually inedible fruit -- but, rather, as rootstock upon which could be grafted other citrus species to make them more drought, cold and disease/insect resistant.

Not all of Burbank's work with fruit-bearing plants was geared toward human consumption. He also spent a great deal of his time on plants that he considered viable candidates as potential cattle (or other stock) feed. Chief among these are any of the plants which contain a "bean-like seed pod" which are high in protein.

Such plants can be found in the "broom family" and there are several "Scotch broom" plants at the Farm that plainly date from Burbank's time. Oddly, most of them exhibit the same "red-on-yellow" coloring as the candidate below... (the flowers of the Scotch broom are usually solid yellow):

The fruit of one species of plant that is NOT currently marketed for human consumption which Burbank was working on at the Farm is the hawthorne. Both Mexican and Chinese varieties can be found here -- still in the partial rows where "the Master's Hand" planted them...

Hawthornes are extremely drought tolerant and disease/insect resistant... Ordinarily, the fruits of the hawthorne -- known as "haws" -- are quite mealy and tasteless; however, one can only wonder what their place would be in our diets of today had the "Plant Wizard's" hands not been stilled when they were...

Here is a photograph that I took looking up into the profusely flowering branches of some of the Chinese variety of hawthornes at the Farm:

A little-known hawthorne that is present at the Farm in only one area exhibits a rare tendency toward "variegated" (or two-toned, green and white) leaves -- undoubtedly the work of Burbank:

On the whole, stone fruits (e.g., cherry, plum, peach, etc.) are notoriously suceptible to both air and soil borne diseases and the ravages of insects... Indeed, with a couple of notable exceptions, most all the stone-fruit trees of Burbank's time succumbed to these maladies during the 50+ years after Burbank's death in 1926 and before the Western Sonoma County Historical Society was formed to preserve the remaining 3+ acres of the Farm in the mid-1970s.

Over the years since then, Farm volunteers have been diligently attempting to find, purchase and plant Burbank varieties of stone fruits in order to repopulate the Farm with them.

Here is photo of the blossoms of one such sapling -- a cherry tree...

One of the "mystery plants" discovered at the Farm during its initial cleaning and refurbishment phase was several rows of "sorbus" (aka, "Mountain Ash", aka "Jerusalem Pear"). It took Burbank experts and senior volunteers quite some time to discover that the normally inedible (even when "ripe") fruits of the sorbus trees -- which resemble tiny, golden-yellow pears borne many to a branch -- were only made edible by a process called "bletting"!

"Bletting" consists of leaving the fallen, ripe fruit on the ground in order for it to partially ferment. When bletted, the fruit of the sorbus has both the flavor and consistency of (of all things) vanilla pudding!

Here is a photo that I took of some of the sorbus trees in bloom:

Standing as it does completely within the city limits of the City of Sebastopol, the Farm is not only an "oasis of green" but, also, a haven for various species of local wildlife.

All manner of birds such as wild turkeys, corvii, various species of sparrows, hawks and even great-horned owls make their home there (for either part of the year or year-round) and one flock of turkeys that frequents the Farm even boasts a "hanger-on" in the form of an exotic and beautifully-plumaged "silver pheasant" -- apparently a "refugee" from someone's backyard aviary!

In addition, one can find other animals such as squirrels, rabbits -- and, sometimes, even deer -- here that can be found nowhere else within the town. The clownish, territorial antics of the Asian, feral, "red squirrels" who reside in Mr. Burbank's nut and fruit trees, alone, can be a source of entertainment for hours!

All in all, the Farm is one of those precious corners of Mother Earth that seems to attract with an almost "magical" affinity -- a sparkling "jewel" of terra firma that we call "Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Farm".

In this writer's humble opinion, any intinerary to the "Wine Country" of Sonoma County or Northern California would be much impoverished for the lack of its inclusion...

Happy Travels!

jean