The rose garden at Descanso Gardens. Photo copyright 2019 by Anna Boudinot.
One of the best things about Los Angeles is that there’s always something in bloom. Evergreen pear trees blossom in January, the scent of jasmine fills the air in April, and jacarandas spill their purple flowers all over the street in May. Crape myrtle explodes with petals in September, and floss silk trees, native to the Amazon rainforest, flower in October.
In February, we have camellias, and camellias go hand-in-hand with Descanso Gardens. Descanso, located in the northeastern suburb of La Cañada Flintridge, has been open to the public for nearly 70 years. It’s a relaxing spot with winding trails, tall trees, and various sections devoted to particular categories of plants, such as the rose garden, the ancient forest, and “nature’s table,” a selection of edible plants. It also boasts an art gallery, a Japanese teahouse, and ponds filled with turtles and koi. The delight of Descanso is that while its landscape is carefully maintained, it also holds on to a certain natural beauty that makes visitors feel like they are meandering through the woods rather than following rigidly-defined paths of a conservatory.
California live oak at Descanso Gardens. Photo copyright 2019 by Anna Boudinot
As with many of the stories in this blog, this story starts with a rich man amassing private property and ends with said man making the property available to the public. The interesting twist in the Descanso Gardens story is that the benefactor of the gardens, newspaper magnate Elias Manchester Boddy, amassed the gardens’ most impressive plant collection due to the US government’s brutal, forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans in the 1940s.
Boddy was an interesting character, having spent time throughout his life as a NYC subway guard, a textbook seller, a Congressional hopeful who ran against Nixon, and an Academy Award-nominated documentary writer. His most successful venture was as the editor and publisher of Los Angeles’ now-defunct Illustrated Daily News. With the money he made from the paper, he bought a 150-acre plot he called “Rancho del Descanso” and built a 22-room mansion, which visitors can tour today. Boddy was fascinated by Japanese culture and wrote a book in 1921 entitled Japanese in America, in which he attempted to defend Japanese Americans from “anti-Japanese propaganda and harassment.” The book (which you can read in its entirety at this link) contained over 200 pages on the history of Japanese people in the United States, their culture and traditions, and their assimilation into American society. Boddy was an avid collector of camellias, a beautiful flowering plant of Asian origin, and became a customer at local Japanese nurseries. The camellias thrived underneath the shade of the California live oak forest that covered much of Descanso.
Camellias at Descanso. Photo copyright 2019 by Anna Boudinot.
On February 19, 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, which called for the forced relocation and incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. They lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, and their property: an inestimable economic amount, not to mention the emotional trauma they endured. According to David R. Brown, the onetime executive director of Descanso Gardens, in a 2015 interview, “Mr. Boddy decided to purchase virtually the entire inventory of camellias of the Star Nursery, owned by Mr. F. M. Uyematsu prior to the Uyematsu family’s removal to Manzanar,” as well as purchasing “the Mission Nursery business owned by the Yoshimura family in San Gabriel, [which]... was believed to have also included substantial numbers of camellia plants.” While many repugnant people took advantage of the chaotic situation by buying Japanese Americans’ property at a fraction of what it was worth, Boddy reportedly paid a “fair price” for the camellias and the nursery: the Mission Nursery website attests to this. By far the star attraction at Descanso, the camellia collection is now the largest in North America. It has grown to over 16,000 plants and over 600 species.
View of the San Gabriels from Descanso Gardens. Photo copyright 2019 by Anna Boudinot.
In 1950, Boddy renamed Rancho del Descanso “Descanso Gardens” and opened it to the public. He moved to San Diego in 1953 and LA County bought the property at the urging of local residents who wanted to prevent Walt Disney from building Disneyland there. Today Descanso Gardens feels like it’s a million miles away from Disneyland, rather than just 38. Skirt the gardens to find the hiking trails along Descanso’s edges and get a stunning view of the San Gabriel Mountains. Head back down the hill to stroll among the camellias. The juxtaposition of their deep green leaves with vibrant red and delicate pink blooms makes for a striking image underneath the shade of the oak trees. It is a quiet place that lends itself to introspection—made even more significant when considering the gravity of these plants’ history.
Descanso Gardens is family-friendly, wheelchair-accessible, and open from 9-5 every day except Christmas. Admission ranges from $4-$9. More information here.