New York (Long Island)\
The Kanes in Levittown
Muriel Kane: well we grew a lot of vegetables. I was very excited about learning to grow vegetables; and I still am. We did it together; he did the turning over of soil…”
Julien Kane: "...after a while we began to get corn borer. We were even then very concerned about not using sprays or pesticides…” We “gave up corn; you can=t grow without spraying...”
The Burnetts in Ronek Park
Eugene Burnett: Some of the most beautiful lawns that I've ever seen anywhere. There was a guy that used to put...there was a kind of competition going with that.
...this guy on Chevy Chase, he used to put nitrogen on his lawn. I had a beautiful lawn too, beautiful thick lawn. My thing was I used to put, I think it was phosphorous. Ah and that stimulated root growth and made it very, very thick. There were some beautiful lawns there. The houses were very well maintained. But you had a higher than average citizenery living there.
There was a weed/feed store cause it was all very rural in those days and there was a Weed and Feed store down in Broadway/ I think it might have been north of the tracks. Yes, where Firestone is at now. We used to buy a lot of stuff there, you know.
We used to get a lot of plants from the old timers that lived in the neighborhood and they would give you a piece of something and you would grow it
I had a vegetable garden and we bought fruit trees from the City of Glass. I think mostly people went there and umYand also there was still farms in North Amityville.
The Murphy's in Old Field
From the book:
Caught up in the lawn-making enthusiasm, even Robert Murphy tried to plant one outside his Crystal Brook home. consulted county agricultural extension agents, in his case, about his failing Crystal Brook lawn
A botanical connoisseur like Robert Murphy himself imported “exotic” specimens into his home collection from travels around the country and the world, as well as Long Island’s wilder corners. Among his transplants were, for instance, “holly berries” from Fire Island beach.
The Murphys, gardening afficionadas long before DDT or other sprays came on the postwar market, had never before used pesticides on their vegetables or fruit. Into the 1950's, they saw no compelling reason to change. [To fertilize they also used] other detritus of animals or plants--stable manure, cotton seed meal, or even salt-hay mulch from local marshes.
Los Angeles
The Rynersons in Lakewood
Bud Rynerson: [The Lakewood model houses] virtually didn't have any landscaping.
Janet Rynerson: What they did was they had a set pattern of landscaping in the front yard.
Bud Rynerson: A few bushes in the front yard...Really just a few bushes and some lawn.
Janet Rynerson: Two cypress trees and a couple of bushes and a lawn.
Bud Rynerson: The backyard, nothing. I don't think they provided that.
Janet Rynerson: They never did provide that.
Bud Rynerson: I think we did all that.
Janet Rynerson: Yes.
Bud Rynerson: ...[in the front] they put in the lawn and the plants, but the backyard was our problem. In fact, we had a favorite story we tell about that. We had moved in and we had three children. Several of them were in diapers yet, so we had to string a clothesline up. Well, I strung our clothesline up from, I think, our garage to the telephone pole in the backyard. She got all the clothes up on the line and the damned thing broke. And, of course, we had nothing but adobe back there. So she had to wash the clothing all over again. [Laughter]
The Alvas in San Gabriel
Bea Alva: Nothing [was on the property when we moved in]. Nothing, just a couple of trees.
Unidentified Speaker: Weeds.
Bea Alva: Yes, weeds, lot of weeds. Then we tried planting corn. I ended up being the gardener day in and day out and they went to work. I got tired of that, all the watering and you know. Then they decided to plant tomatoes. Oh, they were going to make money on the tomatoes. They didn't. We ate it all. You know, it was that type of thing.
But finally my husband says, "Well, we can't sell it because it's our one." I mean, "We can't do what we want because it's our one. Let's sell it." So we put it to the real estate for 1,800, He said, "No, I won't take it." He said, "You'll do better on your own. You sell it for 1,800. Then you get all the money. Now," he said, "if it was on that other side of the street of Del Mar, I could get you 3,000 for that."
...So we said, "Okay, we'll do it." So we tried selling it. Well, we asked 1,000 for it, and this man across the street wanted it for a friend of his from L.A. He said, "No, he won't buy it, it's too much money." "Okay."
Then we stayed with this property and we again tried the City Council and asked if they would let us build another house in here. I told my husband, "Let's build a bigger house in the back for our children."
The Lillards in Beverley Glen
Louise Lillard: A lot of houses didn’t have much lawn because of the terrain, but ours did. That was considered one of the nice things about the house despite the fact that it was in the hills…that it did manage to have a flat lawn in the back and in the front so the children could play and you could plant....my husband worked a lot on it and he planted a lot of flowers and trees and grape arbor. He was constantly...he loved to garden…he was constantly in the garden – camellias and fuschias and he planted a precious dawn redwood that he dearly loved that was some rare species of redwood and he…I think he loved plants more than he did people actually. He was actually just a very plant oriented person and he got actual sensual pleasure just from watching things grow. He would have just a few little ears of corn and he would laugh and say…when he would eat it finally…he would say this corn probably cost about $10.00 an ear because of all the special fertilizing and treatment, but that didn’t matter…he just loved growing it. I was looking at his journal the other day that you mentioned to see if there was anything about the Hillside Ordinance, but there wasn’t anything about that…but, as I turned the pages, I was just struck by how…as I said…it was almost a sensual pleasure in watching plants grow…watching plants mature…watching tress. He loved trees and he said that that goes back to those days in Blister Rust when he was saving the Sugar Pines. And of course, The Great Forest, his first book was all about the trees of the north and he…it was the most important thing in his life, I think...
But everybody up there pretty much who lives in that area are almost all gardeners. It just lends itself…people who moved there liked to garden and like the land and liked land or they wouldn’t be there.