Hortense Miller, founder of the famous Hortense Miller Garden in Laguna Beach, a vegetarian, environmentalist and early feminist, died at 99. Read the full story here.
Miller, to those who knew her, waited too long. She told me in 2004 and Register reporter Lori Basheda in 2005 that she was ready to go in her 60s.
She said to Baseda, “Well, there’s an end to everything. Good God, I’m 96 years old. I ought to die. And I don’t do it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Miller was like that, funny even when she was frail. The lifelong gardener “went to seed” on Monday.
I remember my own special day with Miller. I was there to write her story and she was in a cheery mood. Happy I think, because I was not there to write about her garden.
Not only did Miller tame a wild hillside in Boat Canyon, she built an extraordinary house.
She hadn’t gotten recognition for the modern house since it appeared in House and Garden magazine in 1959.
Not a stick of furniture had changed and Miller joked that she was probably wearing the same pant suit that she wore for the story some 50 years ago.
Miller was like that. She didn’t change. The seasons did. She waited too long for the poppies to bloom in the spring, the tanagers to stop on their migration, and too long to renew herself like the plants in her garden.
But gardeners know something special about seeds: They live on another day. Millers feisty spirit and sharp wit will certainly bloom forever.
2003 - Laguna Beach
Hortense Miller has labored for more than 40 years to turn two acres of hillside in Orange County into one of the most renowned wild gardens in the world, a natural space full of surprises at every turn, with more than 1,500 species of plants.
But the biggest secret of this special place is sitting in plain sight, and often overlooked.
“Everybody who comes to visit wants to see my garden, but one of my biggest accomplishments is my house,” said Miller, 94. “It wasn’t easy building a midcentury-style home when everybody else in Laguna chose seaside cottages.”
Miller’s viewpoint has always been exceptional. Since her teens she has believed that plants are better than animals, animals are better than humans, and women are as good as men. An early feminist, maybe, but Miller stuck to her vision and searched far and wide for a contemporary architect. It turns out she found Knowlton Fernald Jr. almost in her own back yard, in Newport Beach.
Miller knew what she wanted and couldn’t care less what the neighbors thought. “Miller was an avant-garde thinker, even then,” Fernald said.
Fernald and Miller designed the house together. Every room merges into the landscape, with floor-to-ceiling glass for an uninterrupted view of the birds, plants and Boat Canyon creatures that Miller loves.
“Miller asked for two things in a house — space for her murals and that the garden could be seen from a different angle from every room,” Fernald said.
While architectural visionaries such as Richard Neutra and Joseph Eichler were building modern dream houses in California much earlier, the modern look was still relatively new to Orange County.
“When my husband, Oscar, retired in 1950, we moved here from Chicago to look for land,” Miller said. “The Midwest, though, was way ahead of us in modern design. There was not much in Southern California to choose from architecturally.”
Fernald not only designed Miller a house with the ambience of an atrium, he pain stakingly created many of the details, such as identical indoor and outdoor beam lights, for a seamless blend.
“Miller didn’t want walls, but we had to make accommodations for storage,” Fernald said. “So I designed cabinets on legs to double as room dividers.”
You can’t always tell whether you’re inside or outside in the house. Even the brick is transparent, with the basket-weave design backed by heavy glass.
There are only two interior walls in the main house, both made of walnut. One serves as a bookshelf, the other is used for storage. Both float above the floor on legs while ambient light shines from underneath, lighting the tile floors.
“Dody, my cockatoo, loved to chew on those walls. There wasn’t anything I could or was willing to do to stop her,” Miller said.
Dody may have changed the walls with a few pecks here and there, but precious little else has changed since the home was completed in 1959. The furniture, fixtures and appliances have been in the house, and virtually in the same locations, since its completion.
“We’ve re-covered the couches two times, but the Eames chair is still as good as new,” Miller said.
And exactly in the same spot for 44 years. Even the Norwegian desk accessories sit unmoved, as if in a time warp.
A unique feature of the house is the two-bedroom suite that was built as a separate structure. Inside and out blur as you step along the fern-lined walk to arrive at the sleeping quarters.
“My late husband, Oscar, loved to listen to politics on the radio. I could only take so much. I needed some quiet time.”
The distance from the main house provided that respite.
Throughout the home are hints of Miller’s eclectic interests.
On a bookshelf rest volumes that vary from architecture to entomology. Rachel Carson’s sobering “Silent Spring” shares a shelf with Henry Mitchell’s lighthearted “One Man’s Garden.”
The most telling peek at Miller’s talents is her artwork. In 1942 she spent one brief but cherished year at the Chicago Art Institute. Eclectic murals in what Miller describes as the “institute” style grace the walls of her covered patio, bathroom walls and hillside arbor. An intricate collage of the Midwest fills one bedroom wall. There are five mermaids around the house.
“Mermaids bring bad luck, you know,” Miller said.
Even so, the house has survived three fires. In fact, Miller welcomes the renewal of fire in her garden and landscape beyond.
“The fire doesn’t really want my house — it has lapped all the way up to the support beams. It would much rather feed on the native plants. It is so sad that there aren’t many left.”
