How the Weed Queen of Venice Became an Earth Mother

Packed inside The Garden Tent, about a hundred of us are clinging to the gospel according to James Folsom.

He’s talking “container gardening” and telling plant jokes and we’re listening intently like he’s about to divulge the location of the Holy Grail.

Folsom, director of botanical gardens at The Huntington Library in San Marino, is instructing us to flush out potted plants once a month to get rid of the evil gunk, and we’re whispering, “Yes, yes!” at this simple, yet who-woulda-thunk-it advice.

He’s rattling off names of ideal potted garden plants . . . philodendron, cactus, camellias, citrus trees, geranium, bulbs, African violets, miniature roses . . . and people are starting to shift in their chairs and take notes.

I’m half expecting someone to stand up and yell, “Preach! Preach!”

Somehow, our Garden Tent lecture by James Folsom has taken on the feel of a revival tent meeting with the Rev. Jim spouting epiphanies. All that’s missing are folks fainting in the aisles.

So how did I, the Weed Queen of Venice, end up in a place like this--in Wilmington on a bright sunny Saturday--listening to a 45-minute talk on “The Garden Pot: Container Gardening in the Sun and Shade?”

Two days earlier, my friend Susan had phoned.

Sorry for calling so last-minute, she apologized, but what are you doing Saturday?

Visions danced in my head of four of us ending up in primo seats behind home plate at Dodger Stadium as I gleefully answered, “Nothing. What’s up?”

There’s a garden show, she said.

“Oh, well, uh, I have dinner plans.”

It’s early Saturday.

“Well, uh, let’s see, I have an aerobics class at 4.”

It’s in the morning, she said. We’ll be back in plenty of time. The first lectures start at 10.

Lectures? Garden show?

Ah, yes. Spending one of my two days off watching grass grow and being lectured on it, too. Well, just pinch me.

We arrived at the Banning Residence Museum--site of the garden show--shortly before 10.

The park grounds were mostly covered with mostly proper women wearing mostly flowery dresses, pearls and purses with matching shoes, who reminded me mostly of my mother and her friends. The white gloves were unspoken.

The gardens surrounding the house were just as impeccable. Color-coordinated. Height-coordinated. Ground cover to rival The Huntington. (Even the portapotties were cool. No dark, dank, stinky holes-in-the-ground were these. They were light and airy, with running water and even air conditioning, so that you could actually breathe as you went.)

For a moment, I thought of my front yard in Venice--the tiny patch that had been home to many lush, green weeds during the winter rains. But which now, after many waterless weeks, looked like Amazon Jungle Meets Death Valley.

I almost felt guilty for neglecting it so. Whenever people would visit, I’d hear myself apologizing for its appearance and add the outrageous lie, “Oh, it’s on my list of things to do this weekend.”

I only reluctantly answered the front door, fearing it might be a lawyer from the Neighborhood Watch with pages of petitions demanding I do something with my yard or move.

I kept the answering machine on just in case it was my landlord saying, “So, Michelle, I drove by the house today and . . . “

But, hey, I have more important things to do with my time, thank you, than root around on my hands and knees pulling weeds, singing to zinnias, fertilizing roses and coaxing beetles to go elsewhere before I clean their clocks.

Now, however, I was in this tent with all these people who lived for gardening. And I feared they would sniff me out for the fake I was, that they would pelt me with decorative rocks, beat me with pussy willows and yell, “Plant killer! Weed lover!”

*

Five minutes into the first lecture--Shirley Kerins’ 45-minute speech on “English Gardens in a Dry Climate”--I started to nod off, the caffeine from the cappuccino and the sugar from my breakfast lemon bar failing me.

Then came my awakening.

”. . .and don’t be discouraged if all those plants you grew back East don’t grow here.”

I bolted upright. I heard harps, violins, a heavenly choir.

Shirley was talking to me , about my yard. She knew my troubles.

She went on to say how the weather and the soil and the sun were different here. How our hopes and expectations for a great garden shouldn’t be dashed, just different.

Yes, Shirley, yes !

I thought of marigolds I had murdered, dieting daisies, parched petunias--all gone because I had been a negligent earth mother.

And how, when those bad things had happened to a good person such as myself, I had given up. How I had said to the weeds, “The yard is yours.”

Now, remorse was setting in .

So, minutes after the lectures, Susan and I made a pilgrimage to Home Depot.

Fifty pounds of steer manure, 100 pounds of top soil, 70 bucks in plants, 24 hours and eight bags of weeds later, my yard looked like Huntington Gardens West.

My neighbors still speak of the miracle in Venice--of the day when that woman finally trimmed those shrubs and chopped those skyscraper weeds. Not only did gorgeous geraniums, succulents and ice plants appear, but so did a house.

Truly, a miracle.