Added to the National Register of Historic Places April 19, 2021

UPDATE, 1/31/23: an earlier version of this blog post indicated that Descanso founder E. Manchester Boddy helped to run the Star Nursery while its owner, FM Uyematsu, was at an internment camp during WWII. Uyematsu’s descendents reached out to me with evidence that Boddy may have, in fact, tried to shut down the nursery. See the updated “Blooming in World War II” section below.

Descanso literally means “rest” in Spanish. That’s what you do at Descanso Gardens, you rest. You go to stop and smell the camellias, stroll among the oaks, slow down a little bit. I could go on for hours about the salubrious effects of spending more time among the rose gardens, turtle ponds and sun-dappled lanes of giant trees at this botanical wonderland. It’s a magical place from a purely floral perspective. But the history of Descanso is also a human history – of horticulture and architecture, racism and war, the struggle between private and public concerns, and the effort to preserve green space in a rapidly urbanizing Los Angeles. So let’s take a ramble down the metaphorical camellia forest of Descanso’s fascinating story.

In Descanso Gardens’ nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places, the historians at Sapphos Environmental, Inc. break its period of significance into two broad phases: 1937-1952, when the property was developed by Manchester Boddy, and 1966-1969, which covers the construction of the Japanese Garden. 

For context though, let’s start further back. For thousands of years, the land that now encompasses Descanso was tended by the Tongva, a Native American tribe dispersed throughout southern California. The establishment of the San Gabriel Mission by Spanish missionaries in 1771 initiated a new system under which indigenous people were subjugated, their land divided into massive ranchos. Descanso Gardens are built on land that was once part of the 36,000-acre Rancho San Rafael, given to the soldier José María Verdugo by the Spanish governor of California at the time. But with Mexico’s independence from Spain, the Mexican-American War and the Gold Rush all happening within a single generation, the first half of the 19th century was a tumultuous one for SoCal and the Verdugo family. In 1871, after Verdugo’s descendants foreclosed on the mortgage on their rancho, lawsuits were filed and competing claims were made, the land was partitioned into 31 parcels. 

The Boddy Era

Fast forward 50 years to 1920: a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman named Elias Manchester Boddy, son of a Washington state potato farmer, moves from New York to Los Angeles with his wife Berenice and their newborn son. Boddy had survived a gas attack at the Forest of Argonne while serving during WWI, then caught double pneumonia upon his return to New York, and his doctor thought a move west would do him good. 

The poor but talented Boddy stayed in the book merchant business, and soon caught the attention of LA Times publisher (and real estate magnate) Harry Chandler, who hired him to run the new Times-Mirror Book Publishing Company. In 1926, Boddy took a gamble and purchased the failing Illustrated Daily News paper from another insanely wealthy American, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Within a few years he had turned the paper from a money pit into a profitable and popular, liberal-minded newspaper with a circulation of 200,000. Boddy’s reputation and coffers grew, and with their newfound wealth, the Boddys bought 125 acres of land in the Crescenta Valley, expanded to 165 acres by 1937. They named the property “Rancho del Descanso.”

At the time of its purchase, the Rancho del Descanso was mostly old oak trees and wild chaparral. The fallen oak leaves contributed to the acidity of the soil, which made its chemical makeup similar to the mountains of east Asia. At the advice of horticultural experts, Boddy got to work buying and planting east Asian flower varietals, especially Japanese camellias, along with azaleas and rhododendrons. He also purchased a large tract of land in Hall-Beckley Canyon, just a few miles north. The land included a stream, so he dug an underground pipeline to irrigate his growing rancho with fresh mountain water. It’s still in use today. 

Nice as it would be to sleep under the trees each night, Boddy commissioned a mansion for his family from society architect James Dolena (same guy who designed Walt Disney’s estate in Holmby Hills). Built in 1938, the Boddy House is a classic Hollywood Regency home, with some colonial revival touches out front for show. The two story home has four wings radiating out from a central foyer, including one wing with a high-ceilinged library and a separate gun room (!)

Blooming in World War II

It is a sad irony that one of the major sources of Descanso Gardens’ fame – Boddy’s peerless camellia collection – only exists because of the unjust internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. In the late ‘30s, Japanese immigrants and their families made up a sizable portion of the flower farmers and nursery owners in LA County. Boddy was a regular at two Japanese-owned purveyors of camellias, F.M. Uyematsu’s Star Nursery in Montebello and Sierra Madre, and the Mission Nursery in San Gabriel, founded by Fred and Mitoko Yoshimura.

When Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, Uyematsu and the Yoshimuras were forced to leave for detention camps. Before they left, Boddy paid $50,000 for some 300,000 plants from Uyematsu, and bought the entire Mission Nursery from the Yoshimuras, paying them regular installments while they were away. Out of these tragic circumstances, Boddy acquired thousands of new camellias. With the help of horticulturalist Howard Asper, they were integrated into Descanso, which became one of North America’s largest camellia plantations.

It’s worth pointing out that while Uyematsu sold the large majority of his stock to Boddy, he kept about 20,000 camellias, and continued to run his flower business from Manzanar. There is credible evidence, drawn from the Uyematsu family’s War Relocation Authority case files, that Boddy was upset about not receiving all of Uyematsu’s camellias. Letters from the nursery’s acting manager RW Augspurger to Uyematsu suggest that Boddy may have tried to put Star Nursery out of business while its owner was interned, by vastly underselling camellias to major accounts.

After the war, Boddy brought on horticulturalist Walter Lammerts to expand Descanso’s collections of native plants, fruit trees, lilacs and roses, and to hybridize the camellias. By the 1960s, Descanso Gardens had a 100,000-strong stock of camellias in 800 varieties from all over the world. It even achieved baller status as an “International Camellia Garden of Excellence,” as declared by the International Camellia Society.

Alarming the Neighbors: Descanso Goes from Private to Public

LA transplants poured into the city after WWII, and some of the newcomers in La Cañada weren’t too happy at the prospect of sharing their quiet neighborhood with a giant commercial enterprise – you gotta remember that Boddy made a nice chunk of change selling flowers, seeds and plants during these years. Boddy responded by renaming his estate “Descanso Gardens,” opening it to the public and charging visitors $1 to tour the grounds. Unfortunately the 6,000 people that showed up only made the neighbors angrier… 

In the late ‘40s Boddy took a crack at Hollywood, crafting the story for the 1949 war movie Malaya starring Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart. Lionel Barrymore appears in the film as a newspaper publisher named (wait for it) John Manchester, based on you know who…it’s a treat to watch Jimmy and Lionel acting together in a much friendlier scene than It’s a Wonderful Life, three years earlier. Several sources indicate that Boddy used his earnings from Malaya to build the Boddy Lodge, a small structure next to the lake at Descanso.

After a failed bid for a US Senate seat in 1950 (Richard Nixon ended up winning), Boddy retired from his day gig at the Illustrated Daily News in 1952, and decided to sell Descanso Gardens and move to San Diego. This concerned the neighbors even further – think of all the noise and unscrupulous development that subdividing it would entail! Legend has it that Walt Disney even came around to investigate the area for a theme park he wanted to build.

La Cañada residents convinced the LA County to purchase Descanso Gardens to protect it from further development. In 1953 they signed a lease/purchase plan, and it officially became public property, formally closing the Boddy chapter of Descanso Gardens’ history. 

The Japanese Garden

With the loss of its visionary founder, the Descanso Gardens spent a few years finding its way. In 1957 a group of neighbors formed the Descanso Gardens Guild to raise funds and help prune the garden’s future. The Guild hired botanist Theodore Payne to install a California Natives Garden in 1959. But according to Descanso’s NRHP nomination form, the Guild’s most historically significant achievement was the creation of the Japanese Garden.

In 1966, Descanso Gardens unveiled its Japanese Garden, a tranquil environment of walkways, waterways and vegetation native to east Asia, created by landscape architect Eikiro Nunokawa. It opened with a tea house designed by local architect Whitney Smith, who designed two houses for the Case Study Houses program. Three years later a traditional Japanese farmhouse (or minka) and a graceful bridge were added, both designed by Kenneth Masao Nishimoto. For their first 15 years of existence, the tea house and minka functioned as Descanso’s gift shop and food stall.

I find deep historical resonance in the creation of Descanso’s Japanese Garden. The core of Descanso’s world-class floral collection were direct results of the tragedy of Japanese American internment. Nearly 25 years later, Descanso built a traditional Japanese garden designed, crafted and operated by numerous people of Japanese descent. There is something beautiful in the idea of the Japanese horticultural tradition that spurred Descanso’s growth, coming back in an even more pronounced way, and largely through the financial support of the Japanese-American community.

Descanso Never Rests

“I want Descanso Gardens to remain for all time as a living monument to the beautiful old West, whose deserts, mountains, trees, streams, and flowers have been a source of inspiration and joy to me.”

-Manchester Boddy, “Welcome to Descanso Gardens” brochure, 1951

Though it’s gone through phases without major new additions, the “rest” Gardens have never rested for long. Visitors today enter Descanso through a courtyard complex finished in 1982, including the Visitor Center, gift shop, classrooms, a café and Van de Kamp Hall. The International Rosarium opened in ‘94; in 2014 came the Oak Woodland, which recreates the native LA habitat from before the Spanish arrived. The following year the Ancient Forest opened, with cycads and other plants that were around during dinosaur times.  

As its collection of flora has expanded, Descanso has also become a broader cultural center. It presents art exhibits several times a year at the Sturt Haaga Gallery, fashioned out of the former garage at the Boddy House. When I visited with my family, the Your (Un)natural Garden installations by artist Adam Schwerner had filled Descanso with giant tree-like structures and archways made of brightly-colored found objects.

The pleasure of a place like Descanso Gardens is in enjoying natural habitats that you couldn’t find otherwise without traveling the world. Clearly, Descanso is an environment curated and shaped by human hands – or rather a “museum of living collections,” as described by the American Alliance of Museums. So many strands of its history are purely human stories. But Descanso’s existence also speaks to the innate importance of the natural world to our cultural identities. Descanso wouldn’t have lasted this long without generations of Angelenos who believe that preserving natural landscapes is worthwhile, whether for inspiration, for education, or simply for rest. 

Recommended Reading: 

+Descanso Gardens’ NRHP nomination form 

+Our History (DescansoGardens.org)

+Boddy House (DescansoGardens.org)

+Hirahara, Naomi: “Reconsidering the Camellia” (KCET, 2017) 

+Kao, Mary Uyematsu: “THROUGH THE FIRE: Grandpa Cherry Blossom — Propagating Japan’s Beauty in America” (The Rafu Shimpo, 2021)

+Kao, Mary Uyematsu: “THROUGH THE FIRE: Grandpa Cherry Blossom — Propagating Japan’s Beauty in America (Part 2)” (The Rafu Shimpo, 2021)

+Simpson, Kelly: “Legacy of Early L.A. Developers Still Remains” (KCET, 2012)

+Rancho San Rafael: A Land in Transition (KCET, 2010)

+Southern California Flower Market: A Japanese American Business Blooms (KCET, 2012)