He’s an Angel in the Garden

For years, my neighbors and I would shake our heads as we strolled by the unkempt corner in our modest West Los Angeles pocket. The yard--such as it was--consisted of devil grass punctuated by an occasional brown patch. Not a flower, not a tree, not a sprinkler interrupted the gently sloping expanse of lawn, which in summer grew increasingly scorched as the season wore on.

The adobe-style house had possibilities, but I often wondered whether it was even occupied, so forlorn did it appear.

Luckily, one neighbor, Jack Drucker, saw the property not as an eyesore but, rather, as a blank canvas.

Now, a year after this meat salesman and aspiring landscape gardener decided to splash that canvas with a palette of colors, our block has a cheery Southwest oasis that prompts oohs and aahs from passersby and has won Drucker a reputation as a Johnny Appleseed.

I call him our neighborhood “gardening angel.” By whatever nickname, he demonstrates that one man really can make a difference.

A year ago, Drucker approached Angel and Maria Rivera, the longtime residents of the house, which is down the block from his own. Knowing that the hard-working couple found it difficult to devote any time to their yard, he proposed that he create a desert scape for them--on his own time and with his own dime. They agreed.

He and a helper, Jose Medina, spent hours digging out the old grass, readying the soil and planting a rich assortment of succulents, cactuses, vines, silver-toned grasses and flowers, including California golden poppies, red and pink geraniums, orange zinnias, daisies, lilies and sea lavender. Other neighbors donated cactuses and jade plants.

Here and there, Drucker added what he calls “rocks and props”--railroad-tie steps, logs and driftwood plundered on Pacific Coast Highway jaunts, rocky remnants of Malibu cliffs that avalanched down in last year’s storms and rusted-out barrels found in downtown Los Angeles.

“I was going to do a small piece, but it snowballed,” Drucker recalls. “It just came alive. It was a great joy to me to have the artistic freedom.”

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And so the work of art began to take shape. Before long, with an assist from El Nino rains and Drucker’s doting, the blank canvas had, indeed, become the earthy equivalent of an old master. This homespun botanical garden has added tangible if unquantified value to the owners’ property, but the improvement in neighborhood ambience is priceless.

Drucker, a widower, is 64 but has the verve and lanky physique of a much younger man. He sports a year-round tan from his gardening; dirt is embedded in his knees and hands. Greeting a visitor at his home one evening, he is mindless of a swipe of soil on his nose.

“I’m a late bloomer,” Drucker says of his self-taught gardening talent. He “got the calling” in 1992, he says, and since then has maxed out his own peaceful jumble of a garden. His verdant backyard is given over to goldfish ponds and plants reminiscent of another Jack’s towering beanstalk. An overhead sprinkler system is designed to mimic a rain-forest effect. An occasional metal sculpture--the products of Drucker’s other hobby, welding--is scattered about.

Drucker, whose family moved to the Los Angeles area from North Carolina in 1939, figures he got his enviably green thumb from his grandmother, who used to putter around her garden in halter and short pants, “sucking on a Coke in 110-degree days with 120% humidity.”

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On his daily rounds in the neighborhood, Drucker travels with Charlie, his squat, 12-year-old border collie mix with a wildly wagging tail. The two are the best-known duo in the area, thanks to Drucker’s generous donations of plants and trees and labor to the lawns of many other residents.

Drucker became a meat wholesaler after graduating from college and serving two years in the Army, and he’s looking for a change.

“Meat has made me a nice living, but it has lost its mystique,” he says. Besides, as his boss often says of his grubby gardener’s paws: “Jack, those are not the hands of a meat salesman.”

But there is an advantage. By starting his day job at 4:30 a.m., Drucker can “put in my eight hours and then another eight hours on the yards.”

Some neighbors are starting to pay Drucker to spruce up their gardens on a regular basis. He hopes to parlay those gigs into a full-time business. Money isn’t the object, though.

“I wish I had enough money that I could do yards for nothing,” Drucker says. “I’ve had so much fun. What it has done for everyone who sees it, that’s the real kick.”