A Visit to an Exotic Garden

MY MOTHER loved roses. She cultivated them. As a child, I spent hours with her in the garden, weeding, pruning, cutting, and tending the plants. She showed me that gardening was fun. She sowed seeds of interest in me that have stayed with me all my life.

My gardening days were cut short when I left home to attend college at the University of California at Berkeley. While studying to be an engineer, I appreciated the lovely gardens on the college campus. War was raging in Vietnam, and a big change was in my immediate future.

I decided to sign up for the peace corps and was sent to the University of Washington for training. The campus there was like a paradise. Everywhere I looked, there were lakes, gardens, lawns, and snowcapped mountains. Then, in 1964, I left for La Paz, Bolivia, to work as a teacher at the University of San Andres. What a contrast! I went from sea level to 12,000 feet [3,500 m] above sea level. Very little grew there, and gardening became just a memory.

After two years in Bolivia, I got a teaching job in Hawaii, at the Wahiawa Intermediate School. I lived in a small cottage right on the beach at Sunset Point, and I fell in love with palms and other tropical plants. I felt I was in a paradise. Then the thought struck me that someday in the future, I should create a garden with palms as the focus.

I returned to San Diego, and then I spent the next 18 months hitchhiking from California to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. During this period I began to read the Bible. As I traveled, I spent many long hours in jungles, gardens, and parks and meditated on what I was reading in the Bible. Finally, I returned to San Diego in 1972 and began a long and satisfying career teaching mathematics in Coronado, California. My idea of a garden of tropical plants in my own backyard began to mature.

My First Garden

In May 1973, I bought a small house near the Pacific Ocean, in Ocean Beach, California. There I was—at the top of a hill, with a small house, a big yard, and a love of gardening. The setting was perfect for what was to come, my unique garden.

At first, my gardening was haphazard. It was a hit-and-miss experiment. If I liked a plant, I bought it and planted it. I kept planting anything that caught my eye and my fancy. I watched them grow—fruit trees, pine trees, deciduous trees, evergreens, shrubs, bushes, flowers. You name it, I grew it.

Many plants were ones that I remembered from my childhood. Caring for plants was peaceful, fun, therapeutic, and rewarding. I meditated on the beauty, design, complexity, and purpose of these creations.

Not every plant pleased me or fitted into my scheme of things, so I discarded many. I was searching for a special look. Plants that were messy and overly aggressive were not welcome. They were too much work and needed too much upkeep! Also, I wanted rare plants—not your common or garden types. I needed a theme. Then it happened!

My First Palm

In 1974, I went to a local nursery, and there I saw the key to my search. It was beautiful, with its graceful crown of arching bluish-green pinnate, or feather, fronds. It was the Butia capitata, viewed by many as the most beautiful palm in the world. Sometimes it is called the jelly palm because of its sweet, fruity seeds. It hails from South America, is easily maintained, and grows to a height of 16 feet [5 m]. At last, my garden had a focus, a theme—rare tropical palms from around the world! I had chosen to grow “the Princes of the vegetable kingdom.”

It wasn’t long before I was picking up rare or exotic palms at different nurseries. There, in a remote corner of one nursery, was another fantastic palm tree staring me in the face—a Mexican blue fan palm. It has a stiff, blue-green fan-shaped (palmate) leaf radiating in a crown from the apex of the trunk. The flower seed spikes extend out in beautiful light-yellow arches. A mature tree grows to a height of about 40 feet [12 m].

Now I was really hooked on palms. Where could I find more of these rare plants? I started to ask around in the San Diego area but without any great success. Then I hit a gold mine of information—the Southern California Chapter of the International Palm Society. This society has thousands of members in 81 countries. It has a wealth of information about every palm known to man—over 200 genera and some 3,000 species. The Southern California Chapter publishes The Palm Journal for its members, and this is an invaluable source of up-to-date information.

This contact has allowed me to acquire and cultivate over 150 different palm species in my little garden. I say little because it only occupies some 7,000 square feet [650 sq m]. My palms represent just a fraction of the species discovered so far. Which ones are my favorites?

Some of the Beauties in My Garden

Actually, I love all my plants, but a few really stand out. Some I am particularly drawn to because of their exotic look or their armor of thorns or spines; others, because of their color or their size or even the challenge of getting them to grow in the Mediterranean-type climate of southern California.

One of my special trees comes from Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa. It is the Bismarckia nobilis palm. Why do I like it? Because of its unique purplish-blue color, its rarity, and its leaf configuration. Each of its fronds weighs about 20 pounds [9 kg], making this one of the larger palms in the world.

Another favorite, the fishtail palm, comes from the mountainous regions of northern India, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. Mine grows well here in San Diego in spite of the relatively cool winters. In fact, I like the challenge of growing palms here. That is why I have been so pleased to have a tree from Borneo in my garden—the Arenga undulatifolia. It has broad and distinctly undulate leaves.

A recent addition is the Burretiokentia hapala palm from New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the South Pacific. So far it is thriving. I can add to this list other trees that are special to me, such as the Pritchardia hildebrandii, or the loulu palm, from Hawaii, with its yellow-green fan-shaped leaves. It loves the sun and is certainly exotic.

An intimidating palm is the Trithrinax acanthacoma, or the spiny fiber palm. It has needle-shaped spines on the trunk, which seem to say, “Don’t get too near!”

I have recently started to cultivate cycads. Although not related to the palm, a cycad is similar in appearance, though much smaller. One of my favorites is the Encephalartos gratus, which has an amazing frond that seems to leap into the air. This catches everyone’s eye. The seed pods, or cones, are unusually large and emerge from the side of the plant. They look like a pineapple or a pinecone.

Do my palm trees attract people? I should say so! I frequently find people stopping by to admire my plants. From the sidewalk in front of the house, they can see an exotic tropical garden that slopes down the hillside. In March 1997 my garden was one of three that the Southern California Chapter of the International Palm Society opened up for visitors. It was described as “a memorable clinic on a diversified and ornamental collection of palms.” In what ways has this garden been a blessing to me and to others?

My Garden Gives a Witness

As a result of studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was baptized in 1991. Now I am retired from teaching, but I keep quite busy as a Christian elder and a pioneer minister. It is nice to use my garden as a springboard for talking to people about the Creator when I describe the marvelous design evidenced in my varied trees and plants. At times, I also bring up the subject by noting that palm trees are mentioned in the Bible. (Judges 4:5; Psalm 92:12) Certainly the garden has helped me to draw close to God and understand his wonderful purpose to have obedient mankind live in a paradise. After all, the original Paradise of Eden was a magnificent garden or park.—Genesis 2:8.

According to Bible prophecy, that Paradise condition will be restored when Jehovah brings to ruin those who are presently ruining the earth. (Revelation 11:18; 16:14, 16) Then we will all be able to participate in turning the earth into a wonderful paradise. In the meantime, my little plot of land continues to give praise to the Creator.—Contributed.

[Picture on page 16]

Mexican blue fan palm

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Fishtail palm

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Left to right: red pandanus, royal palm, traveler’s palm (not to scale)

[Picture on page 17]

Encephalartos ferox

[Picture on page 17]

Flower on a shaving brush palm

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Tools for my garden work