<Begin Segment 23>

DH: So now let's talk about the restoration because now you are back here. Explain how you came to move back to Bainbridge Gardens.

JH: Well, the last site that I mentioned at the Village Shopping Center I leased that property, and the landlord decided he was going to sell all the property there, which constitutes some 20 plus acres, into a major shopping center. So they didn't have room for me because the land cost, land development cost, would be too high for an expanded nursery operation. So I had to make some decisions and I probed around and found about three different locations to move my nursery operations plus Bainbridge Gardens.

DH: Now the 20 acres you are talking about is the site they call the Village. I just wanted to clarify that the nursery was about 20 acres and the Village was --

JH: Was only approximately about 3 acres, yeah. Anyway I had four possible locations. The weakest strangely enough was Bainbridge Gardens. Again the stigma of moving here didn't appeal to me, but I searched out all the possibilities. And then I had another option too, I could have retired. But at the time I was only fifty-five years old, and I was thinking to myself, "Well gee, what would I do if I retired?" I would obviously maybe find someplace to work, but being what I am, I never would have been happy working for anybody except myself so that became an unoption. And so investigating other possibilities of where to move, for some reason or other -- and I think this is fate. Maybe it was a guided fate, I'm not sure -- somehow or other I thought, "Well, gee whiz, here's a beautiful piece of property, here's something that was in the family since 1911. Why not try to rebuild it again?" And something just drew me to that decision.

DH: Do you remember how the first idea even came to your mind of even considering this site because for a long time you really neglected the site as I understand.

JH: Yeah, that's right. Well, it's kind of a painful thing to come here for quite a while because there were all memories of hardship.

DH: And your father had been deceased since 1974. We are talking about 1988.

JH: '88, yes.

DH: So no one had been on the property.

JH: That's right, for fourteen years it stayed latent, yes. But it had all very negative, traumatic feelings. But somehow and then I talked it over with my wife Chris and we decided well, this would be the right site, but we were going to just have a little modest operation, just a Mom and Pop-type store, and this way we would have connections with people. So I redid the Shiki Building, which was a very small building, and we operated out of that. But somehow or other it just kept growing and growing and growing, and I guess it's just my nature to make that happen because I can't sit still and I always want to build. I'm always itching to build and progress forward. But it was probably one of the finest decisions I've ever made. But as I said coming back to my discussion with my wife Chris, we were going to make it a very small operation, a Mom and Pop operation, so that maybe during the winter we can just lock it up and go someplace, but it never did happen. It just kept growing and growing and the thing that developed was the public awareness of what was happening here and the richness of the history and the wonderful legacy of the plants that our family planted here years ago and how all those plants have grown and have grown into an amphitheater of beauty. So as the project evolved it became stronger and stronger and more meaningful. So here we are today with an expanded operation that's certainly not a Mom and Pop operation.

DH: Let's go back a little bit. When you first -- then after you made the decision to come here, describe what it was like the first time you walked on to the property.

JH: Well, actually it was a lot easier than I had thought to develop this property because it already was a nursery at one time. And initially we only had to remove as I recall seven alder trees in order to make a development here. And that's really amazing because in most cases when you're developing a piece of property like this, you remove hundreds of trees in order to clear the land, but it was already somewhat physically developed. And, of course, in my childhood I actually worked here on the property so I knew the property pretty well so it was easy to develop a plan. And in most cases, in this case it wasn't really a drawn plan, it was a plan that was in my head, and it just kind of self-evolved. It was kind of like a cake walk. It just, everything just seemed to fit well together. And certainly there are some shortcomings in the development of this property, but all in all we were able to retain the beauty of the property, and I guess that's what attracts people here.

DH: Well, those who had seen it in the late '70s and during the '80s would probably remember it as a broken down gas station with a rusty gas pump standing in front and the whitewash peeling off of an old building that was falling down in the back and just the weeds. And for those people I don't think they saw it as such an easy plan or "a cake walk" as you described it because it seemed like a complete transformation that you brought something out of what appeared to be nothing. And in an interview, which you gave in 1983, you had talked about the ruins of Bainbridge Gardens and how it was in ruins and how it would not be restored. So in your own mind it seems that you have come to change, to completely change your direction and change your mind about how you felt about the gardens. Do you think that's true?

JH: Well, obviously. As I say that, I don't recall making that statement that I'll never come back here, but I must have said that one time. And as I reiterate, it was basically due to negative feelings about the property and the struggle we had in our previous years, and so probably I had absolutely no thought of making the change and developing Bainbridge Gardens. But as I say, the decision for some reason just evolved and it just like I was steered to do it.

DH: Do you remember what turned this from being kind of a business decision to an emotional decision when you walked along the property and saw it?

JH: Oh, gosh, yes. I tell you when that really happened and struck me. One of the decisions in the development of the property was to make a nature trail in the woods, and that's where my father's pine trees are, the ones that he had started from seed from Japan. And one day I was walking through the woods -- this was late in the afternoon -- and the sun filtered between those pine trees, and I thought I was in heaven. The glow of that sun was absolutely perfect and that made me so inspired that I'll never forget that moment. And it was just like somebody -- and it might be my parents -- that was holding the light between those trees, and I said, "My God, this is it. This has got to be it." And then I started to remember as I walked out of those woods and looked totally around myself and I saw all those beautiful trees that you can witness here if you ever visit and how significant they are to creating this wonderful atmosphere, this amphitheater of legacy. That's what's so important about this project. It isn't making -- the project is not about making money, it's about making and preserving a legacy for the future, a legacy, protecting that legacy that was left behind. And so that's where the value is.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.