The Willow Glen Resident

Point of View

Deborah Taylor-Hollis

An iris garden by any other name-isn't

Jim Morrison wrote "Poor Otis Dead and Gone, Left Me Here To Sing His Song" about the death of Otis Redding. I'm here to mourn a more local loss, the death of Maryott's Iris Gardens, whose final heartbeats were felt in the fall when bulldozers moved in. We are proud of the 12 custom-built behemoths with selling prices of up to $850,000 pressing up against our meager stick homes. It could have been worse.

When the latest inheritor of the original Reese family land on Bird Avenue (location of the Clara B. Reese Iris Gardens and namesake of the county iris society) came looking for her tract of land, she was using information from pre-1927, showing street access to her parcel that no longer existed. Our neighborhood had been built on the old access site. I walked her around to the railroad tracks (the back end of her property) and had to inform her that the only way to get to most of her land was through the two decrepit homes that fronted Bird Avenue, which her family had rented out for years She mentioned turning the whole thing into apartments. I helped talk her out of it, and so now we have--La La Land.

Actually, it's Iris Gardens Court, a great name to give the homes in memory of the gardens they mowed under. Ironic that the tribute to the famous iris plants are live-in grave markers on the site of their passing. Even more ironic that each house has been named by the developer for a type or color of iris that they supplant. While a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, killing the bush and calling the bare ground "rose" lacks a certain charm, as does the 12-foot-high cement wall that surrounds this little bit of nouveau-riche heaven.

As for a developer naming houses--well, it's tacky. Houses get their names from their owners, or the local folk, over years of habitué. My own home has boasted its name for 17 years, since our honeymoon. We traveled to Scotland and found that a moor castle was named "MouseHold Heath" due to its size and location in the highlands. We felt it fit our new place: too small to be called a household, it's a perfect mousehold. The custom of naming homes in my family dates back to when my grandparents lived in Carmel, a place with no addresses, only home names. For Iris Gardens Court, with such generic titles to its manses, I doubt if the newbies will even remember their homes' monikers much past the fifth mortgage payment.

Even more ironic is that only half the homes actually stand on ground used by the Maryott iris gardens. The other half were erected on the lot on which stood the two dilapidated domiciles.

Suffice to say, having a Willow Glen version of Tara erected on the site has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. These new homes do add to our real estate values, pushing most of our cottages into the $400,000 range just by proximity. Of course, we can't boast homes so close that you can pass the sugar from your kitchen to your neighbor's without getting up off the chair. Those of us in the cheap houses will just have to live with the open space around us.

I found it gauche when Almaden Winery became winery estates after the vineyards were demolished, and I still cringe when I see the Lick Mansion of Santa Clara reduced to a clubhouse status crowded behind stucco and chrome condos that detract and diminish the beauty of the old manse. Now, every time I pass the fertile grounds of Iris Gardens Court, I will think of paving paradise and putting up a parking lot. There is, however, one bright spot.

Several weeks ago, while gardening, my son and I found a large and rather sweet mole, which we captured and petted, exclaimed over and then debated his fate. He could not stay in my iris garden, uprooting the shallow plants, subject to future small-boy ministrations. Killing him was out of the question. After several seconds of moral debate, we released him into the lush new grounds of Iris Court. At $850,000 a plot, burrowing in there seemed fitting for our little hero. We know he'll be right at home: We named him Bloomer.

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