Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, city and country, creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

to Sonoma County in the 90s with your host Dana to Rico. Hello, I'm Dana to Rico and Welcome to Sonoma County in the 90s. Today I have with me two lovely ladies from the Luther Burbank home and garden and we're going to be talking about the

Luther Burbank home and garden that is located here in santa rosa. Sonoma County. We're such a fortunate group to have all of these resources in our community. So let's go ahead and join Kathy Stevenson who is the coordinator for the wrecks and pay park for the

Luther Burbank home and garden Cathy and also Cynthia Nestle, who is a volunteer and she is the training chairperson and a member of the board of directors for the Luther Burbank home and garden. It's nice to have both of you here today. I think that the

Luther Burbank home and garden is absolutely a wonderful resource For our community. Um Kathy, would you like to tell me a little bit about it? Yes, Luther Burbank home and gardens is a registered national state and local historic landmark. It is the site where Luther Burbank

conducted many of his plant experiments during his almost 50 year career And we have visitors from all over the world that come and visit and people from all 50 states. It actually is the most asked about tourist attraction in Santa Rosa? And second in the county

only to Fort Ross? We have approximately 70,000 people, 70-75,000 people that go through the property each year. And we have a bit of an active volunteer program. We have almost 200 volunteers who work as docents gift shop workers and gardeners. And we're actually funded as far

as the staff and the maintenance of the building and the property by the city of Santa Rosa. So is it entirely funded by the city of Santa Rosa? No, it's not. The volunteer assoc association runs a gift shop and with the tours that they conduct, they

raise funds that help us with our special programs, are educational programs and all the extra things that we want to be able to do for the community Cynthia, you're in charge of training of the volunteers. What kind of work do you train in? Or do you

train the guy gardeners? Do you train the gift shop people? What do you do all of the above dana. We have training for docents and that's the group that leads tours of the home and the gardens. We train the gift shop workers who work in our

gift shop and help customers. And we train the gardeners and the gardeners, as you would guess, actually hands on work in the garden, helping to maintain them as you see them today. The gardens are absolutely beautiful, especially at this time of year. What kind of training

goes into the gardeners? Because do you have people who are gardeners that volunteer or do you have people who want to become gardeners that are volunteer? I would say most of them have already tried gardening to some degree, usually in their own home, in their own

yards and in a sense know that they like to have their hands in the dirt. That's usually what we find. But they come with the notion too that they will have an opportunity to learn a lot more about gardening by working with us in our program.

And that's certainly true. The gardener's work under the direction of the site curator who is very knowledgeable about horticulture and plants and planting and all the things you need to know to make it come together. So it's a combination really of helping maintain the gardens and

at the same time learning a great deal. I see the gardens are just lovely right now. They're at their best. Yes. Yes. The summertime, can you tell me this is a historic landmark. When did the Luther Burbank home and garden become historic land. A little bit

of history on it to have that information when Elizabeth Burbank Luther Burbank married a woman who was about 30 years younger than he was. And I often think that if it hadn't been for that, the property may not have been preserved in the way that it

was. And he died in 1926 and Elizabeth Burbank died in 1977. And when she died, she willed the property to the city of Santa Rosa. And there was a group of community members, very civic minded people that got together and there was a steering committee to

look at what they could do with the property and how to preserve it. And they were the forerunner to the present volunteer association In 1979. They actually opened the site for docent led tours and in 1980 they opened the gift shop and they obtained the, excuse

me, the historic landmark designation during that period of time. The home, I went into the home about 15 years ago, I believe on the tour, but I haven't been back. But I do remember at the time there were lovely glass collection in the window and furnishings

are those the actual furnishings that were in the home. Um Most of the furnishings in the Burbank home are the original family furnishings that belonged to Luther Burbank's side of the family. His mother Olive lived in santa rosa for a long period of time. She moved

out here after he did. And so most of the furniture is Burbank family furniture. There are things in the house that were collected by Elizabeth Burbank in later years and among those is most of the pieces in the glass collection and the tiles, they're very interesting

tiles in the house that she collected. And so she did do some also some minor renovations to the house. So it's a combination. But mostly Burbank family furnishing furnishing the furniture. It's been a while. I have to get back there now. Cynthia, How about the gardens

themselves? What kind of historic plants are in the actual gardens? Well, I'm glad you asked that Dana, because sometimes some of our visitors assume that everything in the gardens is a Burbank developed plant and that that's not the case. We probably have about 20-25 actual Burbank

developed plants in in the garden. Uh Some of the more famous ones include his paradox walnut and there's a very large example, the paradox walnut in the garden, his famous spineless cactus, the plum cotton tree, the Shasta daisy, Just to name a few actual Burbank developments.

But the majority of plants in the garden are not. And one of the reasons for that is that the time that Burbank was doing his work, there were no plant patent laws, no protection really for horticultural developments. And so anything he developed could be picked up

by another breed or hybridize er renamed crossed with something else and passed on. So unfortunately we don't have a lot of his original work. We do however, have demonstration beds where we plant examples of the kinds of plants he worked with. So while they might not

be his exact zinnias for instance, they would be zinnias similar to those he worked with and we would have a whole bed this time of year, uh, demonstrating his work with zinnias. We grow some of his wheat crops as demonstration his potato is famous Burbank potato.

So we try to do as much as we can to let the visitors see the kinds of things he was interested in his interests as you know, we're extremely broad and encompassed fruits, vegetables, berries, nuts, flowers, trees, there was virtually no part of the plant kingdom.

He didn't get his hands on. And we tried to demonstrate that what he was very extensive. Why is Luther Burbank so important. He introduced at least 800 new varieties of plants uh, during his working lifetime on the Santa Rosa site. Uh, someone figured out once that

that meant on average a new plant every 23 days. I haven't done the arithmetic, but that's what someone figured. Um, and he was introducing things at that time that the world had really never seen. Uh, he became known worldwide and as a result received plants and

seeds from all over the world, some of which he introduced directly, some of which he combined through hybridization with other plants. For instance, his famous santa rosa plum, which almost everyone is familiar with. Um, so he really introduced so much that improved the quality, the quantity,

the size um, of our flowers, of our fruits and vegetables. It was very committed to trying to make the world a better place. And this was the way that that he chose to do it. And I think he demonstrated, and was the first to demonstrate uh

man's ability to really manipulate the plant kingdom for our own purposes. And that's certainly his significant contribution. I happen to be fortunate enough to have his 12 volume set of encyclopedias that I'm not quite sure when they were published in 1912, And I was noticing in

it, he also developed strawberries and the different shapes of strawberries, which were quite interesting. I mean, it was it's amazing everything that he did. A lot of pruning, propagating grafting very interesting. Probably the quality, the innate quality that he had uh that he should be most

noted for in addition to just plain hard work, was his very sensitive eye and ability to select. So he could grow a whole field of poppies, for instance, and to you and me, they might look like all the same poppies. But Burbank would be able to

spot one that had a different characteristic, something perhaps that he was looking for in the way of size or shape or color to isolate that poppy then and use it to create future generations. So, his his ability to see beyond what most of us can see

in the field of plants was quite remarkable. Well, that's what I found fascinating about the strawberries and to create the mammoth strawberries that we see today. And he He was taking these abnormalities out of this huge field. And then by the 6th generation he had hybrid,

I guess what he was striving to get, which is rather interesting. There's also another site affiliated with Burbank home and garden. Can either of you talk a little bit about that? Yes, the Western Sonoma County Historical Society runs the Gold Ridge Farm, which was an 18

acre parcel originally that Luther Burbank purchased in I believe 1889. And he commuted to Sebastopol and did many of the experiments with larger plants, trees and all during that period of time. Um Is it still an 18 acre site? I believe it's been subdivided and I'm

not sure of the acreage, but people who would like to get information on visiting the site can call the Western Sonoma County Historical Society in Sebastopol. Um to get the hours of operation during that time, Luther Burbank was visited by people from all over the world

and we were going to have to stop here in a minute for a break. So why don't you just hold that thought and then we'll, we'll get back to you. Stay tuned, we'll be right back after this brief. If you have diabetes, there are a world

of reasons to get a dilated eye exam because diabetic eye disease doesn't have to take away your sight if you need any more reasons. Just look around you. Shut down. Hello, I'm dana d'Errico and welcome back to Sonoma County in the nineties were discussing the Luther

Burbank home and garden today. So let's rejoin Kathy and Cynthia Kathy. You were just about to show us some fascinating pictures so our viewers can get a chance to see exactly who this gentleman was. I'm sure many of us already know that because there are so

many different images of him throughout the county. But you were going to hold up the picture of Luther Burbank with Henry Ford and thomas Edison. Now, how did he have all these famous people coming to santa rosa? When Cynthia was talking about the importance of Luther

Burbank, she said it very well. He was an inventor. He was seen as an inventor by other famous people and he was considered appear and when Henry ford and thomas Edison visited the world's fair in 1915, I believe it was. They took a special train up

to santa rosa to visit Luther Burbank and from that time they had a correspondence that both carried on a correspondence of Burbank. He wrote to a lot of people and he had many famous people that visited him throughout the years, including Helen Keller and um powdery

ski, the famous pianist and composer and so he was highly thought of. Sometimes the number of visitors he had was a problem for him and people would stand around his site at the corner of santa rosa Avenue and Snowman Avenue just to get a glimpse of

him out in the garden working. So he managed to keep a little bit more privacy out of out of the Gold Ridge farm. And he did limit the number of people that could visit there now who's caring for the Gold Ridge site. It's a group of

volunteers through the, through the Western Sonoma County Historic Society, very dedicated group. They have been able been successful in getting some grants and they have rebuilt the cottage that was or I believe renovated the cottage that was there where Burbank would stay when he went there

and they have rebuilt a barn And they have many other plans for the future. But it's a small but very dedicated. They get no assistance from the city or from anybody else. It's all private volunteer. What I wanted to ask you is this is a very

special year. It's 150 years celebration. So what events or what things do you have planned for this year? And I noticed that you have this wonderful package. Well, we have a number of our events have already happened. We had a very special arbor day event this

year and the students planted a cedar of Lebanon on the property. That's a clone, an actual uh, from the original cedar of Lebanon that Luther Burbank planted and that was his favorite tree and the tree that he was buried under. Um we had a special mother's

Day celebration of victorian handicrafts. We just recently had our fifth annual Burbank garden exposition which was very well attended. We had garden experts and people from, we had entertainment, we had the woman who talks about bats, we had somebody from the bird rescue, we had a

B. Person and butterfly people. It was a wonderful, wonderful day. Um we're going to be having a plant sale on september 25th 25th. Another II Yeah I was at your last plant sale and I bought the white black Burbank original that you have. Now you're holding

up this package of seeds and what is it? This is our logo for this year, this year being the 150th anniversary of Luther Burbank's birth. And so it is called the Sesquicentennial which we all had to learn to say. And we have banners that are up

on Santa Rosa Avenue and various other places with this logo on them which is in honor of the sesquicentennial year. So the plant sale will be on september 25th and then the holiday open house which will be the 20th annual holiday open house will be the

first weekend in december and that's not to be missed that want to come to, this is just the most incredible decorations. They're unique. They're one of a kind, it's all greens and fruit and flowers and they decorate the greenhouse, they decorate all the rooms in the

house and they decorate the outside of the house. And then the gift shop will have some wonderful new products for sale. And it's just, it's a fun event. It's a two day event. It's free and it's from 10 until four both days. I believe that it's

the fourth and the fifth of december. But it is the first weekend and I can tell you exactly what it is. It's on a lot of people actually save some of their christmas shopping for our open house because the gift shop is full of some really

very special products. Are they crafts that are made by volunteers or are they commercial product products? To a fair extent. The gift shop committee uh is extremely selective in what we offer in the gift shop. And they're either things related to gardening related directly to Burbank

or made by by local artisans. So there's some some very special things and we always look forward to that event. There's refreshments, there's music. It's, it's a very nice way to start your holiday season. Well, the garden sale was very interesting and you do sell some

of the species at the garden sale that Luther Burbank developed and how many plants did you sell at the last sale? What can one expect for a variety? There were quite a few. Oh my goodness, I'm sure there were 100 I was going to say 100

at least 100 varieties of things, most of them in relatively small containers. So they're easy to take home and get started in your own garden. And the theme this year is attracting wildlife to your garden. And that does not include deer, which you don't have any

trouble attracting dana. I wanted to have Cynthia mentioned another. Very important date for this fall. And that is the date of our gardener volunteer training. Okay, because I was gonna ask about how does one become involved? How do you become a volunteer and how can you

become a friend of the Luther Burbank home and garden? Well, it's very easy to become involved in Luther Burbank home and gardens and anyone that's interested at this point should give a call to our office 5245445. and request a volunteer application. That's, that's the first step.

We do training two or three times a year for new volunteers. And Kathy was referring to the upcoming training for gardener volunteers, which will take place, I believe on September 18, I think I have that date right? It's a Saturday. So, people interested in becoming gardeners

should get a form and Get it back into us. We then go through an interview process. Uh, and then the training will take place on the 18th. Uh, there'll be some subsequent training over the course of the next week or so to give them some hands

on experience. We will be training docents and gift job workers, probably next March. So people interested in those programs have a little longer to get in touch with us, but we would certainly welcome their inquiries. Uh, training for docents is a little more extensive. It usually

involves at least uh five half day sessions and we schedule as many as possible on the weekend so that people that work during the week can still participate at the same time. We'll take new gift shop workers. Their training, usually one runs three or four half

day sessions, also on Saturdays. So those people have a little longer to think about it, but we would encourage their, their application at any time and we can always use more volunteers. It's a nice organization, all of us who have been involved for some time. Find

it personally socially very rewarding as well as of course the chance to, to make a contribution. Now, how, what would one expect, what kind of hours, how long would they be required to work or? Okay, the gardeners are asked once they're trained to work two shifts

a month and a shift is basically a three hour morning from say nine to noon. So twice a month we'd like them to give us a morning with the docent and gift shop volunteers that works a little differently. We schedule them much more precisely because of

course we have to staff the facility every day that we're open the new doses and the new gift shop workers will work three times each month, either a morning or an afternoon shift. We have both and since we're open six days a week, uh they have

a big choice of days, monday is the only day were closed so they can work any of the other days during the week, morning or afternoon. But they do, you need to make an advanced commitment as to which days their work so we can set up

a schedule and make sure we always have docents on duty when people visit the gardens and we always have gift shop workers available. And that's during, during the season, which is the beginning of april through the end of october. The gardeners work year round. That's right.

The gardens were lovely in the greenhouses, the greenhouse on the site, the original greenhouse and that's how it was built with the brick base and then the glass isn't that incredible. Yeah, it's very beautiful, very interesting. Story about that I find so amazing is that in

the 1906 earthquake when there was a lot of damage to other parts of Santa Rosa. Not a pane of glass in the greenhouse broke, which is just amazing. Yeah. That's pretty, pretty amazing. You talked about the amount of visitors. I was amazed 70-75,000 visitors annually. How

far away do these visitors come from? Are they far are they near, they come from all over the world and I find it interesting that some of the people who come from Japan or Germany or say New Zealand. They know more about Luther Burbank because they've

learned it in their school schooling than a lot of the people that come to visit from the United States. So it is a real idol all around the world still in certain countries. It's very interesting. Now. He's the one who came and said on horseback that

the fields were higher than what a man could see. Isn't there a famous saying that Luther Burbank? He said so many things that have been capitalized like that. Our favorite of course being his statement when he got to the santa rosa area that he believed he

had found the chosen spot on all the earth as far as nature was concerned And those of us who live and work here I think would agree with, where was he from? Massachusetts, massachusetts. And he came in what year? Let's see he was 26 years old,

right, 1875. And so he just stayed here and then developed there. Was he always so horticultural only or did he have another professional? I think his father had initially intended that he should become a physician and he also for some period time had leanings towards the

arts but very early on he recognized his interest in plants and in horticulture and actually before he left massachusetts, he had his first horticultural success. He by accident came upon a potato seed ball, which is a relatively rare phenomenon and he recognized it as such and

through some hybridizing of those seeds was able to improve the quality of the common potato tremendously. What we know today as the baking potato or the Idaho potato is actually the offspring of potato that Burbank developed even before he left massachusetts. And he actually then sold

the rights to that development to a local grower in Massachusetts for $150 and used it to buy his train ticket to come to California California and here he settled. You have an interesting picture of him here, which is kind of the famous picture that we always

see of him. What age was he in that picture? Because that's the picture that's on the set of encyclopedias. Also you would have been probably in his late 50's. Mhm. Because this is a very famous picture in the newspaper. Just a couple of the local press

Democrats. There were some pictures of the new plate that's available at the gift shop and also the plate that was put out for the 1915 world's exposition. Is that with that other one. Can you tell us a little bit about that in the gift shop? The

new plate, it depicts some famous historical views of Snowmen County six different ones. And it is a follow up to a plate that was done as you said during the 1915. I have it. Okay, yeah. And so it was based on that concept and it's a

very popular gift shop item, very lovely and it comes in three different colors so you can match it to your decor. Yes. Green, blue or red and blue or red. That's right. I thank both of you for being on. We're out of time. I'm sure anyone

in Sonoma County who has not been to the gardens will be there this year and I hope to have you again soon. Thank you for joining me. I'm Dana d'Errico and this is Sonoma County in the nineties. I look forward to seeing you the next time.