Guest Blog—William Rein

I’m suffering from “occidental horticultural whiplash”.  I spent nine days working at our west coast research station, Heronswood Garden in Kingston, Washington, flew back home to Pennsylvania for a day to get my lawn mowed, reacquainted with my cat, pay bills, see my Opuntia humifusa  in bloom and miss the delicious ripe fruit of my Amelanchier trees. The next day I flew back west—this time to Los Angeles—to the two-day pre-conference tour of the APGA (American Public Gardens Association) general meeting in Pasadena.  Having never been to Southern California (except vicariously through TV shows and movies), I was anxious to experience the palms, chaparral, freeways, architecture, and people—just so I could compare them to my preconceived notions.

I arrived at LAX to search for the “Flyaway” bus that per the internet should be available (for only $4) to take me to Union Station, to catch the Gold Line light railway to Pasadena.  This is my attempt to avoid renting a car and driving the notorious freeways, an unjustifiable expense given my budget (and not-so-jolly disposition behind the wheel in even “light” traffic back home).  Outside I get my camera out (already) for a photo of those purple-flowering panicled mimosa-like trees (are those Jacarandas? I keep asking myself, as I spot them many times my first day) and, of course, palms gracing the access road. It is warm and sunny, but not uncomfortable.  The bus arrives, gets us on the freeway to downtown LA (I’ll be thankful more than a few times during this visit for those great free-moving bus-only and high-occupancy-vehicle lanes). Once at Union Station, I find my way down into the chaotic concourse, look for the Gold Line, buy the one-fee-fits-all ticket from a machine for $1.25, run up the steps and hop on the train heading toward “Sierra Madre” (which prompts me to ask if there’s a treasure at the end—either it’s the 95 degree heat or it’s humorous only to me, the out-of-towner).  I sit on the shady side of the car—the Gold Line doesn’t have good air conditioning.  Is it me or is it that much hotter just this further inland than it was at the airport?

As we wend our way out of LA and northeastward toward Pasadena, I take note of the scrubby mountains that are jutting upward close to the city, with flat-topped houses teetering on the ridges.  Do they build them so precariously just to tempt Mother Nature and her mudslides?  The hillsides look dry as dust, with spots of dark green scrub here and there.  We pass neighborhoods of tile-roofed bungalows one right next to another, definitely architecturally of the place, with masonry walls, and iron gates—nothing like back home. I am in another world, another country, not just the other coast.  As I suspected, southern California is unfamiliar territory.  Someone just off a plane from Spain would feel at home.

As the Gold Line enters Pasadena, the train tracks are in the middle of an eight-lane freeway  (a good place to advertise public transit).  I get off at my stop, cars whizzing by on either side, and lugging my backpack, camera, and other paraphernalia, am directed down into an underpass, and sweat the three long blocks to Colorado Boulevard.  Finding that street made famous by the Beach Boys was quite a relief—I am feeling the triple-digit heat.  I then turn right at the corner and walk west a few more blocks to my motel, pretty much an oasis in my mind (I’m thinking, “This is supposed to be a dry heat?”).

That first evening I set out on a long walk to scout out the location of the conference hotel where I am to meet the next morning for the pre-conference bus trip to Santa Barbara and other points northwest. I was determined to walk what looked on the computer back home like a bit less than two miles south from my first-night motel (across the street from Pasadena City College) to the “Langham Huntington Hotel and Spa.”  Walking is a great way to get a feel of a new place, to see what’s growing in people’s front yards.  (It’s also soft on the budget.)  First thing I note is the very interesting street trees and hedges—and I have no idea what most of them are. Ubiquitous palms, of course—especially those tall sticks with a pouf of fronds way, way up on top, casting a small patch of shade somewhere across the road.  Many streets are lined with small-leaved oaks (probably the native California live oak).  Homeowners here use hedges (of completely unfamiliar species) much more than in the East.  Except for the fragrant jasmine that appears once in a while, I am clueless.  Is that a shrub of Lantana in bloom under that church sign?  Its flowers look exactly like the multi-hued pink, purple, and yellow-flowering “annual” I planted in a container at home.  In this arid clime evidence of irrigation is everywhere—old galvanized pipes pushed out of the ground, paralleling sidewalks above ground where they compete with the enlarged bases of the old oaks and pear trees. I have to step out of the way of the mists being sprayed across pavement. (My first thought is, “what a waste of water!”)  Unexpectedly thick turf results in grand lawns—I recognize thick-bladed St. Augustine grass from my one visit to Florida many years ago.  Beautiful architecture, an eclectic mix of old mansions and more Arts-and-Crafts styles, mostly masonry or stucco exteriors, is indeed a staple of Pasadena—but with too many sweeping front lawns, narrow side yards (if any) buffering neighbor from neighbor, and lots of roses.
   
I manage to forget my directions and end up getting so disoriented on the winding residential streets that I find myself on “Huntingdon Drive” in another municipality, San Marino. After asking directions in a Starbuck’s, I learn I am quite a bit southeast of the hotel.  I walk in heat that lingers way too long into the evening. I spot giant agave at the entrance to Huntington Botanical Garden, somewhere near the conference hotel.  Finally, I find Oak Knoll Avenue and then the hotel.  I feel discouraged by my rattled sense of direction and hike back up to Pasadena’s main shopping district and buy a good map from the town’s oldest independently-owned bookstore, Vroman’s.  I gather from my new map I’ve walked four miles so far, reaching “old Pasadena”.  By the time I walk east along Colorado Boulevard the twenty or so blocks to return to my motel, I know I’m going to sleep well.
 
By 6 a.m. Saturday morning I make the two mile hike south to the Hotel without getting lost and in forty minutes I’m in the lobby grabbing a cup of coffee, grateful to recognize a few familiar faces, and meeting up with my weekend “Sideways Santa Barbara Tour” group.  Our motor coach heads west out of Pasadena on Highway 101, back toward Los Angeles, passing exits for Burbank and other places made famous on TV, then north, with mountains to the east and, finally, the Pacific Ocean to the west. Time flies as I chat with fellow attendees in the seats front and behind.  After an hour and a half we reach Santa Barbara, visible from the freeway. Palm and other trees in the median make a pretty scene.  We exit the highway, and, after a few wrong turns in a small roundabout and up some twisty-turning Mission Canyon roads (which we experience both forward and—just to add to the excitement—downhill in reverse!), our patient bus driver—who I’m sure is as relieved as we are—pulls into SANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN. 

Our first view is across a long California meadow that runs uphill toward distant Lecumbre Peak (rising 3,500 feet in the Santa Ynez mountains).  I walk a little up that hill, then turn around, and can barely make out the Pacific Ocean way, way down in the haze.  I read later that this mountains-to-shore view is why the botanical garden was set up here, guided by Carnegie Institution Ecologist Dr. Frederic Clements in 1926.  The original design called for plant communities such as chaparral, desert, and prairie, emphasizing the plants of the “Pacific slope” of North America.  The SBBG soon narrowed its focus to plants native to the California Floristic Province (of which up to this point I know, maybe, two).   The 78-acre site includes several trails, one of which leads down into a mini redwood forest (with deep and welcome shade) and the Mission Dam and aqueduct (another cool place with babbling waters), and another narrow, dense one along the bluff, but only occasionally letting you peek at the ocean.
 
California is special—I read in the SBBG brochure that it “is one of Earth’s 25 biodiversity hotspots,” with 5,800 plant species native within the state’s borders, and 1,700 of those species occurring “in such small populations that they face extinction in the next 50 years.”  SBBG is the hub for the Central Coast Center for Plant Conservation. Their researchers collect seeds and plants, study the biology of rare species, and provide information to reintroduce rarities into the wild and sustain remaining populations.

Among plants I learn: Dudleya species (live-forever – “among the most rewarding succulents for use in horticulture”), Aesculus californicum (sort of the California version of our bottlebrush buckeye, Aesculus parviflora, with similar bottlebrush-like white panicles), and, having seen a number of them in Pasadena, I finally identified the star-leaved analogs of the London planetrees and native sycamores back home (they are Platanus racemosa, which, like the eastern sycamore P. occidentalis, follow the waterways in the wild and have similar bark characteristics).

After lunch we return to the big bus and head back down to the highway to nearby Montecito. I enjoyed our afternoon stop at CASA DEL HERRERO – a relatively unknown destination in Santa Barbara with an interesting history.  This is the estate of the late George Fox Steedman (pronounced “Stedman”), a St. Louis, Missouri, foundry owner and quite the metalworker, machinist and inventor—talents which, in addition to his inspiration for the eleven-acre landscape with its Spanish/Moorish elements (also used extensively on and in the house), make for a tour that will interest more than just plant lovers or old-historical-house-and-period-architecture enthusiasts.  Mr. Steedman selected prominent landscape architects Ralph Stevens and Lockwood de Forest to design the gardens, but the main architect was locally-famous George Washington Smith, who traveled with Mr. Steedman to Andalusia, Spain, to study and then buy outright many of the elements (like entire ceilings from old monasteries and furniture dating back to the 13th century) used in building and furnishing the house.  Spain was in such dire straits after WWI that it was selling its history—with wealthy American tourists the beneficiaries. Thanks to its remaining in the family, they turned it over, unchanged, to a foundation in the 1990s. Casa del Herrero is an amazingly well-preserved example of the “Spanish Colonial Revival” period with a period garden.  In the Montecito section of Santa Barbara, this gem is limited to visits by reservation only.

We proceed to Ganna Walska’s LOTUSLAND for an extended visit for the remainder of the day, with a detailed tour followed by dinner on the terrace. Lotusland is a storied place among public gardens in the U.S.  After having attended a short presentation (led by Virginia Hayes) about it at an APGA conference a few years back, I was intrigued that a not-so-famous Polish star of the Opera would have created such an extensive collection of dramatic plants in southern California; I knew I had to visit it if I ever got a chance.  But apparently the 40 acres had been home to a nursery even before “Madame Ganna Walska” purchased the estate in 1941.  (Turns out the nurseryman was Ralph K. Stevens—English-born father of landscape architect Ralph T. Stevens, who was the Ralph Stevens involved in the design of Casa del Herrera.)

The elder Stevens died in 1896, so Lotusland can claim that many of its largest palms are over one hundred years old, and Madame Walska already had an established collection of plants in which to build what she described as her “dream that if given the opportunity, having considerable finances at my disposal, I might fulfill my work to develop Lotusland to its maximum capacity as the most outstanding center of horticultural significance and educational use.”  Born Hania Puacz in Brest-Litovsk, Poland, in 1887, Madame Walska might have been the European equivalent of the typical California star of the 20th century, for she derived her stage name “Ganna” from the Russian form of “Hania,” the surname “Walska” she took from her favorite music (the “waltz”), was married six times, and “continued to study vocal music and spiritual teachings in search of creative fulfillment and personal enlightenment.”

Sixth and final husband Theos Bernard encouraged Madame Walska to purchase this 37-acre estate as a retreat for Tibetan monks.  After divorcing Bernard, she renamed the estate Lotusland in honor of the “sacred Indian lotus” growing in one of the ponds.  For the remainder of her life (some 40 more years) she put her energies into creating a botanical garden, amassing specimens that were the best and the biggest of species that would grow in the gentle Mediterranean climate of Montecito.  In the 1970s Madame Walska auctioned off some of her jewelry to finance what is today a huge cycad garden.  I can attest that, some 25 years after her death, Lotusland can brag honestly about its mass plantings of palms, cycads (including the aptly named Encephalartos horridus) and aloes, as well as its large Japanese Garden, Australian garden, Bromeliad collection, Fern Garden, and ponds. A spectacular water garden is lushly planted with namesake Lotus nelumbo, from which you can glimpse the much more arid cactus collection around the house beyond.  The entire package—the creator and founder, story, big and bold collections, whimsy—makes me conclude, “Only in California…”

Welcome to Heronswood Voice. Please consider signing up for our RSS feed.