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| Laguna Beach & Hills |
Contributing to a special House & Garden issue might seem like a reasonable thing to do, except that a year in the real estate market has left me numb about houses, any houses. And, there is the fact that I do not know compost about gardening.
We live in a town where one could hurl a handful of seed and hit an award-winning gardener or even two. The Garden Club has even met at our house a few times to discuss all kinds of green and flowery things. For all I know, the Little Garden Club may have spent some time here as well and I did not even see the members, because they’re so, well, little.
The plain truth is that I do not know anything about gardening. I do recall that once, in high school, a teacher or maybe it was a coach, called me a "blooming idiot," but he didn’t even mean that I was a bad gardener.
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| FHG, Station Square |
I actually did make a kind of living for a while as a "Weedy-Man," while living in Laguna Beach, a perhaps the most beautiful California beach town. Laguna was a place where a human or a squirrel lucky enough to live there could drop any seed to the ground and it would grow rapidly. Anyone could have done it, even me, if I had tried.
By spring, all of Laguna: canyons, avocado groves, hillsides, and even valuable empty lots would be vibrating with every conceivable plant and flower. But, of course, I do not remember their names, except for the nasturtiums, which grew in my neighbor’s garden.
The wild weeds, which thrived in the hills above the town and on those empty lots became fire hazards when the Santa Anna winds blew in from the desert and when the dry summer heat settled in.
I borrowed my landscaper roommate's blue VW Bug with a small open-bed trailer hitched to it. This machine never started properly, although, luckily, Bluebird Canyon,where we lived was all hill, so that I could coast down, jam it into second gear, and pop the clutch to start it up.
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| FHG, Solum Crescent |
We used scythes to cut the tall, thick grasses and those gas-powered spinning weed cutters for shorter stuff. These machines were remarkable only for their extremely annoying whirring sound and the spinning filament line’s habit of wearing out faster than George Foreman might say "Weed O-Matic."
This was an incredibly labor-intensive business, not so much for me; it soon became obvious to me that I was suited to management, not labor. It was hard work for my roommate's surfer-brothers and their friends, who became the weed-chopping crew. Like many another grand enterprise, it soon fizzled. Or, maybe the surf was up too often for the crew.
Later, I was able to turn this experience into a real “gardening” job working on a municipal crew. We went into the hills above the town to do some serious weed-clearing to make fire-breaks. We started at 7am and quit around 2pm, or just in time to get in some good beach time.
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| FHG, Deepdene * |
Most of the crew had recently spent some time as guests of the state in various houses of detention, where they had gained experience working on other types of outdoor crews, although they referred to those as “gangs” for some reason. That prior work was important, because it meant that they knew how to deal with rattlesnakes, who can be quite annoying when you disturb them from slumber.
It may occur to you that most of my experience with things that grow are related to chopping them down, which, honestly, isn’t exactly the perfect background for writing about gardening.
I did happened to grow up in a place called Forest Hills Gardens, one of the country's most successful attempts at a planned community (see photos), one with many large and small open parks, greenways, closes and even, yes, gardens. The idea was to create an English hamlet, where Miss Marple might feel right at home.
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| WSTC |
"The Gardens," as residents have always referred to it is in Queens, about 20 minutes from midtown Manhattan on the IND subway line at Continental Avenue. Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. designed the community for the Russell Sage Foundation beginning in 1908 aand Grosvenor Atterbury, the famed architect designed several homes there.
The West Side Tennis Club emigrated to Forest Hills Gardens from Manhattan, and built a famed tennis stadium in 1923. I grew up across the street from the club’s entrance on Tennis Place and later, as a member, romped on its soft grass courts, which you might say became my garden.
There were probably many fine private gardens in Forest Hills, hidden behind hedges and walls, but I did not spend much time in them. After all, the whole place was a garden. Why try to improve on Frederick Law Olmstead even if he was Jr.!
Ed Note: We will be writing more about Forest Hills Gardens in the future. Meanwhile, here is some official info and a short slide show made by the author.
* Another rphoto of this home recently appeared in The Times. It was Geraldine Ferraro's home on Deepdene Road in FHG. the author's uncle lived in it until the late Fifties and his family sometimess gathered there on holidays.
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