 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. We're in Santa Rosa, California at the home and gardens of my childhood hero, Luther Burbank. In his day, this plant breeder's face was as well known as George Washington's and Abraham Lincoln's. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford made a pilgrimage to Santa Rosa to visit the gardens of their counterpart in the agricultural world. Curator Barbara Coe is with us today to tell us more about Luther Burbank. Luther was a very dedicated horticulturist that gave to the plant world over 800 confirmed new introductions, new hybrids and species. And he shared with every person he ever met. He's given to us the Russet potato, which everyone knows as the McDonald's fries. And he brought to us the Shasta Daisy, which he spent over 17 years in hybridizing. It has four different plant parents, and he brought to us Santa Rosa plums. Barbara, this is a really interesting garden here at the intersection of these sidewalks. We call this our sundial garden, of course, because we have a sundial in the center of this beautiful lotus sculpture that was made by Harry Dixon. And this whole outer brick area is describing the cut section of a cyanothus seed. And cyanothus is our native Californian wild lilacs. And Mrs. Burbank very much liked this design because Mr. Burbank, of course, spent so much of his life working with seeds. She dedicated this section of this entire 1.6 acres to Mr. Burbank as a memorial garden. And I understand Luther Burbank is buried here on the side. Mr. Burbank is buried in this lawn, and he grew the tree that is no longer here, a cedar of Lebanon, and then he wanted to be feeding the roots of a tree or any sort of plant so his wife placed him beneath this tree that is no longer here. But there's a sculpture over in the corner of the garden that was made from that tree. And this is one of his? The crinomes. He used a couple of different species of crinum in order to hybridize it with the Amaryllis belladonna, what you know as the naked lady from South Africa. And he was able to hybridize these eventually after many, many years of patiently trying to pollinate these and was finally able to come up with the amour crinum, which is a variety that has evergreen leaves, whereas the naked lady, of course, does not have leaves when she actually is blooming. This has the evergreen leaves from the crinum, and it also has some of the fragrance from the Amaryllis belladonna. And he also worked with canas, didn't he? Yes, he worked with canas. He did so much, the Yellow King Humbert. We're here in the canna garden, and we have Mr. Burbank's canna Wyoming and his canna Yellow King Humbert. And Mr. Burbank worked with a lot of the different cannas in order to hybridize what he felt at the time were superior varieties. Of course, now we have many more exciting dwarf geody, dwarf crimson. There's so much to offer in canna hybridization now, but 100 years ago this was pretty spectacular to get the Yellow King Humbert. And this is something a home gardener can do even now, do a little bit of what Mr. Burbank was doing because these will make seed, they can plant the seed and see what comes of it. Easily. Anyone. That was what Mr. Burbank wanted to share most of all, was that anyone can be a plant hybridizer and introduce plants. Canas are used everywhere in the country, and do you have roses? They're also everywhere in the country. We sure do have roses. Let me take you to the Rose Garden. You do have roses? We do have roses. This is an interesting pattern for the garden. Yes. We have in the center Mr. Burbank's initial parents that he used to hybridize and then the individual plants that came from that, called the Burbank Rose, are around that little fountain there. And then each of the circles coming away from that, we have the West Coast Hybridizer's roses, many of which were donated to this garden. Kind of like a pebble thrown in a pond, they're ripples, so he started hybridizing roses and other hybridizers have continued his work. Exactly. This is a beautiful rose. This is brandy. It's a West Coast Rose. West Coast Hybridizer's rose, that's correct. Another one I really like is this one over here. I like all of them. Diamond Jubilee has the most wonderful fragrance. It's just a marvelous rose. Oh, it is nice. And Mr. Burbank didn't forget the Southwest did he. He did some cactus hybridizing. He sure did. He did quite a bit of work on cactus. He was attempting to develop a cattle fodder for very arid areas. Unfortunately, the cattle liked it so very much that when they were able to eat from the spineless cactus, they ate it down to the very nubbin and there wasn't enough left for it to regenerate. Almost spineless. Almost spineless. And they have fruit, which is a little bit spinier, and flowers. And so this is something that's really useful throughout the Southwest. Yes, it is. Thank you for a tour of these gardens and there's so much more that we didn't get to see. Well, thank you so much for coming, Curtis. It's been a joy to show it to you. The preceding was a production of New Mexico State University. The views and opinions in this program are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the NMSU Board of Regents.