Tucked into a tough Pomona neighborhood behind a bamboo-camouflaged metal gate is an otherworldly garden that once was a magnet for horticulturists and designers experimenting with plants and landscapes.
The contained wildness still beckons with a sense of mystery. Hundreds of exotic plants crowd meandering paths leading to a maze of hidden outdoor rooms and patios. Lush vines and plants dangle from branches of dead trees. Towering bamboos surround the perimeter of the garden, designed by John Greenlee and a man called Simple.
The half-acre garden -- a symbol of free-spirited California landscape design -- is closing this month. Greenlee, author of "The Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses," has rented the property since 1977, when he was a student at Cal Poly Pomona. He now lives in Northern California.
"The garden had a tremendous impact on California gardeners and landscape designers. It demonstrated a freedom of spirit and embraced nature," says garden designer Pamela Berstler, who co-owns West L.A.-based Flower to the People.
"John did for horticulture what Jack Kerouac did for literature. He brought to the West a style that endures," says Jim Marshall, general manager of Suncrest Nurseries Inc., Watsonville. "Historically a garden has been an attempt to create order. The fallacy of that is that nature eventually dominates and the order at some point is going to be rendered unto nature. John brought nature into the garden in a way that transcended the need for order."
Until the early 1990s, Greenlee used the back of the rental property for his grass nursery. He began to build the garden after he moved the business next door. Visitors to the nursery, usually garden professionals, were invited to see the adjacent work-in-progress.
The stars of the garden world brought their precious finds. Landscape architect Paul Comstock donated grass seeds of "Paul's Chinese mystery grass." Garden designer Jack W. Catlin of La Canada Flintridge contributed a Japanese black pine, P. thunbergia, which he shaped by weighing down specific branches with stones. Horticulturist J.C. Raulston, the late founder of the Raleigh, N.C., arboretum named after him, gave an unknown species of red bark willow and crape myrtle, both of which he collected in Korea.
The magic began in 1994, when Simple, who calls himself "the roving garden artist," drove cross-country in his '60s-style, painted VW van and landed at Greenlee's front door. Simple wouldn't reveal his given name in a recent phone interview from Pennsylvania and says he legally changed it because it describes his attitude about life.
