Quick Takes With: Louesa Roebuck

We’ve been following Midwesterner by birth, Californian in spirit Louesa Roebuck for more than a decade, describing her as a “fearless forager” in one story,  “renegade florist” in another, and “rebel against convention” in a third. During that time, the floral iconoclast relocated from the Bay Area to Ojai, CA, and wrote two books—Foraged Flora and Punk Ikebana—that make the case for floral designs that are more art than arrangement, and more feral than formal. She is currently at work on a third book. 

If you’re not familiar with Louesa, this is a great place to get acquainted with her eccentric perspective and strong opinions (of which, she concedes, many are unpopular). 

Photography by Ian Hughes for Punk Ikebana, courtesy of Louesa Roebuck, unless otherwise noted.

Your first garden memory:

My most vivid childhood garden memories are of a Victorian gothic yet sweet, very small garden plot behind my ancestral home in Medina, Ohio. My mother’s people built the Victorian house in 1856 or 18765, depending on who’s telling the tale. White wood with dark, almost black, green shutters and trim. There was a generous gray-floored porch that wrapped around three sides, meant for living and even sleeping in muggy Ohio summers. My grandmother ( my momma’s momma); my great grandmother, Lena; and my mother, Maggie, all spent time together in the very old-fashioned English garden behind the house. My family was old-school: NO color in front of house—that was considered very tacky and low-brow. Color and culinary were reserved for the lesser-seen, more hidden bits of the “yard.” Every year, my momma’s momma battled the birds eating her blueberries. Even as a child, it felt too combative and high maintenance to me—I was rooting for those birds to snatch the berries and escape the evil netting.

She grew Monarda, a fabulous pollinator botanical, black-eyed Susans, herbs for the kitchen, and more. The memories have a fairytale quality, complete with dappled summer sunlight, dragonflies, clover in the grass. I would often get lost in the realms of clover. And then, being my gothic family, there was a lot of shadow.

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete Works. 

Instagram account that inspires you:

@pietoudolf, @yearlonggarden, @shaneconnollyandco, @cultivating_place, @robbiehoney, @eatripjournal, @jeromewaag, @amalgamflora, @bababotanics, @accidentandartifact, @pans_garden_nursery, @california_carnivores, @mr_rintaro, @yoka_good_things, @roselanefarms,
@darbysfarm, @coyotewillow.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

Humans behind critters. Or…semi feral verdant. Or…human hands secondary. Or…chill on pruning. Or…herbs herbs herbs.

Plant that makes you swoon:

It changes with every micro season and with every place. Scented geraniums, jasmine, magnolias, heirloom roses, any herb gone to seed, passion vine and fruit, persimmon (especially in late autumn on the branch), Datura, Solandra, Cobaea, nasturtiums, stone fruit blossoms, wild trillium, Usnea lichen,
Queen Anne’s lace, begonia, wisteria, fennel, fennel, fennel!

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

Anything from the flower mart, covered in poisons, transported, grown under monoculture agribusiness conditions, wrapped in plastic, cut the same length, uniform, painful, and full of toxins. Tropicals flown in and waxed really get me grossed out and worked up.

Favorite go-to plant:

We grow many scented geraniums which we employ all year long here in California.

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

Most people use poison in their gardens and over-prune. That’s hard to accept. Gaia runs the show so in our home garden—I can think of no “hard lessons,” mostly just grace and gifts.

Unpopular gardening opinion:

Most of mine are…. But I guess it would be: Let it be more feral, and take a very long view. Let the critters eat some of “your” garden, because it’s not really mine or yours. And never use poison under any circumstances.

Gardening or design trend that needs to go:

Choosing botanicals or plants based on your desires, or your landscape designer’s preferences, or worse yet laziness, that are simply not suited to the place, ecosystem, microclimate in which this garden lives. Planting anything which is GMO, diced and spliced, or grown by big agribusiness. And hideous over-mulching.

Old wives’ tale gardening trick that actually works:

ALL OF THEM!

Favorite gardening hack:

I don’t answer questions that use the word hack. It is not wise to try and fool mother nature…. I don’t believe in hacks.

Favorite way to bring the outdoors in.

Live in both. In our home there is hardly any delineation between indoors and outdoors.

Every garden needs a…

Respect for Gaia above all. Bees, butterflies, bats, beetles, toads, birds, wise water use, homemade compost, and a hand hoe. Less tools equals more beauty.

Go-to gardening outfit:

Almost naked with very thin organic cotton and/or raggedy cashmere and army pants when colder.

Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:

The ones that don’t use poison.

On your wishlist:

Get morning glories established all over our fences. Get the mermaid rose and Lady Bank’s roses established. Cobra fruit trees!!!

Not-to-be-missed public garden/park/botanical garden:

Lotusland. The Turtle Conservancy here in Ojai. The seashore anywhere its been left a bit alone.

The REAL reason you garden:

Humans, we have always gardened. Or at least for a very long time. And I love soil.

Thank you so much, Louesa! (Follow her on Instagram @louesaroebuck.)

For our full archive of Quick Takes, go here.