Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden: 75 years promoting knowledge, conservation, and landscape use of California's native Flora

摘要

Every so often, one encounters an historical figure whose prescience is so startling as to suggest that she had the benefit of time travel. Such a figure is Susanna Bixby Bryant, who founded Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in 1927, as a "botanical garden where California natives reign supreme." Born in 1880, Susanna Bixby spent her formative years on her family's Rancho Los Alamitos in Southern California (see Pacific Horticulture, Summer '89). The story is told that when little Susanna was ill, her doting father, John W Bixby, led her pony into the house to her bedside, much to her delight and, one presumes, the consternation of the rest of the household. The family moved to Berkeley after the death of Susanna's father in 1887. Her schooling tookher to Boston, followed by travels to Europe and elsewhere. Back in California, Susanna caught the eye of Dr Ernest Albert Bryant, personal physician to railroad tycoon Henry Huntington (who was in the early stages of creating his own museum and botanical garden in San Marino), and they were married in 1904.