The Moss Man Prophecy

“Some think it’s a parasite,” says Bill Jenkins. “I’m never out in the yard that someone doesn’t stop by and say, ‘What is it?’ Not to mention the cars that screech to a halt in front of the Jenkins residence. “Some think it’s something like straw I’ve hung up. They don’t realize it’s a living thing. It belongs to the pineapple family. It’s a bromeliad.”

Jenkins is talking about moss--creepy, weepy Spanish moss--and his West L.A. yard is lousy with the stuff. Twenty-one years ago, Jenkins, then president of the Southern California chapter of the American Rhododendron Society, drove across the country to attend a rhododendron convention in Atlanta. Following the convention, he took a side trip to Savannah and found himself in Forsyth Park, Savannah’s equivalent of Central Park, the day after a downpour. The ground was littered with tufts of the city’s fabled Spanish moss, which had fallen from the trees.

“On an impulse, which is the story of my life, I picked up a bunch of them and brought them home,” says Jenkins, now 84 and retired from a career that included writing for the aerospace industry and working as a handyman. “I just loved them. The word that comes to me is ‘languid.’ ”

Back in West Los Angeles, Jenkins wired the moss to the branches of the orange tree in his frontyard. He wasn’t sure if it would flourish or dry up and die. “But lo and behold,” he says, “it was very happy here. But it won’t grow in the Valley or any place it freezes. I’m two miles from the ocean, so the air is moist.”

Today, Jenkins’ property looks like the set of a Tim Burton movie. You can barely see his house for the gauzy filaments of moss hanging from the fig trees, the persimmon tree and the Persian mulberry tree. “The beauty of it is it’s completely undemanding,” he says. “Whereas the rest of the garden plants have their seasons and come and go, 365 days a year it’s there. One boy said it’s like perpetual Halloween.”

Not everyone appreciates Jenkins’ moss, though. “I have two sons who live with me and they think I’m a screwball. They think I should be spending my time on something more practical, but my garden is my sanctuary. I’m proud of it. There must be 7 million frontyards in Los Angeles.” Jenkins has yet to see one like his.

“No one has the imagination to do much of anything,” he laments. “It just takes a little pizazz to come up with something interesting.”