Note on back of photograph: Here a rural type garden sprawls at ease in its generous use of space. The simple axis of brick-paved walk is sufficient to tie it into the general plan of garden arrangement. 1st Installment
Bettye K. Cree (Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Cree) was born March 24, 1879. She married Raymond Cree, a founder and developer of Palm Springs, but the marriage ended in divorce. Ms. Cree then maintained an art gallery in Palm Springs. She died in Pasadena on March 16, 1944.
The Ludington estate, also known as Val Verde, Dias Felices, the Henry Dater house, and the Dr. Warren Austin home was designed by the architect Bertram Grovenor Goodhue, constructed in 1918 and then purchased by Charles H. Ludington in 1924. His son, Wright Saltus Ludington (who inherited the estate in 1927 or 1930), engaged the landscape architect Lockwood de Forest to design the gardens in 1925. Retaining the geometry of Goodhue's design and much of the wilderness, Lockwood transformed the gardens over a period of twenty-three years.
View of the Lansdowne Hermes (a Roman, marble statue from the Hadrianic period, now in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art), against a backdrop of alternating columns and hedges. On top of each column is a sculpted basket of flowers.