True Dirt

already long gone

This was what my garden looked like, one spring day.

the five finger maple

Before leaving the wonder garden at Western Hills (see previous entry) I shopped the plants for sale, looking for something different among the tables of 4-inch pots. At least here, unlike in the garden itself, plants were identified--written clearly in white pen on the green plastic pots. I didn't have much time as the place was closing for the day but I picked up what was obviously a succulent of some sort, two variegated and golden-leaved little things I knew not what, an aster unknown to me, and a pot of alstromeria. Then I spied what looked like a japanese maple--only a few inches high but sporting a healthy set of rather elongated leaves--and grabbed it before rushing to the check-out gazebo. I got out of there for $28.02.

I had to look up everything I bought. The alstromeria "psittacina" has red and green flowers--colored like the parrots of its native Brazil. The seeds come true (and T.D. shall put that to the test, Mother Nature willing). The aster "divaricatus" is the white wood aster of Northeastern America. The sedum "represtre" 'Angelina' is a jolly chartreuse green, mat-forming, pot-loving succulent from I don't know where. The variegated, golden-leaved babies are coprosma: kirkii variegata and "Beatson's Gold", a New Zealand genus, both dwarf forms of what apparently can be a large shrub.

Then there was the little maple. How I wish I had seen it's mother in the garden. Anyway, I carried away a vagabond of some renown with a story to tell. Though we call it maple that is not it's native name. You must ask a Tibetan, perhaps. For our "five finger maple" was found by an Austrian plant collector, Joseph Rock, near Muli, a village in what is now southwestern Sichuan in 1929.

According to William A. McNamara , who writes about the tree at the Quarry Hills Botanical Garden web site, "Renowned nurseryman Toichi Domoto successfully grafted scions onto seedlings of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and distributed them. This is evidently the origin of the tree at Western Hills Nursery in Occidental, which produces large quantities of viable seed and is now over ten meters tall....All Acer pentaphyllum in cultivation today, with one exception, appear to trace their origin to Domoto, Western Hills, and ultimately Strybing Arboretum....Three trees at Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco were presumed to be the only known survivors from Rock's discovery."

So, I missed it at Western Hills but I can go see it at Strybing Arboretum (recently rebranded the "San Francisco Botanical Garden" and excuse me if I cough). But no. I cannot because it is, as E. Idle says, "no more". According to McNamara, "All three had died by 1991, one girdled by a squirrel, and the others from root rot." Girdled by a squirrel (panic, gardeners).

Which wouldn't be so bad except that the genus itself may soon be "no more." According to McNamara, who writes the story of his search for the mother trees in 15 trips to China over a period of 12 years, fewer than twenty trees survive in a region of poor farmers where human survival depends on trees for fuel.

The Bayview Acer pentaphyllum....

And Acer palmatum for comparison....

P.S. thanks to commenter "Chili" who identified the mystery blue plastic flowered plant as "puya alpestris" and provided nice links to more photos of Western Hills and (wonders never cease)
Annie's Annuals where the no-longer mysterious Puya may be purchased.

western hills ending

Happy or otherwise, endings must follow beginnings. So the month of May has been a series of endings here in my small universe. In the larger universe there have been endings too. One of them, noted in the New York Times on May 12, caught my attention. It is a bit unusual to read about California coastal gardens or nurseries in the NYT but this particular garden, The Western Hills rare plant nursery and garden, is one I had for years heard gardener friends wax poetic about but had never actually made the journey to see it myself. This May, the nursery closed and the three-acre garden was put on the market after a 32-year run.

My job having just ended (after a run of three years and seven months) on May 20, I set out on a week day for Occidental, a two-hour drive north from my garden in Oakland--just three days before the gates of Western Hills would close for good. It being the Friday of the Memorial Day weekend I got stranded in the highway-clogging mass exodus from the Bay Area. At Petaluma, a 40-minute drive that took two hours, I turned west toward the coast. A good decision, since nobody was wandering the byways of northern Marin or southern Sonoma counties. The cow country was beautiful. Swaths of sky blue Ithuriel's Spear in the roadside grasses and wisps of coastal fog drifting across blue skies. After Valley Ford, a hamlet infused with the aroma of dairy manure, I turned left onto Bohemian Highway and headed to Occidental.

In Occidental, a one-Main Street town, I turned left at the stop sign onto Coleman Valley Road and meandered my way to the carved redwood sign announcing I had found Western Hills. Five cars were parked in the gravel turnout on the two-lane road. A hand printed sign warned that parking on the road could get you towed or ticketed by the highway patrol. Beyond the carved sign, a rustic pergola appeared to lead into a forest. A few other curiosity seekers wandered away down the gravel paths. I walked past the nursery area--some aisles of handmade tables laden with plants in 4-inch pots, many of them posted with "not for sale" notices--and headed into the three-and-a-half acre garden with digital camera in hand.

Nested among small hills and surrounded by an undulating 8-foot high redwood fence to keep out marauding deer, the garden is seen by a network of narrow paths that alternate between intimate plant tableaux and kalaidescopic vistas of multicolored shrubs and tree canopies.

Unusual plant specimens--none labeled--popped into view here and there. Actually, almost everything was unusual. And I had no idea what family the thing belonged to, much less a species name.The particular genius of the garden is the juxtapositioning of color and texture--mostly of leaf, not flower. Many variegated leaves and unusual colors--gold or red or white--of normally green-leaved plants and trees. Surprising blooms appeared suddenly in view as the paths twisted, in neon colors and towering above my head. Some kind of agave? Aloes? I have no idea....

A "dry" border in full sunlight displayed familiar things--euphorbias, salvias, pentstemon--and then I spotted something very strange in the middle of the border.

I had to bushwhack across the bed to get close enough to photograph it. I found myself staring into the middle of a plant that, conceptually at least, was pineapple-like. But it was covered in what appeared to be turquoise plastic flowers. How do I identify this thing? I don't know where to begin.

At the end of my journey through garden wonderland I came across something utterly familiar to every gardener. Well-used, weathered, lovingly sorted in their places...the tools of our trade.

(see more photos of Western Hills