The Knave Continued from Page 41 order included a great many from Australia as well as the native California Toyon. Also Madrone, Strawberry Trees, English and Portugal Laurels, Mapleleaf Bottle Trees, Pepper Trees, Brooms, Breath of Heaven, Bird of Paradise, Lilacs and Privet. Stephen Nolan must have just about emptied his Belle View Nursery. T MUST have been Oakland's H early natural infancy park-like that setting made in it its a garden paradise and eventually a haunt for nurserymen: Plants were sent from the Oakland region to all parts of California, including Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, as early as the middle 1850s. Magnificent groves of oaks covered the broad but gentle sloping land where the town was founded. Motorists snarled today in traffic jams at 14th Street, Broadway and San Pablo Avenue can hardly STEPHEN NOLAN Pioneer Oakland Nurseryman White picket fence guards Potter's garden from San Pablo Avenue, Broadway and 14th Street, in 1869 imagine the scene that intersection presented 115 years ago. In the gore now occupied by the Wells Fargo Bank stood the picturesque gardens of one George Lee. He was already occupying the land when Henry P. Irving deeded him the 15.25 acres for $1,200 on Feb. 18, 1856. Lee's holdings extended from 14th Street and Broadway up San Pablo Ave. and along Telegraph Ave. to a point above 17th Street. He had a dwelling there, but when he lost his life in 1857 the largest part of the estate was sold to George C. Potter. Lee was drowned when the SS Central America went down in a hurricane off Cape Hatteras on the Atlantic Coast, Sept. 12, 1857. Potter paid $4,000 for 11 acres of the Lee land in 1857. The Lee dwelling was moved to Ninth and Jefferson Streets, and Potter built a new home in the gore for his bride. They came across the bay from San Francisco. Ely Playter bought the corner where the bank now stands. The Potter garden was surrounded by a white picket fence, and Potter wasted little time in finding himself a gardener. He hired a young man who had just arrived here from his birthplace on the Isle of Jersey off the coast of England. The gardener was Stephen Nolan. TEPHEN Nolan occupied a S little white cottage on the Potter estate, a dwelling that stood off Telegraph Avenue near where 17th Street crosses. He brought his wife to the cottage and they raised four daughters and one son during their Oakland residence. The girls were all named after flowers: Rose, Daisy, Violet, Camellia. The gardens Nolan inherited included the citron, the lime, lemon, orange, pineapple and banana plants- all in fruit. But Nolan proceeded to add much more. There were reports that the Nolan children and the Potter youngsters were sad when the property was bisected by streets in later years, destroying their favorite berry bushes. Potter died in 1863. It was several years after that when Nolan established his Belle View Nursery well out on Telegraph Road - about COMPLETE WARD /MONTGOMERY KITCHENS or * BATHROOMS DESIGNED AND INSTALLED BY WARDS where the new Freeway bridges Telegraph today. The Potter home was not dismantled until 1878. Nolan probably planted the eucalyptus tree in the Potter garden that was two feet in diameter in 1872. Reports from those early days say the Potter garden was ablaze with flowers scattered under and between the mighty oaks. "Evidently Stephen Nolan did a good job," reports H. M. Butterfield, agriculturist emeritus of the University of California Extension School. Much information regarding NoIan comes to us from Butterfield, once-upon-a-time a garden writer for The Tribune. Nolan was born on the Isle of Jersey in 1834. He learned his gardener's profession in England, consequently he was well acquainted with the ornamentals in English gardens. He was also expert on the Australian acacias and eucalyptus. There was testimony from Patrick Barry of Rochester, N.Y., himself a nurseryman. Barry admitted his eyes lighted with enthusiasm when he saw the outstanding Eucalyptus Viminalis that Nolan had grown in 1874. He pictured the day he would grow the tree in his native New York realizing it could never survive the winter cold. Nolan's Belle View Nursery became famous for its Australian plants, and bulbs. -THE KNAVE
