It’s been a busy, somewhat bewildering week in Los Angeles, where a jet-lagged but otherwise excited team from the bright lights of Semley (population: 256) has been working in support of our residency at Nickey Kehoe, LA (population: 3.86 million) and, from 17–20 September, Nickey Kehoe New York City.
Now, Los Angeles – in spite of the heat and recent ecological tragedies – is bursting with interesting plant life, from succulents and cacti to hibiscus and jacaranda (sadly we’ve missed these in bloom). There’s a good smattering of pines and the iconic palm trees cannot fail to impress those of us from cooler climes.
Around Beverly Boulevard, near Nickey Kehoe’s seductively stylish store, ostentatious showpiece front gardens vie for attention, each stuffed with all manner of well-kept specimens. They’re spectacular but a little clinical and, dare I say it, soulless (NB might just be envy talking). Not nearly enough scruffy edges, but perhaps that’s a symptom of the palette of architectural agaves, palms and aloes. What we’ve been missing out on is a little time in a real gardener’s garden, so we were delighted to be invited to visit Todd Nickey’s Pasadena home, high in the hills above the city, to get to know Todd and creative partner Amy Kehoe a little better and find out how they like to use our great stuff from Japan.
The road up to the home Todd shares with husband Greg is a child’s scribble of hairpin bends, and the plot itself commands views across sparsely developed slopes of the San Rafael Hills. At night rival packs of coyotes howl at each other across the ravines, perhaps bickering over who will get first dibs on the chickens (safely locked away in a wire cage, I should add).
The house itself has a story. Built in 1927, the Spanish Revival home was designed by architect William F. Staunton Jr. as his own residence, before later passing into Greg’s family. Much of the garden, however, is considerably younger. When Todd and Greg reclaimed the adjoining property in 2015 (it had belonged to another family for a few years), much of what we see today was bare earth. Working with landscape designer Fi Campbell, Todd gradually developed the predominantly native and drought-tolerant garden around the pool, after an early experiment with thirstier grasses proved ill-suited to the Southern Californian climate.
When Amy arrives, she and Todd joke that this is not the way they usually spend their Saturdays. They’re close, but gardening together is perhaps a step too far, even for friends of 26 and business partners of 22 years. Todd, however, is raring to go and we begin with a tour of his perfectly formed vegetable cage, bursting with good smells and more than enough Japanese tomatoes, shishito peppers and herbs to make a superior midweek supper from scratch. Todd points out one recent addition – lovage – and details plans for more slightly left-field additions; though perhaps they won’t be planted here. Together with Greg, he has recently bought a farm in Connecticut (an OLD farm – 1755), which means there’s a whole new chapter of gardening and growing produce on the horizon. It will be a very different type of garden, and not just because of the transcontinental geography: the new house opens directly into the garden, whereas the demands of this plot mean the house is perched on the highest ground, with the garden, which we’ve entered from the lowest point, rising to meet it.
Todd, who grew up with his maternal grandparents in Maryland on the East Coast, retains fond memories of blousier, naturalistic, cottage-style gardens, and there are nods to this amongst the Californian natives. It’s mid-September, so we have to look for clues to imagine just how vibrant the Matilija poppies will be around the edge of the pool, and how salvias like ‘Bee’s Bliss’ and Cleveland sage mingle with lavender, Euphorbia and bearded iris in the borders. Elsewhere, miniature olive trees add a slightly more Mediterranean note. Sheltering under a pergola by the pool, we try to picture the wisteria in full bloom. At this time of year the real stars of the garden are the large bushes of Echium candicans – the Pride of Madeira – which have held on to their spears of fading purple flowers and appear to be thriving in spite of the heatwave.
As they chat and prune, Jake and Todd hunt around the top garden for a selection of interesting leaves and seed heads, furnishing Amy with the necessary plant material to try her hand at a freestyle arrangement on a kenzan (aka flower frog). Helpfully, Todd reminds us of the need to stamp loudly before planting a foot deeper in any of the borders, to give any lurking rattlers the chance to move on first.
“While most indoor spaces benefit from air conditioning, Todd’s house has a secret weapon: bedrock. Ducking into the basement to grab a spade, he shows us how the entire house sits directly on and in solid rock which forms the walls of the basement itself.”
It’s slim pickings at this time of the year, so it feels a bit like one of those rather stressful cooking shows where someone is given an odd mix of ingredients and asked to whip up something delicious, but Amy doesn’t seem to mind and begins experimenting. Clearly there are transferable skills from the day job – balancing form and colour to create stylish, idiosyncratic interiors – which translate well to flower arranging with a kenzan. Jake offers a few pointers (mostly health and safety related) but Amy appears to be a natural.
After a few minutes of snipping stems to length, she gently lifts her creation into a large clam shell that Todd has produced (upgraded, in recognition of Amy’s talents, from the dog water bowl that was initially supplied for the job), while we discuss the importance of a garden – any garden – as an escape from the pair’s busy work lives. A nap in the garden is universally agreed upon as one of the rarest of pleasures.
It rained the week before our visit. That might not seem newsworthy to some of us, but this was rain from the fringes of Hurricane Marie: LAX recorded 0.60 inches on 6 September, smashing the previous record for that date of 0.02 inches. Three days later, downtown LA hit 105°F (40.6°C), tying the record for the day, with unusually high humidity to match. Our British obsession with discussing the weather seems to be catching, as everyone we meet tells us this isn’t normal and – bless them – apologises for the inconvenience. The sensible approach is to plant Californian native species that can handle the heat and, crucially, the lack of rain. Amy reveals that they sought advice from friend of Niwaki, David Godshall of Terremoto design studio fame (see Niwaki Field Report No. 1), when it came to planting up the outside of their storefront. She favours natives in her own garden too, and she and her family have been rewarded with a gratifying increase in pollinators.
As in their eclectic store, Todd’s garden is filled with characterful spaces exuding personality. On the way up to the house, we pass a shady corner where a giant staghorn fern defies gravity above a small water feature. Jake admires the way the harsh daylight is softened as it bounces onto a whitewashed wall from off a hearty pink bougainvillea. The closer we get, the more personal the garden feels, until we reach the final stop on our tour: the garden within the house itself, a shaded central courtyard around which Staunton organised the original hacienda-style plan, with luxurious ferns, a lemon tree and a large, glossy-leaved fig of some sort (Ficus lyrata? Thanks Google.) among other delights. The garden around the pool and the views across the hills are all well and good, but in this heat taking a seat in the shade of the courtyard with a book and a few good plants for company seems like the right speed of gardening, so we leave Todd, Greg and Amy to enjoy the rest of their afternoon together.
