The not-so-secret garden

Young Chang

Just past a ridiculous number of cars on a two-way Corona del Mar

street that’s barely wider than a one-way street, past the coffee shops

and joggers and morning dog walkers, there’s Dan Marty’s garden.

A rainbow of greens with splashes of white sprouting from scarred and

aged pots on a used-brick floor. That’s right -- a bare, grass-less

floor.

“Even if you have just a tiny little apartment, it’s about bringing

the outdoors, indoors,” said Marty, a Newport Beach gardener who will

submit the largest competition garden at this week’s 12th Annual Southern

California Spring Garden Show in Costa Mesa.

“We have a busy street out there, but you get in here and it’s all

peaceful and serene,” he added.

South Coast Plaza, where the garden show will be held, will also share

the feel of a not-so-secret garden Thursday through May 6. More than 100

miniature gardens created by children, along with 85 vendors and four

days of garden celebration -- including a preview gala -- will overtake

three floors of the shopping center’s Crate & Barrel/Macy’s Home Wing.

“It is the largest garden show in Southern California,” said Debra

Gunn Downing, executive director of marketing for South Coast Plaza.

“It’s also a highly respected garden show because of the quality of

vendors and speakers.”

Organizers expect about 80,000 visitors from all over the state and

featured guests from various parts of the country.

Claire Martin, curator at the Huntington Library, Art Collection &

Botanical Gardens in San Marino, is one of the speakers. Karen Hedges,

director of horticulture for Disneyland Resort, will be the guest of

honor for the preview gala. A host of garden experts and authors will

speak.

Seminar subjects include rose-pruning, planting seedlings, natural

pest control, the “secrets of a shade,” ashes, bacteria, worm casting and

“all kinds of topics that gardeners love to hear about,” according to

Downing.

Vendors will sell everything from rare and exotic plant materials to

garden ornamentation to ladybugs and snails.

And the kids? They’ll have their own miniature gardens to visit. More

than 1,000 children from schools in Orange and Los Angeles counties have

made about 100 gardens with help from expert gardeners.

Themed “Enchanted Gardens -- A World of Legends, Myths and

Fairytales,” the children’s projects are interpretations of scenes from

various sources of literature including fairytales.

“They create these miniature gardens using twigs and moss and other

plant materials,” Downing said.

Marty, owner of the Urban Gardener flower shop in Newport Beach and

two locations of an antiques and home furnishing shop called Les

Interieurs, started gardening when he was a child.

His mother was an avid gardener, one who would tell stories about how

her son cut flowers from the family’s backyard and sold them on the

street when he was four years old.

Today, his tastes are influenced by the style of European gardens. At

his personal home garden, there are garden benches he found at a flea

market in the south of France and old French confit jars. The gardener

travels to France every two months to search for rare garden finds and

furniture.

His plants include baby tears of a grass-green color; azaleas that are

a dark, dense green; ivy topiaries showing a weak, lukewarm green and

boxwoods boasting a waxy, cucumber-peel green.

“I really just liked the different shades of green,” Marty said. “And

whenever you add white to anything, it always makes it look better.”

His competition garden for the upcoming show will feature boxwood

hedges, white rose bushes, a fountain in the middle and antique, concrete

benches all together spanning a space about 32 by 15 feet.

“It’s organized and yet it’s not,” Marty said. “It’s all gonna be

green and white, my favorite combination.”

FYI

WHAT: The 12th Annual Southern California Spring Garden Show

WHEN: Preview gala from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Friday; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. May 5; 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. May 6.

WHERE: Crate & Barrel/Macy’s Home Wing at South Coast Plaza, 3333 Bear

St., Costa Mesa

COST: Free

CALL: (714) 435-2160