Kathy Dickey Remembers Alan Chadwick
Kathy Dickey cutting flowers in the Alan Chadwick Garden, Santa Cruz, 1971. Photo by Michael Stusser. (Click on image to watch the video from which this still-frame was taken.)
I came to the Garden Project as a freshman at UCSC in 1969, just 17 years old, and worked there a couple of days per week through early 1971.
As for so many others, it was a seminal time, and the garden and Alan offered a place of refuge that made sense when a lot didn't. I was a biology major, but all the science classes seemed to be about dead things and dissection. Additionally, I had lost my best friend from high school just months before the fall quarter and must instinctively have sought out the solace of the garden.
I lived in the dormitories just up the hill from the Garden Project and would get up early and run or bike down to see what was up each day. Alan put me in charge of feeding the doves, and gently reminded me that they depended on us for food and drink. "You need to drink when you get up; so do they!"
In the mornings when I came down the hill to feed the doves, he taught me how to revere them. I think one time I went into the chalet instead of feeding them immediately, and he chided me, saying, "They depend on you." But he was very gentle.
I came to the garden with a great love for gardening already, as my mother and my grandmother both had big gardens of vegetables, fruits and flowers, so some of it was familiar. Learning to plant formally was quite interesting, though I never quite got the hang of the perfect geometry and got several dirt clods sent my direction with a shouted, "You are just not matheMATical!" He sometimes mischievously threw clods of dirt, but not directly at anyone.
Still, I loved every bit of what I learned, from pricking out tiny seedlings in the greenhouse to the famous double digging, which I still do. I learned about tools and still use the same sort of spade that I used at the Garden project. In my garden today I have ranunculus, anemones, begonias, cineraria, double-dug vegetable beds—all a direct lineage back to the Santa Cruz Garden Project.
I loved cutting flowers to put in cans down by the road so that anyone could take them. My roommate at the time, (still my best friend after more than 50 years), remembers waking up to bouquets by her bed. Sometimes the chancellor, Dean McHenry, would have luncheons at his home, and a group of us would put dozens of cans of flowers in the back of a pickup truck and take them over.
The chalet served as a hub for all kinds of activities. It was an announcement on the bulletin board there that drew me to a meeting at the local Zen Buddhist meditation hall—another beginning that keeps on giving to me! Gardeners, botanists and others seemed to flock to the garden—you would never know who might be there.
Others who were working in the garden during my time there included: Will David, Stephen Decater, Greg Hudson, Louise Washburn, Beth Padgett, Steve Kaffka, Dan [McGuire] the rabbit man, and Eric Watterud. Beth Benjamin & Jim Nelson, Nancy Lingemann, and John & Jodi Frediani had all dropped out to start their own gardens, but had come back. Some regular visitors from the University faculty and staff were: Paul Lee, Ray Collett, Mary Holmes, Dean McHenry, and Page Smith.
Alan treated me with the utmost respect—I felt very included. He shared many stories with me alone and with others when we had tea or informal gatherings. Other women, such as Nancy Lingemann and Wendy Johnson, who were much closer to him than I was, certainly felt respected and included. I saw him treat other young women well, too. He is a titan in my estimation.
Kathleen Dickey
October, 2024
Kathy Dickey (left), Ramah C. (center), and Louise Washburn (right) in front of the dove cote at the UCSC Garden Project in winter 1970-71. The garden Chalet stands to the left of this group.
