In the garden of her pleasant, sunny,
Spanish-style cottage, Maureen Decombe surrounds herself with two of her
passions: plants and insects.
Working in containers in what she refers to as her "cobbler's child" garden, Decombe accents her Palo Alto home and garden with metal sculptures of insects. Stacks of flagstone sit in a corner of the yard, which she says will be incorporated into a new garden design.
Decombe, owner of Blue Door Design, a garden design and consulting
firm, teaches two classes for the residential gardener at the Palo Alto Adult School. Both classes -- "Home Garden Maintenance" and "Garden Design for Homeowners" -- fill up quickly. It's already too late to sign up for the autumn classes, but she will offer more during the winter session (see box at end).
She also maintains and designs gardens for John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems, and his wife Marva. During the drive to their home garden, Decombe talked about her loves and the evolution of her gardening experience.
A Maryland native, Decombe attended the University of Maryland, receiving a degree in government and politics, specializing in pesticide reform and
international food policy. She lived on a 20-acre farm with college friends growing organic vegetables. She also worked for the U. S. Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) as a research technician doing early research on neem, a botanical pesticide from an Indian tree of the same name.
"I grew hundreds of chrysanthemums and put them in a big room filled with leaf miners and counted the eggs and larvae. I became completely fascinated by insects. I can talk about the parasites of aphids for hours," she recalled.
After her stint at the U.S.D.A., Decombe took a job working for a non-profit
organization.
"I began taking longer and longer walks at lunch. I found myself unable to concentrate. I wanted to be outside gardening," she said.
Leaving her office job, she went to work as a gardener at the Washington
National Cathedral, where she worked in the Bishop's Garden.
For several years she managed the cathedral's retail greenhouse, and managed the volunteers. She describes it as a wonderful experience that instilled in her some of her love of teaching.
"I love teaching in a classroom setting. When people go to nurseries. . . people want an answer in five minutes. Real gardening is so complex that it is difficult to come up with [sound bites] for answers." Teaching the classes gives her a chance to fully explain gardening concepts, she said.
Decombe eventually moved to the Bay Area and married her husband, Jean-
Michel, a software developer. Later she earned a degree from Foothill College's
Environmental Horticulture program, with a concentration in design and nursery
management.
While at Foothill, she was hired by Peninsula author Rosalind Creasy ("Edible
Landscaping") who was looking for a gardener for her clients, the Warnocks, in
their acre-plus garden. In addition to Creasy's original design, Decombe has designed other gardens on the property. She transformed a sand volleyball court into a semicircular flower garden. Some of the play area was retained with a lawn for a regulation badminton court. There is also a patio area and arbor.
"I made sure that the space could hold a sufficient number of tables for a party," she added.
The main garden is a showcase of cut flowers, herbs and vegetables arranged
in wedge-shaped raised beds radiating from a gazebo. There are plenty of flowers for cutting, and two bouquets are taken into the house each week, she said. Among her favorite vegetables in the garden is rainbow chard, which she describes as "one of the most satisfying plants... the perfect 'spokes plant' for ornamental edible gardening -- both beautiful and edible."
In her classes, Decombe says she asks her students where they grew up. "Those first gardens... have a profound effect on what makes gardens meaningful for us as adults....
"Tonight we are doing one of my favorite projects in class: making choices about what our dreams are for our garden. [The students] go through magazines and cut out pictures of gardens, save them and paste them in a book. [It] begins to give us a sense of what our style and preferences are. It forces us to make quick decisions about what is deep inside us. When we love a garden, it touches something deep in our soul," she said.
On the first night of class, she asks her students what their least favorite plant is.
"There is a real passion that opens people up and gives them permission to get rid of things in their garden," she said.
If the plant must be pruned or watered constantly or continually gets infested by insects, the plant is telling you that it is unhappy too, she added.
"It doesn't end with taking the plant out. You have to plant something that is
appropriate in that space. The trick for successful gardening is to create a beneficial environment for the things you want and to not leave a niche for the things that you don't want to move in."
In the Warnock garden, Decombe cultivates plants that attract beneficial insects and makes sure that there is nectar available year round. She tries to have something blooming at all times, she said.
An important part of her gardening philosophy is that in a residential garden
there is no need to use toxic chemicals.
"People need to relax and look at what's happening in the garden," she said. For example, in the Warnocks' garden she let the first crop of aphids remain and watched as the beneficial insects came to the garden on their own to feed on them. She manages diseases with compost, using the beneficial organisms in the compost to attack disease organisms, she said. She recommends compost teas as a spray "to make the plant's phylloplane [leaf surface] an uninviting environment for powdery mildew."
After the terrorist acts, the only thing that helped her feel centered again was
being in the garden, she said.
"If we can make our gardens refuges and sanctuaries where we feel centered, then they have fulfilled their purpose.
"People interested in gardening have a lifetime of fascination ahead of them. We have barely scratched the surface. The process of gardening opens up a whole new world," she added.
Box at end:
What: Winter Home Garden Maintenance
Web: Thursday, Feb. 21-March 14, 6:30-9 p.m.
Where: Palo Alto Adult School, 50 Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto
Info: Cost is $54; call (650) 329-3752 to register. Registration begins Nov. 26. For more information, check the Web site at www.paadultschool.org.
