Hidden Urban Paradise: Jim Kumiega's Garden

Behind a door on an alley in the South of Market area of San Francisco, at the end of a narrow passageway, Jim Kumiega cultivates a secret green enclave.

A luminous front room for his tiny mid-block house, Jim’s courtyard garden grows out of of a salvaged piano, rescued ceramic containers, machine parts, and other urban artifacts of a piece with his formerly industrial, working-class neighborhood now shadowed by Y2K-era lofts and posh contemporary apartment towers.

Remarkably, none of Jim’s plants is actually planted in the ground! Some, however, have gained a foothold in the earth by snaking roots through the bottom of their containers and penetrating cracks in the pavement.

Jim grows mostly subtropical and cloud forest plants, taking advantage of his extraordinarily mild microclimate to create a baroque weave along the walls surrounding the courtyard’s concrete floor. Plants that naturally thrive in vertical settings—epiphytes like the evening-scented ‘Lady of the Night’ orchid (Brassavola nodosa), giant-flowering epiphyllum cactus, and waxy vireya rhododendrons—perch on vine-clad walls.

Perched high on walls and low in his container collection are varied bromeliads, their rosettes of foliage fascinatingly armed, pigmented and textured, the occasional flowerstalk emerging from the heart like multicolored flames.

Tillandsia air plants, an especially peculiar subset of the bromeliad family, hang like fuzzy air anemones from twigs and sconces. Jim’s diverse collections of begonias and succulents hint at the rich collections that decorate his home’s interior.

A rising parasol canopy of tree ferns (Cyathea) and bamboo palms (Chamaedorea spp.) gives the garden a private, intimate lushness.

Thanks for sharing your gorgeous secret paradise with us, Jim!

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