On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 06:41:58 -0800, Persephone wrote:

Folks:

At this URL

http://tinyurl.com/bd55h

in today's Los Angeles Times, there is a lovely story about the man
who helped create the plantings in this copy of a Herculaneum Villa,
on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California, and has continued to
maintain them.

Incidentally, J. Paul Getty whose $$ funded the Villa with its
gardens, never saw the place; he died in England w/o ever visiting the
place.

The Getty ((NOT the famous artt gallery up on the hill which was
built much later -- and which has its own garden folklore!) is finally
re-opening this month. When the "new" Getty was built, and the
collections were moved there, the Villa -- as the article explains --
was to hold Getty's collection of antiquities. But after two years of
renovations were completed, there was about a three-year delay in
re-opening, due to endless hassles with the neighbors about noise,
traffic, etc. c, etc.etc.

Hope you enjoy the story, and if in Calif. you visit the Villa.
If you stood up on the 2nd floor balcony and looked out toward the
Pacific Ocean, you could swear you WERE in Italy, looking out through
the Mediterranean plantings toward THAT ocean.

Persephone

Oops - after I checked the newspaper story again, I saw my figures
were way off. It's been out of action altogether NINE years! Good
lord, where have they gone! g. It was supposed to re-open in 2002,
but didn't happen until 2006.