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What was to become an important event in the annals of local horticulture occurred in 1893, when Italian botanist Dr. Francesco Franceschi founded the Southern California Acclimatizing Association in Montecito with greenhouses and experimental gardens. C. F. Eaton, artist, landscape architect and horticulturist, was one of his business partners, and the group became noted for growing, distributing and importing a great variety of cycads, bamboos, vines, exotic trees, shrubs and plants to this area. Offering well over a thousand rare plants in his 1897 catalogue, Franceschi's enterprise outranked all others in his time.

Franceschi claimed that the Santa Barbara area was "known at present all over the world as the place where the largest number of plants from widely different climates have congregated to live happily together, and often thrive with more vigor than in their native countries.... They have convened here from the hottest and from the coldest as well as from the temperate regions of the globe, and they combine to make a display of vegetation that has no rival anywhere."

News of Franceschi's Acclimatizing Association spread throughout California. In 1905, a brilliant Dutch horticulturist, Peter Riedel, who had worked in the botanical garden of San Diego's famed Coronado Hotel, came to Santa Barbara to meet him. Charmed by the city, he leased the Armstrong Nursery near the junction of Hot Springs Road and Schoolhouse Road. Riedel's nursery business flourished and in just two years, he took over Dr. Franceschi's company.

Until his retirement in 1934, Riedel planned the gardens of many lavish Montecito properties, with special recognition of his work on the Peabody estate Solano.

Landscape architect Otto Niedermuller immigrated from Germany to the United States in 1904, and intrigued by stories of the unique horticultural opportunities in Santa Barbara, he came to this area to supervise the landscaping of La Favorita, the William Gould residence on Olive Mill Road. Besides the gardens of the Gould estate, he also created landscaping for Ryerson, Ludington and DeWitt Parshall.

In 1907 Niedermuller married Nienke Koopmans, the Dutch sister-in-law of nurseryman Peter Riedel, and the couple later had three sons - William, Henry and Ted. Ted Niedermuller, a retired Santa Barbara attorney, remembers renowned landscape architect Lockwood deForest, Jr., who sometimes collaborated with his father on the great estate gardens. Probably the most renowned garden he worked on was Madame Walska's Lotusland. "He was an esthetic, elegant gentleman. He was a visionary."

Ted Niedermuller also recalls the depression years of the 1930s when the landscaping business went into a decline and forced his father to take employment as a deputy sheriff. "Landscaping was still his passion, so with ten willing jail trustees he saved the county a fortune by landscaping the Courthouse and County Bowl. The workers made $4 a day and he received 10%," says Ted.

The depression and ensuing war years marked a gradual turning point for estate gardens in Montecito. Although "Garden Tours" were conducted and some estate grounds were regularly open to the public, many properties were subdivided, and their vast gardens were scaled down. However, the unique Montecito climate still attracted horticulturists such as the Tappeiner family. Tucked away in the foothills, their Valleyheart Nursery, which specializes in supplying perennial cuttings to retailers nationwide, has been in continuous operation since they moved to Montecito in 1953.

More visible to local residents was Martin Christensen's nursery at the corner of East Valley and San Ysidro Roads. From 1969 to 1980, Martin supplied the gardening needs of Many Montecito neighborhoods. Today, the nursery has been replaced by a new office building and now Marin does landscape design exclusively. The only complete, full service retail nursery remaining in Montecito is Turk Hessellund, Inc., located on Coast Village Road.

Hessellund's knowledgeable and genial owner, Raymond R. Sodomka Jr., recalls that the nursery's founder, Thorkild (Turk) Hessellund, came from his native Denmark to the burgeoning community of Solvang where he was employed as a gardener. Soon he found opportunity beckoning him 'over the hill' and he moved to Santa Barbara to establish his first nursery twice more before settling in Montecito where the nursery has been in operation for over 30 years. For years, many a Montecito resident swore by Turk's incredible know-how when it came to plants.

Sodomka, a long time business associate, acquired the nursery after Hessellhund's death in 1983. Although trained in journalism, Sodomka was lured into the nursery business in 1965 because of his "passion for plants." But his journalistic talents occasionally blossom and he finds time to do gardening related articles for Sunset Magazine.

Sodomka's nursery serves both local and Los Angeles growers, and he purchases plants from as far away as Oregon and San Diego. His nursery is stocked with everything from rare tropical blooms to skillfully crafted Cotswold birdhouses.

"Santa Barbara has tremendous diversity." Raymond Sodomka comments. "Everything from desert plants to temperate climates to rainforest vegetation can grow here with proper nurturing. And all of this horticultural diversity was introduced to the area by those passionate plantsmen of he early 1900's."

These early horticulturists, D.B. Clark, Ralph K. Stevens, Peter Riedel, Dr. Franceschi and Charles F. Eaton, demonstrated the year round botanic potential of Montecito and set a high standard in garden design for those that followed. Where once only native chaparral, sycamore and California oak dominated the arid landscape, they helped transform Montecito into a world renowned garden showcase.

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