Hometown Hero: Nancy Goslee Power

“Trust your instincts and throw fear away” is the advice Nancy Power gives to garden designers. Advice that is seen in her own garden designs and which has brought her many notable awards, among them: House Beautiful Giants of Design Award for Landscape Design, Pacific Design Center Star of Design for Landscape Design, and an American Academy in Rome Residency in Landscape Architecture.

“I’m mad for plants and it’s hard to restrain myself when it comes to saying ‘yes’ to garden projects.” For the past 5 years Nancy has been the Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Garden School Foundation and the garden designer for the 24^th Street Elementary School.

The 24^th Street School Project began when the LAUSD announced a plan to re-asphalt the school grounds. The neighbors wanted to create a school garden where children could experience growing fruits and vegetables in a beautiful and healthy environment.

Nancy was asked to create a garden plan and present it to the School Board. The Board approved Nancy’s plan, but trees and plants cost money. To raise money they had to become a non-profit, and so the Garden School Foundation was formed.

In the past five years, over 1,000 students have benefited from the garden curriculum. The students have become the proud chefs and boosters of the broccoli, cauliflower, chard, and greens that they grow. The garden changes how the elementary school students think about nature, about themselves, about food and about what they want from life.

The Garden School Foundation is a continuation of Nancy’s work creating gardens for children, including Kidspace in Pasadena and the non-profit Children’s Institute in downtown LA. Whether designing a school garden, the Master Plan for the 127-acre LA County Arboretum, the Norton Simon Museum garden, or a private home garden Nancy has the same vision.

“People want the same things in a public space that they want in a private space and these goals can be achieved through design. Through the placement and choice of trees and plants and the use of space, color, light, sun and wind to create a sense of place.”

Nancy is from a long line of Delaware farmers and remembers her family farm. The farm and her mother’s interest in gardening informed her values. Her real education, she believes, began when she lived and studied in Florence, Italy. Returning to the States, she worked in New York and then moved to California.

“I worked as the West Coast Editor for House Beautiful and scouted gardens for the magazine. For myself I created small landscapes, plants in terra cotta pots and so on. Other people liked them and asked me if I would do the same for them. I soon realized I was much happier when outdoors.”

A chance meeting at Merrihew’s Nursery brought Philip Chandler into Nancy’s life and he became her mentor. He was a well-known garden designer and a respected member of the SMC faculty. They talked about plants and from there things began to ‘just happen.’ Moving into garden design from her success at the magazine was a natural move for her.

“All the gardens I like relate well to their sites. I travel to see gardens. I’ve seen the Villa Gamberaia in Florence Italy and the Courances in France, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC, the Winterthur Gardens in Delaware and private, home gardens all over the world. My favorite garden is a fabulous ruin in Sri Lanka called Sigiriya.

“‘My basic ideals have come from the Persian and Mediterranean gardens that are based on science and hydrology and from the American agrarian past. American farms are based on the efficient use of water and so we get orchards, rows of trees and walled gardens, but you have to be able to see out. Gardens have evolved and they keep evolving and adapting to their climate and their conditions.”

The same ideals are true in the home garden. Nancy’s advice is to “look outside and think about what you see and imagine what you’d like to see. Then stand outside and look at the house and think about what you see and what you’d like to see. Think of wind, sun, shelter, calm. The more you define your space the larger it becomes.”

California historian Kevin Starr has named her style ‘Eclectic Boldness’ and describes her as blending culture and landscape, color and light, and human use and comfort. Nancy says of her self, “I’m really very old fashioned and believe in the Aristotelian golden mean of beauty.” You can see for yourself the gardens she creates in her book, “Power of Gardens.”

What Say You: Stars of the Garden

The stars of this show have names that aren’t household words yet. But, if you go on the Theodore Payne Garden Tour this weekend, you just might come home lauding the Pacific Coast Iris, the California Poppy, the many varieties of Ceonathus, and the Bush Anemone. http://www.theodorepayne.org/Tour/

The tour showcases fifty regional gardens featuring native plants and water conservation. Two of the fifty gardens on the tour, the Williams and the Zinner gardens, are in Santa Monica. The plants are showing off for spring and docents are there to answer all your questions.

The Williams, retired scientists, are passionate about their grandchildren, travelling and gardening. They bought a house on 23rd Street with a front lawn and an overgrown back garden. Gone, along with the maintenance and the water bills, are the lawn and thirsty plants. The natives that have taken their place are hardier and easier to care for.

Filling the front yard is a scent created by the mingling of flowers. Two rock doves sit like old friends on the garden bench and greet me. The front entry is green, welcoming and water conserving. The back is exuberant with ceonathus, irises, and poppies, all in bloom. Rocks and a re-circulating water pond bring a fresh coolness to the garden. It’s easy to imagine the games their grandchildren could play in such a yard.

The Zinners moved to their house on 21^st Place with the intent to make their garden an environmental showcase and they succeed. The Yankee Point Ceonathus, at this time of year in full bloom and making people, birds and bees happy, sets the tone for a garden with gracious outdoor eating and seating areas and play areas for their son.

Next to the Ceonathus is a rocky dry creek bed, designed to collect and filter roof and garden storm water. As storm water run off is now the main polluter of the Santa Monica Bay, allowing the storm water to infiltrate on site is the number one way to protect the Bay.

Lisa Novick, Theodore Payne Staff Member, teaches, “Native plants save water and save insects and animals. Only 10% of all insect species can eat non-native vegetation and insects are an essential part of the food chain. Many land animals are dependent on the work of the insects. All plants may be green, but they are not all equal. Any drought tolerant plant is beneficial in Southern California but native plants conserve water and provide habitat that non-native plants can’t.”

Garden/garden, 1718 Pearl Street, is a demonstration project sponsored by the City of Santa Monica and the DWP. There, you can see two, side by side, gardens, comparing the use of native and non-native plants, designed to show the water conservation, low maintenance, and habitat benefits of the native garden. Their web site has good information on sustainable plants. http://www.smgov.net/Departments/OSE/Categories/Landscape/Demonstration_Gardens.aspx.

More information is available through the City Office of Sustainability. There is even a registry in the City that matches people who want to garden with people who need help in their gardens! Go to ‘garden sharing’. http://communitygardens.smgov.net.

I wish you the joys of the spring garden, the virtues of providing habitat, the benefits of conserving water. To that list I’d like to add one more thought. Southern California is often seen as an impermanent stage set. Visit one of the well-designed native gardens and I think you will find there a sense of permanence. What Say You?