GARDENS : Mission Possible : Out of a Back Yard of Solid Rock, a Homeowner Fashions an Old-Time California Garden
THE SITE WAS promising, but the soil was not. Still, antiques dealer Richard Mouck had found the house he wanted. Craftsman in feel, if not in fact, it was perched on top of Goat Hill in Eagle Rock with a sweeping view and surrounded by several hundred feet of priceless arroyo boulder walls. But why had the previous owners not planted a thing? Why was most of the back yard barely covered with dry, weedy grasses?
The answers lay just below the surface--solid rock. According to neighbors, the few trees and shrubs on the property were planted in holes dynamited in the 1920s by the original owner, a Los Angeles fireman who also built the stone walls, hauling the rocks up from the Los Angeles River in his old truck. Undaunted by his discovery in 1978, Mouck was determined to build his dream garden here, one inspired by the stone walls and turn-of-the-century post cards depicting California mission gardens.
The post cards were part of a phenomenal interest in the California mission era, which spawned an architectural style featuring arches and low-pitched tile roofs; heavy, dark furniture, and gardens with a distinctly Spanish ambience. The results of the Mission Revival period, which began in the late 1890s and lasted well into the 1920s, were not exact copies of the missions or their gardens but romanticized versions, because true mission gardens, being designed for Franciscan fathers, had few creature comforts.
During that period many missions were restored, and mission-inspired buildings sprouted everywhere, including Mouck’s favorite, the massive Mission Inn in Riverside. Californians traveled up and down the state in their new automobiles, visiting the missions and purchasing post cards, many of which pictured idealized gardens full of plants that were considered quite novel and exotic at that time--palms, olives, bird-of-paradise, hibiscus, cactus and succulents. A few of these plants existed in actual mission gardens, but most were more recent arrivals; Californians were just discovering what they could grow in this mild climate.
From hundreds of these post cards, Mouck picked his favorite views and began planning his garden in 1982. A bell tower dominates nearly every post-card view, so in a great flight of fancy, Mouck built one to anchor his garden. Made of 2x4 framing covered with rough stucco, it is attached to the house, though it is visible only from the garden. Below the tower is a small tiled patio, another post-card feature, and a small archway that leads to the garden. Mouck’s extensive bell collection celebrates the entry: Bells are hung from the branches of an old tree-sized hibiscus.
The garden is laid out in a cruciform pattern, with a Spanish-style fountain at the intersection of two paths. In some places, the paths are solid rock, natural outcroppings, and bordered by low stone walls that hold imported sandy soil, about 9 inches deep. All of the plants are drought-resistant because they must survive in shallow soil. (The garden won the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Water Conservation Garden Contest in 1988.) Each of the four main beds is planted with a different color of lantana, which were salvaged from the Valley Drive-In Theater. Even the fountain is part salvage--the base is an old industrial washbasin covered with river rock, with an imported Mexican fountain perched on top.
Around the fountain are pots filled with cactus, and oleanders and crape myrtles make a screen at the edge of the garden. Other plants, though no longer novel, would have thrilled California tourists in the early 1900s: spiny aloes and agaves, neon-bright bougainvilleas, cascading plumbago, rosemary, yuccas and, of course, palms--seen in nearly every early California post card.
