Aerie Art Garden
"Welcome to our desert garden"!
Patience Rewarded-(Shirley Brenon photos Allison McBee)
Research and hard labor pay off in creating a paradise on the desert hillside. For more than two decades Bruce and Clonard Thomas have been carving Utopia out of the Palm Desert Cahuilla Hills, nuturing plants and moving granite one rock at a time.
The hillsides appeared to be barren when they began but water brought the miracle of life to the fertile earth, allowing them to create an oasis, and art garden teeming with birds and critters of all shapes and sizes.
It has taken a lot of research, patience and perseverance to get where they are now but according to them it has been well worth it. "This is like heaven", says Bruce Thomas as he sits under the shade of a large mesquite, peering out over his hand-laid granite wall at the city below. "The only better place is the Indian Canyons because they have water flowing through it." The Thomases' work began in July of 1978, when they purchased five acres of land—they have added more land over the years so that now they own 20 acres. The hillside property consisted of six homesteaded houses from the 1930s and two trees. The property now includes a three-acre sculpture garden, a gallery, five art studios, a chapel, a citrus and fruit orchard and a botanical desert garden with 1000 trees and a variety of cactus. In addition they have created paths, rock walls, pools and a variety of painting and dining areas secluded amid indigenous plants, imaginatively tucked under palapas and overhangs.
Educating themselves to desert plants became their first order of business, since Bruce grew up on a farm in the suburbs of Chicago and Clonard was a city girl from Los Angeles. They spent many hours at the library, in addition to visiting the Living Desert. While they researched they lost no time in investigating what nature had preserved for them; they began to "water nothing on their property. They didn't plant anything but for one year ran water from a 1/8-inch line, providing moisture for the parched hillside.
"The desert soil is full of plants, with 2,000 seeds in one cubic meter of soil," Clonard explains. "You would be amazed at what grew. The ground was alive with wild flowers, trees and shrubs, giving us a chance to pick and choose what we wanted to keep or rearrange." As they learned more about the desert and its plants they began to set out goals for their garden. First of all they knew they would needa lot of shade so people would be comfortable outside. They also
wanted to design their garden so some-thing would be blooming at all times.
"We needed an area of peace and comfort, a place for us and our students to find inspiration so art could be created and appreciated," Bruce says.
"Along with that, we wanted to preserve the desert, as we're losing the integrity of what it is all about. Pretty soon will be like Cleveland in the summer. Sure snapdragons and petunias are nice, but this is the desert. We're in a very small zone that's in danger of being changed. The plants have worked out ways to exist and survive so we must protect them."
From a design angle they were ahead of the game since they both hold degrees in fine art. In addition, Clonard has a master's from Otis Art Institute and Bruce studied sculpture and was a faculty member at Syracuse University. They also ran an art studio and advertising busi- ness in Hermosa Beach before making their home the desert.
I didn't draw up a formal plan for the garden,it just grew organically like a garden should,"Bruce says. We began by developing the area between our house, offering a 360 degree view of the valley, and our art studios, 70 feet farther down the hill. I love sweeping curves, so I looked over the area and then traced marks in the dirt with my shoe," he adds, sweeping his shoe across the dry sand.
At this point they began to visit garage sales,street fairs and remodeling sites looking for trees to buy or obtain "free if you dig it yourself."
For the most part they stayed with small specimens in one-gallon contain-ers, as they were easier to plant in the granite soil and survived just as well, if not better, after five years than a five gallon plant. Bruce also began to blaze a trail traversing the hillside to display his sculpture garden, a continually changing group of more than 20 pieces of art, with each sculpture representing a theme in man's relationship to nature. In addition he began to rearrange the rocks to form walls, trails and water features.I sure didn't know that I had married a rock man and a digger," Clonard says with a smile, describing his backbreaking efforts. "All of the rocks are from this property. All we bought was cement and he went through two cement mixers creating all of this."
Are they finished developing the property? They claim they are but a tour of the gardens and grounds brings discussions of more up-grades to the chapel, used for memorials and weddings, rearranging shrubs for corporate party guests or making changes to the art studios used by local artists. They're also thinking of moving the herb garden next to the kitchen. So much to do, so little time to do it.
Bruce pauses in his discussion of changes and points up to the trail leading through the Sculpture garden. "l used to walk to work every day," he says, "coming down the hill from the house and on through the cactus garden to my art studio over there on the other side of the property. I finally had to quit that because I found so many things to do on the way that I never made it to work!
"Things are better now, as I drive down the hill, but it reminds me of a 'Sig Alert' when I encounter coveys of quail trying to cross the road. Last spring one covey had more than forty babies, which I met up with every morning. There was a lot of confusion as their mother and father called and raced around trying to round them up. I just wait for the crowd to pass, making me late for work, but at least I get there."
