COSTA MESA : Dreams of a Garden Start to Wither
When Paul Brecht gazes out across his 10,000 plants, he alternately sees the beginning of his dream of establishing a botanical garden in the city and the end of years of collecting the varied flora and fauna.
For the past two years, the city has paid the $250 monthly rent on half an acre at Costa Mesa High School, where the 72-year-old orchid grower keeps his private collection of rare flowers and tropical plants.
This week, the City Council agreed to extend the lease for another six months and promised at the end of that time to make a commitment to building the botanical garden or letting Brecht find another city or organization to buy land and raise money for the project. But Brecht fears that if the city decides against him, his dream will die along with his prized plants.
“Six months is not enough time to set something up,” Brecht said, shaking his head after the council’s decision.
Back at what Brecht calls “the ranch,” palm trees, Hawaiian blue ginger, Japanese rice trees, staghorn fern, epidendrum, orchids from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, and other plants grow in neat rows.
A green canopy serves as flimsy protection from the elements. Those plants that survived last year’s freeze are still recovering. After that episode, Brecht created some new hybrids of the orchids that are just about to start blooming.
“Hopefully, I’ll have new orchids that will be able to stand the climate here,” he said.
While Brecht’s new orchids may be able to survive the climate, whether they can survive in a recession-weakened city is questionable.
The city has estimated that a building and three acres of land for a botanical garden would cost about $2 million--money that is not likely to be found in the city’s coffers, Parks Supt. David Alkema said.
“There’s no way on earth that we could invest that for his orchids,” he said. “We’re like a lot of other cities, cutting our budget and trying to find the money we need just to provide the services we offer. And we have a lot of problems at our existing facilities that we’d like to fix and can’t.”
Despite that dim forecast, Brecht suggests that the city’s newest facility, Canyon Park, would be an ideal spot for his garden.
“I got into this and I would hate to get rid of all of it. This is my private collection and I would like it to go on,” he explained.
Before the city agreed to pay his rent at the high school, Brecht for eight years had rented space from Caltrans at Newport Boulevard and 19th Street, but expansion of the Costa Mesa Freeway forced him out. City officials then suggested that his idea for a botanical garden might be feasible, but recent financial difficulties have diminished the possibility, Alkema said.
As for Canyon Park, the prospects of turning it into the site for Brecht’s garden are impossible, he said. It took the city years to get permission from the California Coastal Commission to build a park there, and it is bound by strict land-use rules.
“I’ve recommended to Paul that maybe he can talk to the (Newport-Mesa Unified) school district.” Alkema said. “They have the facility at Costa Mesa High School . . . and others have suggested that he talk to Orange Coast College or other cities that have more viable options or museums. . . . It’s a sad situation that this can’t be incorporated in Costa Mesa.”
