Larry Wilson, Pasadena Star News, 6/16/17-9/17; Crystal Q., CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
In Pasadena, two acres of Zen Garden in this crazy world
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| How to sit Zen (Wisdom Quarterly) |
I mean, Jeff Bezos already owns The Washington Post. Will cosmopolitan America soon, as radio host Madeleine Brand asked on KCRW, have its kombucha delivered by drone each morning along with the latest appalling news from DC?
No, it’s everything, really. I had a yen for some Zen. And what better place to find that than in a Japanese garden?
Fortunately, last Thursday I was in possession of an invitation to visit just that. The Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, two acres of heaven tucked into a Pasadena [next to the community-based Arlington Garden] residential neighborhood, is the coolest Southern California place you have never heard of.
It was created in the 1930s by Japanese immigrant Kinzuchi Fujii for Ellamae and Charles Storrier Stearns, a wealthy, aristocratic — Charles had been knighted by France for his work helping Russian refugees — couple after they had made several trips to Japan.
After Fujii was sent to an internment camp in World War II and the deaths of the couple later in the ’40s. Pasadena antiques dealer Gamelia Haddad Poulsen bought the property, selling off seven full-sized lots and dismantling a three-story mansion in favor of a small family home, but keeping the gardens.
Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden of Pasadena, LA
They fell into disrepair after Caltrans seized part of the property through eminent domain for the misguided, never-built 710 Freeway extension.
In 2005, Connie and Jim Haddad, who had inherited the garden, brought in Takeo Uesugi, professor emeritus of landscape design at Cal Poly Pomona, who oversaw a faithful restoration of Fujii’s vision.
It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places, and you must drop everything soon to see it.
Thursday, the Haddads were both there.
Happily, along with a couple of small tour groups, were several wheelchair-using residents of a nearby convalescent home. The pathways have been widened so the garden is accessible to all, like several clients of Pacific Clinics, which aids those who have known physical and emotional trauma.
There was a haiku poetry workshop, which Jim Haddad is a member of, led by a local expert. Retired Caltech Math Professor Rick Wilson sat under an umbrella playing his Japanese flute, whose dulcet tones floated through the lush foliage.
Huge white carp swam through the central lily pond.
“A good Japanese garden becomes a sort of bonsai in its entirety,” said my guide, landscape photographer Deanie Nyman, as we walked. “And this garden was designed as a miniature of the Japanese coastline,” using over 2,000 granite boulders.
There’s a 12-foot waterfall.
There is also a faithful version of a Japanese teahouse, where Los Angeles novelist Lisa See will be reading from and signing her new “The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane” on June 30. First and third Thursdays, tea is served there along with a talk on the intricacies of the ancient Japanese tea ceremony.
But mostly, for me, the garden was about the stroll, and the crazy quiet after living in the world of headlines all week. I was fascinated to learn that when Japanese gardens are built elsewhere, it’s not about importing plant materials from Asia.
It’s about integrating indigenous ones into the formal design. So native live oaks and sycamores are the overarching shade trees, and even a redwood is thriving.
Because so few know about it, the garden is open only Thursdays and the second and last Sundays of each month.
- Go to japanesegardenpasadena.com to reserve your Zen
- How to sit Zen (Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal)
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Larry Wilson is a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com. Public editor
Larry Wilson is a member of the Southern California News Group's editorial board, writing a twice-weekly column, and is public editor of the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News. For 12 years he was the editor of the Star-News, and prior to that its editorial page editor. He has been a professional journalist since age 19 when he became the rock music critic of The Daily Californian at UC Berkeley, a student newspaper he now sits on the Board of Directors of, and has worked at the Pasadena Guardian, the Pasadena Weekly, where he was founding business manager, and Rolling Stone Press. He is a co-founder, with the novelist Jervey Tervalon and the late food critic Jonathan Gold, of LitFest Pasadena.
lwilson@scng.com Follow Larry Wilson @PublicEditor
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