The Ojai Garden

Even dusted with ashes, red-hot serrano peppers seem to glow in the eerie light of the Day Fire. Photos by Les Dublin.

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A teepee of scarlet runner beans and morning glories makes a cool, inviting hiding place. Photo by Les Dublin.

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The pictures are in two parts. They are from what I call the "Jing Mai Yuan," the Garden of Quiet Beauty. The first batch were taken in the spring. The last three were taken two weeks ago and are of the installation of a home-grown, hand cut and built Japanese Torii (gate) that now opens up into the garden below. The garden itself was something I spent two years hand-carving into a hillside on my land with a pick axe, shovel, pry bar and rake.

It is inspired by the Zen Garden at Ryoanji in Kyoto but has a distinctly Ojai feel. The boulders to make the rock garden were all dug out and rolled (carefully) into place, also by hand. The river that runs thru the garden is of colored glass and stone. At the "headwaters" of the stream is a dragon, the symbol of the "Creative" and the first of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. The garden is surrounded by four Buddha's and entered by one of three hand carved pathways. In the center of the garden is Kwan Yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion and mercy. The plantings on the garden fence are jasmine. On the hillsides, ice plants. Scattered are volunteer sunflowers and California poppies.

The Torii is cut from an 80 foot pine that had to come down two years ago before falling on our barn. The wood chip mulch on the floor of the garden and on the trails leading to it are also from the same pine. The wooden stump seats came from the pine as well. The century plants co-operated just in time this year as well by sending up some magical sprouts into the sky. And, yes, there are four varieties of bamboo growing below the garden.

The garden itself weaves Taoist, Zen, Confucian and Shinto elements into a single unity.

The lanterns are actually solar lights. There are other solar lights on the Torii which can be seen at night from Route 33 as you travel from Lomita towards the five corners.

I can - if anyone is interested - put together a sequence of photos that track the construction of the entire garden from a bare hillside pasture, to what it is today.

All in all, if you are a gardener yourself, I think you will like what you see. More fun than writing about the Middle East.

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Volunteers put down a new layer of mulch in the vegetable area of the Ojai Community Demonstration Garden today. The woodchips and leaves were placed over a layer of flattened cardboard boxes. The layer of cardboard keeps weeds from growing. What a great way to recycle cardboard! Photo by Les Dublin.

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Eggplant. I always thought this was a funny name for a vegetable, until a couple of years ago, when we had a variety growing in the Demo Garden that actually looked like white eggs. All varieties make beautiful garden plants. The fruits (or vegetables) come in many different shapes, sizes and colors. Since many varieties have strikingly dark foliage with lovely deep purple flowers, they make an excellent edible landscaping plant. Photo by Les Dublin.

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