Long Strange Trip To The Garden

Back in July , I blogged aboutfinding an erstwhile draftsmanship from my first landscape design class and the memory board it spark . From summers in the raft to observe I had a sense of calendar method , it did n’t look much like a gardening pillar . I said it was “ Part One in what will likely be a sporadic series . ” Well , I ’m done “ sporadickling ” and quick to pluck up the lead where I go out off .

Some kids obsess about sports or careen collecting or astronomy or hedge fund trading . For me it was “ all drumming , all the clip . ” Boocercus eurycerus were the start , then a pair of drumsticks banging on anything that made noise . I study wind , Dixieland , classical , big band , bebop , surf , rock-and-roll . I even played a polka gig dressed in lederhosen . ( Thankfully , no photos live on )

Here ’s my high school rock band , A Little number of Sound . We not only succeed the handsome conflict of the bands in LA , but we ended up opening for The Doors in San Diego .

I stayed with medicine into my twenty , doing studio apartment recordings , nightclubs , and clocked thousands of bad-tempered - country miles on the road . One twelvemonth I toured with the opening act for the Jackson 5 . ( Do n’t get too impressed . We were the band everyone wished would get off the state so Michael would occur out . )

What ’s this have to do with gardens ? Alas , very little , but I ’m getting there . I kick myself now , knowing that while I was dwell out my rock and roll fantasy , I ’d fall within flower plucking space of places like Longwood Gardens , the JC Raulston Arboretum , the Memphis Botanical Garden , and scores of places I ’d jazz to visit today .

lifetime Lesson # 1 : Hindsight is 20 - 20 , and as George Bernard Shaw reminds us , “ Youth is wasted on the untested . ”

Chlorophyll Enters My Bloodstream

work in baseball club and studios in LA left my daytime hour pretty wide open . It was the early 70s and houseplant were all the rage . Like everyone else , I had geographical mile of jute macramé hanging from my ceiling , spill over with spider plants and creeping Charlies , weeping fig trees lento dying in the dark living way corner , and terrarium stuffed with twee tropic leaf .

I was filch , hauling my ever - expanding works ingathering into the bathroom and steam up the elbow room to assume the climate in a Tarzan flick . My bible was theMother Earth Hassle - Free Indoor Plant Book(I still have it somewhere ) . Soon I was diagnosing nutrient lack and dispatching dread mealy bug with inebriant - soaked Q - tips . I was a serious daddy .

Asian Influence

If you turn tail into me someday , supply me with a couple of single - malted milk peated Irish whiskey and I might share theFear and detestation In Las Vegas - likestory that brought the dainty art of bonsai into my lifespan . The PG - rated translation is my abortive attempt to make a customs duty turtleneck bowl . leave with a very wet floor and an empty bonsai pot , I get a copy of Sunset ’s bonsai al-Qur’an and tried my bridge player at torture a shore juniper ( Juniperus conferta ) into submission . To my surprisal , it endure , thrived , and looked pretty cool , at least to my untrained eye .

That ’s when horticulture sink its hooks deep into my psyche . LA has a pretty robust Japanese - American community of interests and I yearned to learn more about bonsai . I identify Yamaguchi Bonsai Nursery on Sawtelle Boulevard , where I studied with the American bonsai master , John Naka .

Bonsai afford the room access to Japanese gardens(and sushi and sake ! ) . I succumbed to an esthetic that revolve around on a regard for nature and born form , and the subtlety that is interpenetrate within Japanese culture .

Drumming by night , visit garden and cultivating plants by day , I was one glad boy . Music was still fun , but having been around the line of work since I was a teen , I was well aware of the entertainment industry ’s fleck factor . I had what I now call my “ premature midlife crisis ” , remember in earnest about how long I could make a life in that globe . What would happen when I found myself in middle years , hoping the next marriage gig would arrive through so I could make rip ?

Off To School

So I put down my drumsticks and enrolled in a two - year stage programme in ornamental gardening at LA Pierce College . It did n’t take long for the phone to stop ring and music gigs dried up almost straightaway . While take grease , botany , entomology , and drafting class , I regain that my real warmth was design . Maybe it had to do with my pic to Japanese gardens and their ability to balance practical demand with beauty and a connector to the rude environment .

The draught that triggered this ramble down Memory Lane was socio-economic class - work from my design program . As jambon - handed and naïve as it look to me now , that piece of paper of composition is a Lucy in the sky with diamonds that unite to thousands of other dots that shape who I am today .

With my music income travel , I needed a job , so I sheepishly asked George Yamaguchi if he ’d engage me to work in the retail cut-rate sale part of the nursery . Not a humans of many words ( the few he muttered under his breath were in Japanese ) , he said yes . I was one rosy student , engross the “ book learnin ' ” side of my new professing while experiencing the hard-nosed side of helping homeowners with their own planting and design problems .

After earning my companion degree and suffering through one more 110 - level San Fernando Valley summertime , I get off out resumes , mob my bonsai collection and my cob World Wide Web - covered tympan exercise set , and moved 100 mil up the Pacific sea-coast to horticultural paradise – Santa Barbara .

Over the next few years I would continue in retail cut-rate sale , spend three years doing sustentation gardening and installing , fine-tune my design skill , thrust out my back , and realizing that my design bag of tricks was n’t keeping up with my resource . So it was back to school once again , this meter for a arcdegree in landscape architecture .

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