When Santa Cruz was a fog-kissed wintergarden
Winter isn’t the time of year most people think of blooming flowers. But in Santa Cruz, an early flower grower circulated cabinet photos and newspaper scenes showing his blooming fields as “Midwinter in California,” bringing tourists to see his “Wintergardens.”
Thomas Thompson was a British-born floracultural expert who visited New York in 1867, then came to California around 1870. By the mid 1870s, he’d established a flower business on Ocean Street, expanding east along Water Street, becoming one of the county’s first large scale flower producers, with a national reputation.
His carnation greenhouses provided a daily staple, when a carnation was considered part of a man’s daily attire.
His Ocean and Water Street flower fields were a tourist attraction, drawing more flower growers into the Ocean Street flats, which became the popular “Flower Basin.” It’s soil was ideal for growing, due to a high water table that keeps unwatered lawns and plants green, even through dry times.
Thompson was among the first paper white narcissus growers on the west coast, claiming a market advantage as the earliest to bloom in the state. Thompson pioneered golden calla lily development and production on the West Coast, becoming a major national supplier of this specialty, chiefly to New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Thompson built a special hot house to grow delicate tropical plants, including specialty fruits and vegetables such as bananas, pineapples, guavas, tomatoes, and green peppers. When the balmy Eastside microclimate was called the “Banana Belt,” it was quite literally true.
Leedham
British-born Edward Leedham retired to Santa Cruz from San Luis Obispo flower growing in 1892, then lost his life savings by 1899 via his much-sued Santa Cruz Penny Press. At age 70, he was still caring for two daughters and a blind son, and decided to return to his first love, flower growing. He didn’t have to look far. Peter Thrift was growing the first Dahlias in California at his home on Garfield Street (once located about where the Water Street steps to the County Court House are). Like many Santa Cruz gardeners, Thrift’s garden was an experiment in the variety of plants he could raise in our rare Mediterranean climate, and in Thrift’s case, they were all Dahlias. With Thrift’s encouragement and assistance, Leedham borrowed $50, acquired the Bias Potato Farm on River Street (now Gateway Plaza shopping center), and established Leedham Bulb Company. The company improved
plant stock, creating many new dahlia varieties, and was shipping all over California. San Francisco held a Dahlia Show in 1901 at which Leedham displayed 25 varieties, yet all the other dahlias from other towns traced their origins to his Santa Cruz nursery.
Becoming the coast’s leading expert, Leedham did volume business. He expanded to growing daffodils, gladiolas, narcissus and freesias. Thrift died shortly after the 1904 State Flower Show named California’s leading flower regions as Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, and Santa Cruz. At the 1905 World’s Fair in Portland, Oregon, Leedham was presented as California’s leading bulb grower. The crush of new business caused Leedham to reorganize his company into a co- op in 1905, with J. Montroyd Sharp as president, Leedham vice president, postmaster O. J. Lincoln secretary, banker Henry Willey treasurer, and C.E. Lilley as farm manager. As a co- op, they could take in flowers from numerous small growers, one of the “backyard industries” that were flourishing in Santa Cruz at the time. They bred bulbs never grown on the West Coast before, and benefited from the frequent visits and hybrids of Santa Rosa horticulturist Luther Burbank.
Growers
Sharp had a Beach Hill block planted in bulbs and a windmill. Portland World Fair organizer Colin McIsaac moved to Santa Cruz in 1907, was elected head of the Board of
Trade, which he renamed the Chamber of Commerce. McIsaac bought land at East Cliff Drive and 17th Avenue, and laidout his “Lilydale” calla and ginseng farm. In 1908, O. J. Lincoln established “Los Robles” bulb farm west of Lilydale, specializing in freesias, baby gladioli, Anemone St. Caen, etc. C.E. Lilley established a fern and bulb farm on Water Street that became one of the top five local nurseries. Leedham sold his company in 1908 for $4,000, although remaining as farm manager.
In 1907, Leedham had acquired 200 “Purity” freesia bulbs from the strain’s originator, Rudoph Fischer, but the crop failed, and the stock was thrown under a greenhouse bench. Flower breeder George Streator discovered the discards the following year, and took them to his Westside bulb farm south of Younglove Avenue. There he propagated them, and sold the increase to C.E. Lilley and Colin McIsaac. Robert Lincoln recalled later, “…it is from this stock that practically all of the plantings of Freesia Purity has come!”
When Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet” visited Santa Cruz on a goodwill tour in 1908, McIsaac proposed planting every vacant lot and weed-patch in flowers. He even turned a junkyard at the waterfront (now Monterey Bay Visitors Center) into Chamber of Commerce Park, or Peace Fleet Park for its array of white rowboats planted in flowers. Shipboard dignitaries and the general public found Santa Cruz an Eden of flowers and ancient trees.
War
In 1914, Belgium flower exports were crippled by World War I hostilities, leaving local growers an opportunity to capture part of the market. But to do so, McIsaac had them establish the county Santa Cruz Bulb Growers Association. McIsaac pointed out that Santa Cruz, Live Oak, and Capitola had some of the characteristics of Holland, where bulb farms only occupied a 1-to-3 mile area stretching 50 miles behind coastal sand dunes, subject to damp North Sea winds, and a long, slowly-warming spring, with windmill-supplied irrigation. The slogan for Santa Cruz blooms was “Fog Kissed.” McIsaac resigned the Chamber to focus on promoting the association at 1915 World’s Fairs in San Francisco and San Diego.
During the war, imported bulbs were suspected of bringing an infestation of stem nematodes, so in 1917, the government enacted a “Quarantine 37” embargo against the importation of some European bulbs. The scarcity of dutch bulbs drove prices up, so that Baby Gladiolas and Spanish Iris, once $3-$5 per thousand, were now $20-to-$40 per thousand Glads, and $25-per-thousand irises. The highest jump was narcissus, from $15 up to $150 per thousand. Yet this also carried greater risk of susceptibility to nematode.
Pioneer Thompson died June 13, 1918, with his nursery to be divided among his children, according to a will made after his first wife’s death and prior to his second marriage in 1912, thus failing to provide a place for his surviving widow. The division also would bisect greenhouses and destroy the famous nursery. Ernest Isliker had worked at the Wintergardens since 1913, and as he departed for military service, he regretted the loss of this landmark business. When he returned, Isliker found their latest idea was to sell the nursery and divide the proceeds, so he quickly purchased it. He later stopped to admire a remarkable garden created by Frances Boekenoogen, and ended up marrying her.
The plant plague was followed by a human one, called the 1918 Flue Epidemic. Whatever its source, it was spread by soldiers, becoming the hidden enemy, both within allied troops, and then at home. It came in three waves, each successively worse, until the epidemic was declared over in 1919. McIsaac spent this time in Oakland selling real estate, then returned to Santa Cruz in 1920.
Scientific farming
By 1920, 300 local bulb growers were supplying the county’s five major growers: Brown’s Bulb Ranch, Seabright Bulb Co., H. A. Hyde Co. of Watsonville, E.C. Lilley, and Lincoln’s Los Robles. With the embargo on Holland bulbs still in effect, Santa Cruz needed strategies to continue growing diseasefree blooms. Bellingham, Washington, had the only known experimental bulb farm in the U. S., but its findings had little relevance for the Santa Cruz climate. Yet in 1922, local bulb growers refused to fund their own survey of local conditions. So McIsaac encouraged them to become a department of the County Farm Bureau, which already had University of California ties for study and investigation.
McIsaac fell ill in March 1923, then on March 12, the 59-yearold was dead of an acute attack of influenza. For five years after the epidemic ended, casualties were still mounting. Yet McIsaac had laid the groundwork so well, that County Farm Advisor Henry Washburn carried out the plan. The University of California at Berkeley set up a Santa Cruz County farm program, to help growers share results of trial-and- error work, or volunteer to conduct U.C.sponsored experiments at their farms. E.M. Eisele invented a lawnmowerlike freesia planter, reducing labor from three hours to three minutes, then he worked to eliminate red blight from freesia bulbs, producing his own “University Strain.” By 1923, Santa Cruz supplied 90% of the nation’s freesias, becoming the Bulb Capital of the Pacific.
However, that September the nematode had been discovered in alfalfa crops near Watsonville and Yakima, Washington, which also threatened potatoes, strawberries, narcissus and hyacinths. Bob Lincoln, Walter Roberts (Brown’s Bulb Ranch), Henry Blackburn and the Santa Cruz Chamber successfully argued to exempt Santa Cruz bulbs from quarantine. Yet with fears growing over California bulbs, Santa Cruz growers stopped labeling their product California Bulbs but “Santa Cruz bulbs,” a term that became a mark of quality.
The advocate for Dutch bulb importers was Santa Cruzan H.A. Van Torchiana, Pacific Coast consul to the Netherlands. Washburn gave Torchiana a personally guided tour of Santa Cruz bulb growers, showing the unexcelled quality control, such that Holland brokerage firms sometimes sold Santa Cruz bulbs as Holland bulbs in the eastern market. In Washington D.C., Torchiana tried to get the quarantine removed from Holland bulbs, but his arguments were contradicted by port inspectors.
Santa Cruz County would continue to grow in importance as a center for flower production, for more than half-a- century.
The scarcity of dutch bulbs drove prices up, so that Baby Gladiolas and Spanish Iris, once $3-$5 per thousand, were now $20to-$40 per thousand Glads, and $25-per-thousand irises. The highest jump was narcissus, from $15 up to $150 per thousand. Yet this also carried greater risk of susceptibility to nematode.