Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
A black SUV stopped in front of Mitzi Blahd’s house on Brooktree. ‘A man got out and asked me if I was the gardener,’ Blahd recalls. ‘He said, ‘I want to compliment you. This garden was done with love.” Lew Whitney introduced himself as a Palisades neighbor and the owner of Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach. ’It was like getting the Nobel Prize,’ Blahd says. ‘At the time, I was taking bids for the Pacific Palisades Library Association on the relandscaping of the branch library and I asked him of he would be interested in bidding the job. Whitney accepted the offer, and submitted a bid for $49,000. We thought that was fair.’ For Whitney, whose primary focus as a designer is residential gardens, the library project was a challenge. Just spending a half-hour observing life around the library (at the entrance to the Palisades Recreation Center), one understands immediately the obstacles. Balls, kids and dogs that spill over into the south side of the library from the adjacent park are one thing. On the parking lot side, foot traffic, people traipsing through the beds walking their dog, and others jumping over the wall along Alma Real to cross through the parking lot to the library entrance is another. With all these conditions in mind, plus the economic and bureaucratic constraints of working with the City of L.A., Whitney designed the project, which was then implemented by his son Ethan, of Whitney Landscape. The new library, a rustic building, clad in a luminous gray stone and capped with unpainted timber, was completed in February 2003. In the ensuing years, wear and tear, and the city’s budget constraints, resulting in reduced maintenance, took a toll on the landscaping. Weeds, bare beds and chocked plants detracted from the design of the building, which could be complemented by a new creative design. When the final plan gained approval by the Board of Library Commissioners last August, work began. Plans called for revitalizing the beds that wrap around the building on the park side and on Alma Real. The interior spaces were not included, nor were any existing trees removed. ’I was looking at relatively low-water consumers and plants that would not need high maintenance,’ Whitney explains. So instead of choosing a palette of flowering plants, he concentrated on and looked for foliage that would provide interesting forms and shapes. ’Some areas provide a contrast, while others emphasize foliage of complementary color and texture,’ Whitney says. The Alma Real beds, across the street from Corpus Christi School, feature wine colors against the building and yellows towards the sidewalk. On the park side, the scheme emphasizes the shocking contrast between plants that complement the stone on the building and bright-green spot color. A little over six months old now, the garden is still filling in but is shaping up well. The Library Association will provide funding to pay for improvements and maintenance of the landscape for five years from the date of completion. The Department of Recreation and Parks will continue to provide basic landscape maintenance. A Los Angeles native who absorbed his love of gardening from his mother Adele, Lew Whitney embarked on a business career in the late 1960s after earning an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked for an investment/securities firm until it ‘went broke’ in the 1970s. ‘And then I took a complete turn in my career to pursue gardening.’ With no formal training, Whitney went to work for Roger’s Garden in 1974 as a plant salesman and over the years moved up to become president and chairman. He is now a partner in the business and in the process of retiring from his two-day commitment with the intention of becoming a freelance designer and helping his son, Ethan. Whitney furthered his gardening knowledge through ‘the school of hard knocks and experience,’ and balancing his business background with his interest in horticulture. Roger’s, one of the few remaining full-service retail nurseries in that coastal region, occupies seven acres across from Fashion Island in Newport. Presented in a garden-like setting, the nursery offers an extensive variety of plants, outdoor living furniture, home decor, landscaping, pottery and fountains. As trends go, Whitney says that Roger’s has enjoyed a 10-fold increase two years in a row on sales of succulent and drought-tolerant plants, but that overall sales this year are down 35 percent. ’Roger’s is a lifestyle business,’ Whitney says. ‘The holiday business (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween) is huge, but horticulture is still the heart of the business.’ He has seen the move from large garden spaces to what he calls decorating with living plants. ‘People are pressed for time and gardening has to compete with sports and health for recreational time. Gardening is about instant gratification.’ After 35 years in the business, Whitney says, ‘everything I know is in my feet and flows up.’ A man with many interests, he sees himself spending more time sailing. He and his wife, Toby, enjoy many weekends sailing to Catalina. But, as 15 year-residents of the Huntington Palisades (within walking distance of the library), they have no plans to retire anywhere else and recently remodeled their own garden after tearing down the old garage and installing a new backyard. ’We love it here, the sense of community, in particular our Huntington neighbors,’ Whitney says. A fervent library patron even before the relandscaping project, he is a heavy user of recorded books, wishing that Patrick O’Brien would miraculously come back to life with a whole new addition to his Aubrey/Maturin series. Whitney sees no waning interest in horticulture. ‘The process of hybridization is keeping it interesting,’ he says. ‘There are always new cultivars coming out.’
