Native Beauty of Autumn Along the Garden Trail

Move over, John Jakes.

The best-selling author of “California Gold” has some home-grown competition in the form of a series of California historical novels by Santa Barbara writer Robert Easton.

Easton’s multigenerational, multivolume California series began a few years ago with the publication of “This Promised Land,” which told the stories of the Chumash Indians, Spanish explorers and missionaries and the resultant clash of cultures.

The just-published (Capra Press, Santa Barbara) second volume, “Power and Glory,” evokes the turbulent California of the Gold Rush and beyond. A subplot involves the Southern strategy to seize California for its gold and access to the Pacific Ocean. To the California history devotee, Easton’s careful research shows on every page.

While Easton’s California novels have received nowhere near the reception of Jakes’, Easton has received an honor that, to hikers at least, is quite special: A trail was recently named for him. Easton Trail winds through the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and gives visitors a close-up view of the kind of land that Easton loves, writes about and has helped preserve.

It’s altogether fitting that a trail be named for Easton, a fourth-generation Californian and longtime conservationist, who for many years has worked to protect the South-Central Coast and the Santa Barbara backcountry. And it’s altogether fitting that Easton Trail crosses the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, an enclave devoted to the display and preservation of California’s native plants.

Autumn brings a quiet beauty to the garden. Red, gold and brown leaves cloak the sycamores and other deciduous trees and shrubs. A little rain this month or next should prompt the flowering of manzanita and gooseberry.

The garden, home to more than 1,000 species of native trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses, is a place to linger and learn. It’s only about a mile’s walk around the garden, perhaps three miles if you explore all of the garden’s side trails.

(Those hikers looking for some serious exercise can drive to the end of Tunnel Road, then join up Tunnel Trail and ascend to Seven Falls and Inspiration Point. For some more hiking suggestions, buy a map or guidebook in the garden’s bookstore. Robert Easton’s California novels are also available at the bookstore.)

Directions to trailhead: From U. S. 101 in Santa Barbara, exit on Mission Street and head west to Laguna Street. Turn left and, keeping the Santa Barbara Mission on your left, you’ll soon join Mission Canyon road. When you reach a stop sign at Foothill Road, turn right, then make an almost immediate left back onto Mission Canyon Road. At a distinct V-intersection, keep right on Mission Canyon Road and follow it nearly to road’s end, where you’ll find the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Park in the garden’s lot.

The Hike: From the garden’s main entrance, as you approach the bookstore, turn left on the path and head down into Mission Canyon. The buckwheat-bedecked trail descends into an arroyo ecosystem full of toyon and lemonade berry. Side trails lead to the garden’s manzanita section.

The trail drops to the bottom of Mission Canyon, crosses Mission Creek and reaches an intersection with the new Easton Trail. Follow this trail as it climbs moderately up the west wall of the canyon. Watch for some pieces of adobe pipe. These 200-year-old remnants of the Santa Barbara Mission’s waterworks system were unearthed when Easton Trail was built.

Easton Trail descends to the garden’s island section. Here you can marvel at the wonders of evolution, at how Channel Island plant species have evolved differently than their mainland cousins.

Joining Canyon Trail, you’ll proceed up Mission Canyon, which is no planted garden but a natural oak-sycamore woodland that was thriving long before Europeans arrived at California’s shores.

The trail crosses over the top of Mission Creek Dam, built to hold water for the padres, Spanish soldiers and Indian converts. From the dam, a trail loops around a redwood grove. Planted 50 years ago, the redwoods are doing nicely in the cool canyon.

Now join one of the trails ascending out of the canyon to the main part of the garden. Enjoy the wide meadow and its multitude of flora with identification tags and Latin names, then make your way back to the garden’s bookstore and the trailhead.

Garden Trail: 1- to 3-mile loop through Santa Barbara Botanic Garden