Gigantic statistical data about public gardens tend to have an oddly diminishing effect. Noting that Descanso Gardens contain fifty thousand camellia bushes, thirty odd thousand tulips and four thousand plus roses gives the impression that sheer bulk is both sufficient and defining. Just as some people reduce the Louvre to a triangular trek between the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and the Venus de Milo to make a one-time visitor’s tour manageable, there is inevitable distortion in the process of checking off the milestones. The totality of the entity is somehow dimmed. A one-time visitor can be forgiven for conceiving of the process passively and the garden as a constant and static enterprise, unchanged and unchangeable by the interaction of person and garden. But some significant part of the quarter of a million visitors a year have to be recurrent.

Decanso Gardens are located near the junction of the Glendale and Foothill Freeways not more than half an hour from the center of the Los Angeles metropolitan complex. You skitter along the tops of hills making the approach to La Canada-Flintridge, fourteen hundred feet above sea level. Descanso means ‘rest’ or ‘repose’ in Spanish, a name reinforced by the entrance on a residential street beneath a canopy of live oak trees and a parking lot acting as a buffer between nearby residents and garden activities.

A rough map of the gardens reveals a division into the constituent parts: the camellia forests, the lilac grove, the main lawn, the Boddy House and Art Gallery, and the International Rosarium. Picnic areas are located outside the garden proper at the outer edge of the Rosarium and Iris Gardens. Additionally, there are sections devoted to California native plants, a bird observation station, the Japanese Tea House and Garden, and a stage facing the main lawn area. A half hour tour by tram ($2) takes you to most of these sites. (A cautionary note about the tram tour: Although the tour is listed as taking place at 1 p.m., 2 p.m., and 3 p.m. during weekdays, a ‘rule of six’ prevails; namely, the tour requires at least six persons to purchase tickets, otherwise it is cancelled.) The driver reveals such data as the 165-acre size of the Gardens although only half of it is under cultivation, but ‘that gives us some 80 odd acres to play with.’ More revealing is that casual use of the first person plural with reference to the gardens indicating both a vicarious possession and affection for the place. In addition to the regular staff, volunteers donate some 45,000 hours a year of contributed services to the garden ranging from Docent activities to plant propagation for semi-annual plant sales.

Live oaks and camellias surround the main lawn area in which summer concerts by the Pasadena Pops Orchestra have proven so successful that efforts are being made to present the concerts on both Friday as well as Saturday nights. Four times a summer about two hours before the scheduled time of the concerts, people pour into the greensward where tables for ten await. People arrive with food, wine, costumes appropriate to the concert theme, centerpieces for the tables, and an anticipatory eagerness that is contagious. Whatever monetary benefits may attend the concerts, an incidental by-product is to create communities in the process -- communities for music, for social interaction, and, not least, for the garden itself.

Even though the gardens per se are not open to those who attend the concert, the entry way with the classrooms, gift shop and lathing overhead laden with wisteria performs another function for the garden visitor: Talent scout. Changing exhibits both in the entry way as well as the central display area where the roads fork off to the left and right highlight plants that the casual gardener might never access other than by viewing them directly. The recent addition of a hundred exotic hibiscuses in a new bed was highlighted through displays of plants such as ‘Silver Memories,’ ‘Fifth Dimension,’ and ‘Donna Lyn.’ These plants produce 8 and 10-inch exotically colored flowers even though container bound. Another ‘find’ was Origanum ‘Kent Beauty,’ an oregano subshrub cascading out of a pot so that the lilac/pink flowers contrast with the darker pink and green bracts and nondescript foliage. Of course, there are also old friends to be rediscovered, like Aeonium ‘Zartkopf,’ a succulent with rosettes of the darkest purple. In late summer the central display area contains a garden of gourds as well as fall vegetables such as Swiss chard, lab-lab beans, corn and artichokes. Corsican gourds (lagenaria siceraria) take many different forms, ranging from a zebra-striped melon look-alike to one named ‘birdhouse’ for the conically knobby shape usually associated with them. Several vines of ipomoea -- Blackie, tricolor, and Terrace Lime, climb up twiggy frames to add color and textual interest to the exhibit. Presumably, the gourds will be used for Gourd and Pumpkin Festival in late October.

Educational activities take place in the Van de Kamp Hall, a structure large enough to combine classroom activities, seminars, flowers shows and meetings of organizations both established and nascent. Education can take many forms, however. Sometimes the form is as impermanent as the eldritch cries of children studiously ignoring carefully planned lessons in the Rosarium on a summer day; these lessons will be nostalgically and inaccurately recalled half a century hence to the benefit of the gardens. But the commitment to the education of children to a love and appreciation of plants and wild life is unmistakable: The Docent training program includes planning tours for elementary school children. On other days education occurs while dedicated not young ladies grapple with the principles of flower arranging. And it occurs when the consumers at a sold out seminar take notes and puzzle though catalogs while getting a preview of ‘Roses in the 21st Century’ on a soggy Saturday morning in January.

Established and venerable organizations such as the Los Angeles Rose Society and the International Geranium Society meet and present competitions here with a fixed regularity. The Geranium Show occurs the day before Mother’s Day. The Los Angeles Rose Show occurs in a line of progression of rose shows in the Spring and Fall; to change any one of these occasions the same kind of intensity and emotion usually reserved for major murder trials. Organizations devoted to flower arranging, bonsai, chrysanthemums, camellias, and African violets all meet on a regular basis. And new organizations form all the time. People fascinated with hibiscus will have an exploratory meeting in a few weeks to create yet another community attached to the Gardens. While the notion of competition is under attack and may sometime give way to the more conciliatory and compassionate idea of a ‘Celebration’ of Roses and/or Geraniums, that is an idea whose time is not yet upon us.

Annual and biannual competitions or celebrations permit multiple communities to gather ranging from the camaraderie of exhibitors who travel the circuit of competitions to the clutch of casual observers looking for the latest in cultivars in the chosen field. Others of us meet old friends for ritual reunions, renewing and reinvigorating friendships amidst the plants and flowers we mutually admire.

Allegedly, ‘Lavender Lady’ lilac was developed to assuage the pain of emigrant Easterners who yearned for the scent lost in the trek to Southern California. The lilac grove at Descanso pays tribute to the power of that scent; it is impossible to enjoy the lilacs without arousing specters of associations and events preserved in the amber of memory. An annual trek to the April flowering in the lilac grove is a must for those who remember Spring Breaks before the de rigeur pilgrimage to warmer latitudes. ‘Lavender Lady’ is just one of the hybridizing accomplishments of Dr. Walter Lammerts whose work at Descanso extended from camellias -- especially camellia reticulata -- to stone fruits to the design of the Rose History Garden in the late l940’s. A visit to the lilac grove in late summer provides another gift of the garden -- almost complete solitude.

Solitude is a not unpleasant gift in the midst of a giant metroplex whose growth has not yet peaked. A summer visit also yields an unexpected gift of two aberrant lilac blooms on bushes of ‘Lavender Lady’ and ‘Mrs. Harry Bickle’.

There are other pleasures to be had at Descanso, both seasonal and permanent. The twenty-two room mansion of the last private owner of the estate is used to house offices of the Descanso Guild which manages the property (although the site is owned by the County of Los Angeles). On the ground floor art shows by local artists in various media are offered to the public for both inspection and purchase. There is a small meditation garden adjacent to the house with 16th century oriental tiles. Elsewhere a small Japanese teahouse open on weekends nestles amidst ponds and the obligatory koi. A nature trail through native chaparral offers the opportunity to visit the original state of the land.

A pilgrimage to the camellias, or the roses, or the spring tulips -- alone or even in combination -- would obscure the many facets and varieties of interaction with Descanso. While the camellia bloom is many months away, the Fall rose bloom is about to enter its secondary high season. Part II moves to the International Rosarium.