Conjugal Beds
To call Jim and Lise Wright the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo of plant collectors wouldn’t be too farfetched. After all, the adjacent homes of painting’s legendary couple still draw tourists in Mexico City, and the gardens at the Wrights’ side-by-side houses sometimes slow traffic in the Bay Park suburb of San Diego.
From the street, the house where the Wrights live is more or less hidden behind Jim’s palm tree collection, while Lise’s garden is a riot of color at the house next door, which the couple rents out. “It’s a compulsion,” says Lise, 48. “You need to put another quarter in the slot machine. You can’t stop buying more things.”
Jim bought the “palm house” in the 1960s, when he was already sweet on palms. The 58-year-old retired medical research technician now has about 75 species. Stacks of palm journals beckon from the kitchen; the latest issue of “The Palm Journal” reposes in the bathroom; and Jim’s license plate reads “SD [for San Diego] PALMS.” Jim also grows nearly 200 orchid varieties behind the house.
Today Lise has a degree in environmental design and works in landscaping, but when she met Jim in 1977, she “didn’t have that much of an interest” in plants. Lise had an epiphany at a rose society show and now has about 150 varieties of roses and a collection of about 70 day lily varieties.
The Wrights have their limits, however. “There are people,” says Jim, “who wouldn’t hesitate to spend a couple thousand dollars on a given plant.” The most either has paid for a plant is $140, since they prefer to start with young plants. “Imagine adopting a 21-year-old-child,” Lise says. “What’s the point?”
The Wrights deal mainly with nurseries and fellow plant society members. With foreign sellers, “you don’t know if [the plants] are wild or cultivated,” explains Jim. “They could be protected.” He makes an exception for conservation, citing the fan palm from Guadalupe Island south of San Diego. “It’s going to be extinct because goats eat all the seedlings.” A healthy specimen is flourishing near Jim’s kitchen.
Unlike more entrepreneurial collectors, who log purchases and grow in containers for easy salability, the Wrights collect to make their gardens “as beautiful as possible,” says Jim. There’s also the pride of nurturing a hard-to-grow plant and the thrill of acquiring a rare find.
Lise concedes that she and Jim are each “kind of possessive” about their turf. “Jim will want to get something and he’ll ask if he can put it [in her garden]. And I’ll have to be the warden.” When the Wrights travel, it’s not for long. If your collection is alive, says Lise, “you have to be kind of a homebody.”
