From 1974 to 1984, Marilee and I ran a 7 acre organic farm a mile down the road from Watkins Glen race track in NY. We raised fruit, vegetables, maple syrup, bees, chickens and Black Angus beef, almost everything we ate for ten years (except milk which we got raw from the dairy next door).  Our 60 x 160 basic vegetable garden was one of the finalists in PBS’s Victory Garden’s search for the best home garden in America. We also raised 3 kinds of apples, 8 kinds of grapes, rhubarb, red raspberries, yellow raspberries, blackberries and unsuccessfully tried a stone-fruit orchard (peaches, plums, apricots). Our yard sale when we moved included tractor, mower, snow blade, tiller, ten foot hauling trailer, and lots of other practicalities.

        We got spoiled having fresh vegetables in all the best varieties right at our fingertips. There’s nothing like shucking your corn while walking from the garden to the already-boiling water on the stove...or plunging your hand into humus-filled mounds to pull out the exact number of potatoes you wanted for dinner. I’m afraid I could rhapsodize a long time about how we ate our way through that decade.

        When we moved back to California we had plans to continue gardening, though on a much smaller scale than we   did when raising two hungry sons. Alas, we discovered that vegetables didn’t like living on a bluff overlooking the Pacific anywhere near as much as we did. Our first year planting taught us that only parsley and jalapeños would thrive in the breezy salt air. No matter how many clever culinary combinations you come up with that’s still a rather limited diet. But shovels and soil and spending hours wearing knee pads had become part of our lifestyle, so we decided to try our luck at ornamentals instead of edibles.

        We didn’t know much about flowers and the like so it was research time.  We bought a pile of  books and began haunting all the nurseries within an hour’s drive. Everywhere I had a speaking engagement or a TV appearance we visited local arboretums for ideas: Phoenix, Tucson, Vancouver, New York, Brooklyn, Charleston, Ensenada, Amsterdam, London... We asked lots of questions and got lots of good ideas!!!  So we bought plants of all types and began experimenting. Some died. Some lived. Most thrived. We discovered that cacti, succulents, euphorbia, and literally thousands of trees, shrubs and flowers loved the Mediterranean climate that blesses Shell Beach. Our favorites became those that needed the least maintenance.

        Although the two of us take care of all the plants, I must thank Ray Walsh for help starting the design and Jerry Dailey for a decade of hard labor and clever solutions to problems as he helped me build walks, walls, stairs and infrastructure.  Four weddings have been held in our backyard, each couple required to personally help improve the yard. One couple brought nine people and spent three days laying brick and building paths.

        We were still youngsters (translation: in our 50’s) when we bought the house and put in our first flowers. Over the course of two+ decades the garden and we have grown old together, both benefitting from the association.

        Vegetable gardening for survival was an outstanding experience (photos at right), but growing plants to make our world prettier, or simply to see how they grow, has been a treat for us. Over the years I’ve found it impossible not to take a few pictures which I share in hopes of helping neighbors decide what they might like to plant...inspiring other amateurs by our successes or just entertaining people who visit this site.

        Photos are in no particular order. I will add continually.