An Evening at Broomall’s Dahlia Farm: Eagle Rock, 1912

By Estelle Lawton Lindsey. Originally published in the Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, September 14, 1912, page 4.

Original text by Estelle Lawton Lindsey is in the public domain. Editorial introduction and notes copyright © 2026 by Steve K. Lloyd. All rights reserved. 

In September 1912, journalist Estelle Lawton Lindsey visited J. J. Broomall’s dahlia farm at Eagle Rock and found more than a commercial flower garden. Her account gives us one of the most vivid surviving glimpses of Broomall in his own surroundings: watering with hoe and hose as evening settles over the garden, surrounded by dahlias, chickens, goats, a collie, an Angora cat, his wife, and visitors carrying armloads of flowers.

The portrait is especially valuable because the Broomall who emerges from Lindsey’s interview is already recognizably the man who would later write extensively about dahlias and plant improvement. He speaks of hybridization and selection, unexpected variation, fragrance, horticultural education, the economic possibilities of growing plants, and the mysteries still hidden in plant life. His question about why gardening was not taught in the public schools echoes ideas he had already expressed in print and would continue to develop for decades.

Lindsey’s descriptions and Broomall’s reported explanations are preserved here as historical testimony rather than modern horticultural instruction. A few scientific assertions reflect contemporary misunderstandings or anecdotal explanations and are addressed in the Editor’s Notes rather than altered in the text.

There was a great peace over the dahlia garden; the sun had slipped gently down behind the mountains and all the sky was crimson with the afterglow. The cool sea breeze reached even parched Eagle Rock and blew the flaming dahlia heads back and forth so that Frisky was confused in his feline mind as to whether to chase the dahlias or the butterflies, and ended by washing the face of the Duke of Fife as he lay panting in the irrigation ditch.

On the slope by the side of the vine-covered cottage two Toggenburg browsed peacefully among the chickens.

In the garden with Frisky, the Angora cat, and the collie, euphoniously dubbed the Duke of Fife because of his distinguished lineage, were J. J. Broomall, the dahlia man, his pretty wife, and a friend of mine and myself, with our arms filled with wonderful blossoms.

The dahlia farm is a place of rest, a place of wonder at what the skill of man can do when intelligently co-operating with the forces of nature, and a place to learn how happy one may be if one will only study all the beauty that is held in plant life.

Mr. Broomall worked with hoe and hose at watering the garden while he talked to us of his work.

“Over 60 varieties,” said he with the pride of the inventor, “and dozens of them my own. Would you know they were dahlias?”

We shook our heads; we would not have known it; you would not have known it, and neither would Solomon. The garden was a riot of brilliant color, a revelation of flower form; and all these beautiful and strange blossoms were the descendants of one cactus dahlia brought from Mexico, its home, in 1842. They are the results of hybridization and selection; and the work of developing them is as fascinating as mining for rare gems, and as full of surprises.

Dahlias have a tendency to “break” into various shapes and colors, so that one stalk will show flowers of many different shapes and colors. Dahlia cultivation has always the element of surprise, the charm of watching the growth of living things.

Mr. Broomall selected an immense blossom and, leaning on his hoe, invited us to inspect it. It was more like a great, ragged, rosy chrysanthemum than anything else; the heart was seashell pink and the petals tipped with ivory.

For the sake of comparison he held it by one of his own creations. He calls the latter “Immense.” It is a giant blossom, prim as an old maid’s housekeeping; the petals were variegated pink and white, the colors being divided by a distinct line.

Los Angeles was complimented by having a flaming yellow beauty named in her honor, and a delightfully colored bloom of colossal size and fullness was called “Luzon.”

The stem of one of these flowers broke in my hand from the weight of the head.

The cat made a sudden high leap at a golden butterfly resting on a blossom as white and fluffy as he, and larger than his head. This flower is called “Blizzard.” Mr. Broomall broke it off and handed it to Miss Dick; then he took up his hoe and gave us his philosophy. Philosophy always seems to bring up the rear guard of an interview.

“I’ve always been a florist,” he began. “I took the gold medal at the Seattle exposition and had a flourishing business in the north until my lungs drove me here. So you will gather I know something about plants. What I want to know is: why don’t they teach gardening in the public schools? Plant life is the foundation of all life and it would furnish an interest for hundreds of women who now have nothing to do but be bored with life.

You see that big single dahlia over there, the white that looks like the petals were coated with wine-colored velvet? Don’t you think a bored woman could be happy if she knew her work had given that wonderful bit of beauty to the world? Cross-breeding is not hard work unless you regard hand pollenization as hard.”

“Ignorance of the laws of plant life make people do some ridiculous things, too. I had a neighbor who planted cucumbers and cantaloupes together and had no idea until I told her why the melons tasted like pumpkins.

Then there is the question of a living that confronts so many women with children. This work is healthy and keeps one at home; it makes you happy, too. And while you do not make a fortune, you do make a living.

“There’s a mighty compensation in working with flowers; they never are ungrateful. They don’t get disagreeable and they have a fine way of surprising you every once and again.

“One day I went out while the flowers were wet with dew and found a delicate dahlia had suddenly become fragrant; it smells like a spray of honeysuckle, but loses its odor during the heat of the day.

No man knows the law that made that perfume—but there is something new to be enjoyed by all men.”

At this point Frisky fell to sucking the end of his tail, a gentle hint, so Mrs. Broomall informed us, that it was supper time; and my friend and I ran for the car, the lights of which were gleaming in the distance.

If you are bored with life and beauty rests you, pay a visit to the dahlia farm.

1. Dahlia origins. Lindsey’s statement that the cultivated flowers in Broomall’s garden were descendants of “one cactus dahlia brought from Mexico … in 1842” should be read as a period account, not as a reliable summary of the ancestry of the modern garden dahlia. Cultivated dahlias arose through a more complex history involving multiple forms and generations of hybridization and selection.
   
   

2. Cucumbers and cantaloupes. The anecdote attributing an undesirable melon flavor to cucumbers and cantaloupes being planted together reflects a common gardening misconception. Cross-pollination affects the genetic makeup of resulting seed and its offspring; it does not ordinarily change the flavor of the fruit already developing on the pollinated plant.