The Turf War
Look here, there’s more meadow madness coming,” says John Greenlee, tramping through his dewy garden in the post-dawn fog. He lifts a rose and takes a whiff. “A perfect moment. Just a moment. That’s what you get here. Performance art.”
It’s cold, not quite 7 a.m. We’re in the “Rose Room,” a part of his half-acre Pomona landscape that illustrates what he calls “a new paradigm for the American garden.” Instead of a tidy, thirsty turf lawn edged with flower beds, its rose-wrapped fences surround scrappy meadow sedges and Zephyranthes candida through which, like embroidered stitches, daffodils and narcissus sprout.
Elsewhere, past a dreamy tunnel of Alphonse Karr bamboo and a reflecting pool flanked by 20 kinds of ivy, there’s the “Mermaid House,” a thatched-roofed hut with a bed inside, its “blanket” ornamental grass. Perennial sunflowers flood the views, along with succulents, nasturtiums and a host of leafy surprises. These, Greenlee says, are what a garden is all about: “Plant something here, it pops up there. We can edit, but we’re not really in control.”
Two decades ago, Greenlee started planting the weedy lot around the bungalow he shared with fellow horticulture students at Cal Poly Pomona. Over the years, he developed an interest in grasses, in particular, native prairie and meadow grasses once plentiful in the United States but largely wiped out by development. Getting such grasses and a slew of others into the landscape trade became the focus of Greenlee Nursery, which he started in 1987, down the street from his house. In 1992, Rodale Press published his extensive compendium, “The Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses.” Today, still living in the bungalow, he sees his garden as a history of where he’s been and whom he’s met on the way to becoming an expert on grasses and a crusader against the environmentally unfriendly front lawn.
His life’s later chapters are here, in the switch grass fringing a pond, in the Chinese sedge along a more seasonal pool nearby. But some of the other novelties--a rare conifer from Baja, a climbing aster--show the early influence of plant-mad, garden-designing mentors such as Chris Rosmini and the late Robert Fletcher. Hordes of meadow roses--tough ramblers with a heritage dating back more than 70 years--are a passion Greenlee caught from Berkeley sculptor Marcia Donahue. He now sells them through his nursery. Then there’s the Pennsylvania-based roving landscape artist known as Simple, who has, Greenlee says, “taken my garden to finishing school.” Every so often, Simple appears and the two butt heads until something new is born--for example, the Mermaid House.
Despite his penchant for eccentric outdoor structures, though, it’s nature that inspires Greenlee and stirs his protective instincts. “Ecology starts at the front door,” he likes to say. “An emerald turf lawn that gobbles chemicals and water is a prime symbol of arrogance.” On the other hand, a romantic meadow--one that brings back bugs and birds--evokes our memories of the past, while rustling sedges and bunch grasses remind us of how it felt to be small and awed by growing things. “A meadow, full of the right plants for our climate--drought-tolerant grasses native to the Southwest, species tulips from Afghanistan, South African babianas--is like a perennial border you can walk on,” Greenlee says. “And it teaches you to walk more softly on the earth.”
