Trouble in Paradise: Nursery Dispute Mars the Landscape : Lifestyles: Frieda Seyfarth says the new owners haven’t kept up her home on the site. They say she and the nursery have posed unforeseen problems.
The only home Frieda Seyfarth has known for the past 17 years is a hovel surrounded by hundreds of thousands of trees on the outskirts of town.
Seyfarth, who calls it “The Garden of Eden,” insisted on staying as part of the deal when her Padua Hills Gardens, a wholesale nursery, sold 18 months ago for $3 million.
Sitting in a carport--part of her “home,” which includes a basement room and bath under a long-vacant house--Seyfarth, 73, said she lives in such “slum conditions” because the new owners have reneged on a promise to fix up her crude quarters.
She will not make the needed repairs herself, since the sales agreement gave the buyers that responsibility. And, although she received $340,000 at the close of escrow, Seyfarth said, her bank account has dwindled because of taxes and gifts to family members.
Furthermore, because the new owners are behind in their monthly payments, Seyfarth said, she does not have the income to buy another nursery. And she would never consider living anywhere else.
The new owners have their own tale of woe. They tell of trying to sell trees and plants during an economic slump and dealing with an eccentric widow, who sold them the property with the provision that she be allowed to live there, rent-free, until the end of 1995.
“We saved her bacon,” said Larry Hawes, who gave up a nursery business in Oregon to team up in the transaction with his brother-in-law, Patrick Hilt. The two bought the nursery, now called Padua Hills Nursery, when its future was threatened by a lawsuit.
Frieda Seyfarth is a soft-spoken, determined woman with bobbed white hair and a face that flushes red when she laughs, or cries. She spends her time reading, growing plants and running errands in her pickup truck. Most of her shopping trips are for things such as jeans and shaving gear to send to her two sons, both in their 50s, who live in Texas and Northern California.
Seyfarth hasn’t owned a television set for years. She cooks on a hot plate next to the refrigerator in the carport and washes her clothes at a coin-laundry.
When she talks about living in “slum conditions,” Seyfarth doesn’t mean that she wants a stove or a TV. She just wants new carpeting in her cluttered one-room home, the replacement of broken windows and the removal of a six-foot-high, chain-link fence that the nursery buyers erected around her shanty to keep her and her two large dogs off the premises.
The fence is symbolic of the ill will that has developed since Hawes and Hilt came forward in December, 1990. The two were attracted by the trees, many 30 to 50 feet tall, Hawes said. But they did not know they were also buying broken water lines, rundown equipment and a host of other problems. Nor could they foresee a plant-damaging 1991 winter freeze and a recession that has diminished the demand for nursery products.
Despite their disagreements, Seyfarth and Hawes share a love for the nursery. “A Garden of Eden,” Seyfarth said. “A botanical wonder,” Hawes called it.
The huge garden was created by Seyfarth and her late husband, Herman, a landscape architect and head gardener at nearby Scripps College. He was an immigrant from Germany; she grew up in an orphanage in Philadelphia. Together, they moved to Claremont in 1953 and acquired 7.5 acres of scrub land along Mt. Baldy Road.
“My husband loved plants so much, he couldn’t sell them,” Seyfarth said. “He felt like they were his children. He couldn’t part with them.”
By the mid-1960s, the couple had trees and shrubs overflowing their own land, so they began storing them on adjacent vacant property, eventually filling another 25 acres.
After her husband died in 1971, Seyfarth ran the nursery with the help of a crew of Mexican immigrants. She wasn’t able to pay her employees much, so she cooked their meals and let them live on the grounds.
For years, no one cared about the nursery’s encroachment on the land. Then, the property owners, a partnership controlled by Pomona College, decided to sell the land to the city of Claremont as part of a 1,345-acre parcel intended for both housing and open space.
Suit was filed in October, 1989, to evict Seyfarth, who resisted, claiming squatter’s rights. The complaint was headed for trial when Hawes and Hilt stepped in, promising to buy the nursery and move the trees off the borrowed land. An attorney for the Pomona College partnership called the deal “a delightful result for everybody.”
But now, 18 months later, Seyfarth and the nursery’s buyers are exasperated with each other.
Under the sales agreement, Seyfarth is to receive monthly mortgage payments of $5,000, plus a percentage from the plant sales, with the balance of the note due at the end of 1995. Seyfarth said Hawes and Hilt are behind in payments.
Hawes declined to discuss financial details, but said arrangements to pay have been made with Seyfarth’s lawyer. Efforts to reach the attorney, Richard E. Walden of Los Angeles, were unsuccessful.
The sales agreement also requires the buyers to remodel the bedroom and bathroom where Seyfarth lives. Her living quarters were designed as a storage area under a wood frame house in which the Seyfarths had intended to live. After her husband’s death, Seyfarth allowed her employees to live in the house. She moved into the basement in 1975, after losing another home in a legal dispute.
Seyfarth said the nursery buyers put in a new toilet, added air conditioning and heating and painted the interior, but have not carpeted the room, repaired the bathroom’s damaged walls or fixed the boarded windows. Seyfarth said she also fears that the fence could trap her in the event of a fire.
Hawes said Seyfarth never asked for carpeting, but he acknowledged other improvements are needed.
“Obviously, we’ve got to address these things,” he said. “We’re moving as fast as we can.”
Meanwhile, Hawes has his own grievances. He claims the fence is necessary because Seyfarth’s dogs threaten customers. And, he said, she has annoyed customers by writing down their vehicle license plate numbers.
Seyfarth maintains that the animals are harmless and says she jots down license plate numbers because Hawes will not give her a customer list in case she needs to check sales receipts to confirm her share of nursery income.
Hawes said the only way the situation can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and benefit is to make the nursery a financial success. He said he is forgoing a salary to put all his resources into the business, but he underestimated the amount of work needed to keep up and make improvements.
The trees are so numerous that, after a year and a half of ownership, Hawes said he still does not know how many he has. Seyfarth estimates the number at 2 million, but Hawes puts it closer to 500,000. Many of the trees have broken through their boxes and taken root in the ground. Some weigh five tons or more, making transport of them from one location to another a major production.
Seyfarth said she cannot imagine living in surroundings that are not filled with trees and plants. Her feelings, she said, are best summed up in a poem--”God’s Garden,” by Dorothy Frances Gurney--that always brings tears to her eyes:
“The kiss of the sun for pardon,
“The song of the birds for mirth,
“One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
“Than anywhere else on earth.
