A peculiar thing about the California landscape is that while it is chock full of majestic vistas and grand horizons, most people fail to find its most exquisite natural feature – its native gardens. I was thinking about this while looking at the photographs I took on a recent expedition to Pt. Reyes National Seashore. It is a popular destination for Bay Areans and out-of-towners, but most head for the mile-long beaches or the lighthouse at the end of this finger peninsula that is nearly cut off from the mainland by the most famous faultline in the world.
But if you decide to head north along the country road that winds among still-operating dairy farms and cattle ranches, you just might be tempted to pull out at the sign that says “Abbott’s Lagoon“. It would be well worth your time to take the short walk out to the dunes beyond where the lagoon, a fresh water pond fed by streams, spills over a small rill and spreads out among the dunes in turqoise shallows where the summering pelicans play.
It would be enough just to watch the marsh hawks glide above the lagoon and wander among the shadows and light of the dunes. But on a mid-June day when we took our walk, this normally austere landscape had been transformed into a fantastical paradise, shoulder-high in bloom and rolicking with bird song. Above waving plumes of purple grasses, white-crowned sparrows perched in the cow parsnips warbling arias across the fields, and on every fence post a fat California quail postured, it’s crown feather bobbling in the breeze.
Floating above the purple waves of hair-grass (Deschampsia cespitosa ssp. holciformis) were islands of sunshine yellow bush lupine (Lupinus arboreus) and a great tall stand of bee-plant (Scrophularia californica). Half hidden in the understory of the grasses were poppies and checkerbloom, owl’s clover, yarrow, woolly yellow sunflowers, jewel-like bi-color lupine and a universe of pollinating insects.
The dunes had their own gardens, spare and surprising. Clumps of dune heliotrope required eye-ball contact to discover the sugary sparkle of their tiny cups. The dune cinquefoil’s crimson tentacles formed a brilliant net across the sand, and a curious lawn of lush dune grass felt cool and soft on bare feet scorched by the coarse dune sand. And the end of the trail is the sea, a roiling roaring mass of wave and foam clawing at the steep narrow beach. It is suddenly quiet only steps away, behind the sheltering wall of sand where the glassy reach of the lagoon melts into colored gems of coarse gravel. So quiet I could hear the muffled flap of pelican wings as they glided above me.

I read this in the paper today, “We’re all so conditioned to expecting things right when we want them, and gardening is a very different approach to life”.
Well, it can be, sometimes. I see many people installing what could be called “instant” gardens with the help of often talented and inventive landscape professionals. But if you define gardening as a process and not just a result those garden owners are not really gardeners in the true sense. On the other hand, I am beginning to think I am not the gardener of my garden either. Far from instantaneous, my garden has an evolutionary history on a par with geologic time. Furthermore, it now appears to have happened mostly by accident. At least, not by this gardener’s intent. Whatever I intended has been reinterpreted by dirt, and weather, and the non-human denizens of this hill I have planted upon.
In any case, this constantly morphing botanical kaleidoscope (Greek for beautiful shape) I call my garden presents me occasionally with catch-your-breath moments of revelation. Yesterday was one. It was just the glimpse of late afternoon sun, slanting through the red oak tree, to light the lilies…. so I grabbed my trusty digital camera and ran downstairs to try an capture the illusive nature of a garden’s midsummer moment.
And for a very unusual and interesting read on some philosophically inclined bulb-hunters, check out this article by a Genia Bellafante in the NYTimes.