Here’s a piece on the Victor Reiter family garden on Stanyan Street, excerpted from The Gardens of San Francisco, Joan Hockaday, Timber Press 1988, titled “A Connoisseur’s Collection on the Slope of Mount Sutro”:

Every city has its foremost plantsman, one knighted in inside circles as the expert to consult on matters green and growing. Victor Reiter was San Francisco’s appointed master and he carried his title with a firm but tender grasp, only occasionally looking up from his breeding journal to realize the whole town was talking about his botanical and horticultural prowess.

Mr. Reiter’s sheltered and sloping one-acre garden at the foot of Mt. Sutro is like no other in this city; the size alone, combined with his extraordinary plant collection, made this a “must see” for visiting garden enthusiasts. The octogenarian’s passing during production of this book only sharpens the debate over whether his garden – or any garden – is but one man’s creation, destined for a new life of decline or redesign, and, further, whether garden preservation should occupy a more prominent role in conservation efforts, as it does abroad.

Fortunately for San Francisco, this spacious garden is now in the hands of Mr. Reiter’s widow and children who share his keen interest in the land and its upkeep. For one brief moment, however, on a crisp fall 1986 day soon after Mr. Reiter’s passing, the garden was in the hands (and knees) of a most distinguished clean-up crew – one San Francisco Parks chief, one Pacific Horticulture magazine editor, and dozens of others untitled but no les expert – gathered to help family members keep weeds at bay for one more season. It was an astonishing, affectionate outpouring in tribute to Mr. Reiter.

Hundreds of rare plants once thrived here; many survive his years of collecting. Collecting was, for Mr. Reiter, an all-consuming hobby, a chance to bring back a one-of-a-kind specimen, a chance to shelter outdated, unpopular hybrids until fashions changed once again. He had the space, the knowledge, and, finally, the horticultural connections to make collecting a joy. Each plant has a fascinating history behind its place in this garden – smuggled alpine seeds from the bank president’s wife, rare cemetery tree sips, and everywhere gifts and exchanges from friends. These stories, in later years, became the focus for garden visitors, became almost as important as the plants themselves.

A turning point for this garden – and gardener – came with an unexpected chill in December 1932. In Mr. Reiter’s words: “The big Freeze drove the dirt gardeners out of their burrows most successfully … the unprecedented icy blasts from out of the Arctic swept over Northern California leaving its gardens ravaged and its gardeners broken hearted.” Thus the California Horticultural Society was born out of resolve of Mr. Reiter and other early participants to “pattern some of the features of our fledgling after that great organization – the Royal Horticultural Society – whose objective is the advancement of horticulture in all its branches.”

While some gardeners collect the biggest and brightest new plants, Mr. Reiter wanted the smallest, most subtle, oldest breeds. For new plants, he bred his own, on site, then offered them for sale in his LaRochette nursery, which his father started years before. Roses were the specialty in the early LaRochette days before Mr. Reiter Jr. advanced to strictly temperate climate specialties, including that most colorful and tender of San Francisco plants – fuchsias. The 1952 LaRochette catalogue is a fuchsia connoisseur’s prize in itself, with its enthusiastic listing of introductions that are now scattered in gardens all over San Francisco and elsewhere. He set a goal to breed a fine white fuchsia which appeared in 1949: Fuchsia ‘Flying Cloud’ – a double rosy white. He then moved on to challenges among the eucheras, echeverias, correas and brooms. Remnants of LaRochette Nursery appear everywhere in this garden – from the masses of fuchsias haphazardly strewn about the upper garden to the lathhouses and greenhouse foundations near the once-bustling ‘office’ behind the house.

A magnificent tree – a wedding present from a British well wisher – now dominates the upper garden. When the Magnolia campbellii mollicomata is in bloom in mid-February, friends father to toast its magnificence. In Victor Reiter’s opinion, this Himalayan Magnolia tree, with its enormous, clear, deep pink blossoms, was the handsomest in the city. The tree arrived as a three-year old and had to be rerouted through Canada along the way.

So rarified is the atmosphere in this plant collection beneath Mt. Sutro, one is immediately tempted to inquire about seeing the family ‘jewels’ – Rhododendron ‘Victor Reiter Sr.’, Fuchsia ‘Mrs. Victor Reiter’ Echeveria ‘Carla Reiter’ – until it becomes clear that this unassuming family would prefer showcasing other families’ gems. Besides, having a plant named in one’s honor is a mixed blessing; if the plant does poorly, the honoree is blamed, rather than the supplier, or the real culprit, which might be a snail or a slug. For this reason, and others, Mr. Reiter preferred to name his new plants according to color, shape or size – characteristics rather than characters.

Each plant, each family has its colorful history at every turn in the garden. Sadly, Mr. Reiter never wrote all the stories down, never strolled through his vast garden with tape recorder in hand, so some memories are lost forever – a lesson other collectors might note. Mr. Reiter’s tremendous photo collection, however, equals the best of family albums and chronicles his life work on 35 mm slides, many on permanent view at Strybing’s Horticultural Library.

This private garden could hardly be duplicated today – as with any fine collection, it took years to gather and adapt. To see so many different flowering plants in one unscientific setting is enough to send the uninitiated along the collecting path at once; for the initiated, the paths led to Utopia. Unfortunately, because Mr. Reiter collected the tiniest species, they are the first to succumb to the weeds, the first to be smothered under larger less desirable plants nearby.

Nature, ever so quickly, closes in. Cities, just as quickly lose their living collections.