PRIVATE FACES, PUBLIC PLACES : In a Secret Garden, Public Enterprise

Breath on the cold dawn air, a fork turning in frosty earth, fall leaves mulching--there was a time man knew his seasons by the soil. But in this land of freeways, it seems sometimes as if there is no land, only distance, as if fall is told by its new model cars and winter by the appearance of leather boots.

Hard by the Ventura Freeway, near the 405, is a lingering reminder of that other age, of faded aunts in straw hats, of weathered men with distant eyes, plotting revenge on thieving rabbits. In Sepulveda Gardens there are 350 allotments, $20 a year each, 16 acres of backbreaking work, of tomatoes, potatoes, squash, pumpkins, raspberries, melons, artichokes, peas, beans, onions, leeks, parsley and, it must be said, a few common weeds.

It is a garden of first names. Maggie, in linen shorts and full-dress makeup, is known for the freedom with which she offers her advice, for the glory of her butter beans and roses. “Ah, my Christian Dior.” Among the plants and slugs, in the early morning wind, she can forget being out of work, forget the indignity of interviewing, middle-aged and unwanted.

Ardis was raised on a farm in Michigan. She has three plots, heavy with fruit and flowers. Her 86-year-old mother turns out to weed, her husband talks kindly to newcomers of old-fashioned remedies--of throwing soapy water over bugs and eschewing the chemical life.

The retired carpenter has a picket fence around his patch. The engineer’s beds are precisely measured. The insurance salesman strains relentlessly after the elusive strawberry. The family with children have a stuffed scarecrow lolling over giant sunflowers. Gardens tell the story of lives.

Out by the fir glade, weeds are strangling beautiful bushes of donkey lavender, of lemon verbena, tarragon, mint, salad greens and 15 kinds of tomato. Heirloom seeds were planted here, a riot of neglect consumes all. The gardener has cancer. Who would have the heart to take away his lot?

They do confiscate lots, of course. Janet LaFrance, who runs the gardens for the city, sits in her office in battered hat and cotton gardening wear, and worries over notices threatening eviction. She is a gardener herself and softened by it--she is friendly to ladybugs and praying mantises, to squirrels that scamper off saucily with heads of corn, to lot-holders too frail to manage after years of digging in and turning over, to the children who come to pick apples, to the handicapped for whom she has built raised beds, even to the needy who steal the crops at night.

It is a secret garden: life that produces instead of arranges, of bounty and generosity. The gardens only seem quiet: The soil teems with snails and tiny creatures, with social worlds that have learned one another’s ways. Against the deafening roar of the freeway, of mechanical man speeding across miles, there are these few acres, this other place of small signs and miniature sounds. Of jays, eager and predatory, eyeing the fruit from spreading shade trees. Of sparrows in the oleanders, of lizards on the liquidambar, of a carpet of pink flowers dropped from the giant silk trees, of winter cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli starting to show through rich, brown earth.

Judges, attorneys, maids and handymen, people with two jobs or retired, age-spots on hands daubed with potting soil, thick fingers chubby with manual labor, long ones gnarled with arthritis, couples together, women alone: It is a community. It is a place where there are some worst gardens but no best ones, where weeds are no respecter of property lines, so that all work together or all lose.

They give away vegetables to friends, to visitors--who can eat that many cabbages? And in learning the patience with growing things, they forget, for a few hours, mechanized life to which one man can make no difference. The life of the 405.