Garden Tours
I first drove up to this house on Christmas Day, 2011, so eleven yeas ago. I was on my motorcycle and brother-in-law Jeff was on his bike and we we tooling around looking at what Zillow said was on offer in the general vicinity. Kim, Thomas (his official name at the time) and I had driven down from San Francisco over the course of a week and looked for what I guess we had to call a retirement home for us to move to in the future. We started in Sausalito in Marin County (too urban) and bumped along down the California coast, skipping the beautiful but somewhat isolated mid-coast region around Cambria and Half Moon Bay and skipping the scary L.A. Basin (too congested), which I define as starting in Ventura and running down to Orange County. We hit Mountain View (too Silicon Valley), Monterrey & Carmel (too snooty and expensive), Santa Barbara & Montecito (too California), Laguna Beach (too Republican), and finally found ourselves in San Diego County, where we were predisposed to anyway. Here we looked first in Fallbrook and Bonsal, but both seemed more horsey than we were inclined. We were heading back on the 26th and had somewhat resigned ourselves to hot having found anything just right when I went out for the ride to check out this part of northern Escondido where I had driven by and admired the hilltop homes high above Rt. 15.
I had set out to go see several homes in an enclave called Rim Rock, but it is a gated community and er had no appointments that would allow us to get in. I have a natural aversion to gated communities anyway since they offend my liberal egalitarian sensibilities and I also think they do no good since I truly believe you cannot wall out bad things or bad people. In some ways, I think walls and gates just draw attention and ire from people who might be inclined to want what you have. I have always felt that material possessions are easy to replace, but peace of mind and sensibilities are less so.
Kim’s brother had lived in Escondido for many years and my sister had lived in nearby Rancho Bernardo and Poway for about as long. They both seemed very happy in the area and we had visited enough to know that we liked it too. We are not beach people, but nor are we ranch people. We want what can best be described as an exurban lifestyle where we can see the Ocean but not have to deal with its congested traffic and its corrosive salt air. Views always matter to us, so the thought of something that was close to the 15, but still in sight of the Ocean was very appealing, hence the interest in those hilltop homes in Rim Rock. Once I couldn’t get past the Rim Rock gate I wandered up to one last listing on a hillside just next to an enclave called Hidden Meadows. As I drove up the hill I notices that unlike in Fallbrook and Bonsal, where such hills are common, but where they never seem very well-tended, this hillside area was lovely with ice plants and Bougainvillea in full winter bloom lining the roadsides. It reminded me of a slightly less tropical version of Bermuda. When we found our way to the house for sale at 10133 Quail View Drive, I was blown away by the gardens covering the hillside heading up to the Tucson-style stucco house at the top of the hill. The place looked like a Dr. Seuss book with agaves, aloes, cacti and all manner of local and quite exotic-looking succulents.
I was not bold enough to go up the driveway uninvited on Christmas morning, but instead called the broker of record and made an appointment for my sister and sister-in-law to go see the house the day after we returned to NYC. I was so smitten by the house and grounds that I bought it sight-unseen. My sister and sister-in-law did show us videos of the inside and I had 40+ pictures from Zillow, but it was the gardens that I could see from the bottom of the driveway that really sold me on the property and made me want to buy it. I guess you might say that it was the ultimate curb-appeal to me. So, I bought it (it had had a 30+% price decline recently) without either Kim or I setting foot inside of it. In fact, the first time I set foot in the place was the day I closed on it about six weeks later.
I then spent the next eight years years barely thinking about this hilltop except for the three or four times a year I found my way out here. During those years I had the help of my local family in doing everything from upgrading the aspects of the house we felt needed to be changed as well as occasional garden maintenance. The last thing the prior owner, who had established the wonderful succulent garden said to me was to please not use too much water…even though she had seen fit to install an irrigation system. For the first few years we went back and forth about water or no water and I think its fair to say that I was entirely undecided about watering this succulent garden. During those years, I was adding little to the garden, but merely trying to not have it die.
When we moved out to the hilltop full-time three years ago, I suddenly realized that having a gardener come to clean things up only before we were coming out, was not sufficient. By that time I was mostly in the “don’t water” camp, so I let the garden take of itself the first year. The result was that by August, my gardener (Joventino, who I had put on a once-every-three-weeks basis) was telling me that the succulents were browning out due to lack of water. So, I connected with Andre and went through a multi-level upgrade to the irrigation system, focused on extending the system to the areas of the property that needed more water. What I’ve ended up with (after several added iterations) is a 25-zone automated system that adjusts itself based on the weather and specifically the rainfall. It’s a challenge to manage the system properly, but the end result has been a very verdant garden that has extended from the front entry hillside to probably 85% of the entire property, front and back.
Friends and family that visit always want a tour of the gardens, which I am always willing to oblige. I have mostly added elements for the children that come to spend time with us, but clearly adults find interest in the gardens as well. Our first real tour of the full gardens took place this past April when we had the entire Hidden Meadows Garden Club for a garden tour. Since then there have been many smaller and impromptu visit and tours, but this holiday season has seen a real step up in activity. Besides the normal array of holiday family visitors, including the kids that very much enjoy the games area, the Hobbit House, the Climbing Wall and all the other attractions, we’ve had some larger tours.
To begin with, out friends and neighbors Faraj and Yasuko had their children over for a full tour. Then our friends and neighbors Jeff and Shannon brought their family, that consisted of about 20 adults and children for an even bigger and more complete tour. I figured that was the grand finale for the season, but then today I noticed a group of women walking around the north paths around the house with Kim. It seems that Kim had encountered them down by the road, right where I had sat on my motorcycle eleven years ago. They explained that they were from San Marcos and that they had a habit of bringing visiting friends over to see our gardens. As you can imagine, it was hard for Kim not to invite them to come up and see the whole property (at least she stopped short of showing them the insides of the house).
When we decided to not live in a gated community, I’m not sure we thought that meant that we were opening our doors to the entire community. I can say the same thing about my decisions about adding to the gardens. But the truth is that we throughly enjoy and take pride in our gardens. We don’t do it to garner attention, but if people want garden tours, let there be garden tours.