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Garden of earthly delights - Western Wanderings - Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, CA

Sunset, March, 1999 by Peter Fish

Shaw Avenue in Fresno, California, is not a thoroughfare displaying notable imagination or eccentricity. Once it ran past fig orchards. Now it runs past office supply stores. When you pull up to one of the last vacant plots of land in sight, you wonder if you've come to the right place.

But 20 feet beneath the earth, the cool air smells assertively, though not unpleasantly, of dirt. The light is the light that slants across 19th-century engravings: parallelograms that burnish the earthen walls and polish the leaves of the fruit trees.

"That's a loquat," Lorraine Forestiere says. "There's a Chinese date."

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Ninety-two years ago, Lorraine's uncle by marriage, Baldasare Forestiere, planted these trees, or their ancestors, and carved out these underground rooms. Forestiere had come to Fresno to make a fortune in farming, but, as things worked out, did something else instead.

When you visit Forestiere Underground Gardens, it is usually Lorraine Forestiere who shows you around. She is a short, scrappy woman who narrates Baldasare's story at the rat-a-tat pace of a Santa Anita announcer broadcasting the daily double. "He came here from Sicily, he bought 70 acres. But it was hardpan soil - you dig down a few feet, it's like hitting cement." Baldasare discovered that beneath that layer was more pliable soil in which he could plant his fruit trees. And he discovered that beneath the surface he might find refuge from Fresno's summer heat. He began to dig, and he continued to dig for 40 years.

The world that Baldasare created has been compared to the catacombs of Rome, to Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. Tunneling through the ground, forming the hardpan soil into simple bricks, Baldasare shaped a maze of patios and passageways. He had a bath, a fishpond, a chapel. In courtyards his fruit trees sprang up, their branches reaching through holes cut to the outside world.

He was a kind of genius, and it was not always easy being a genius. Newspapers would interview him for feature stories. Some reporters were full of wonder - "No plans were made," noted the Fresno Bee's scribe in 1923. "Every detail in the development of the underground gardens has originated in the brain of Forestiere and has never been set on paper." Just as often they were condescending, referring to Forestiere as the Mole Man, calling his gardens a cave. "Every time they called it a cave, he would get upset," Lorraine Forestiere says.

Nor has it been easy being the descendants of a genius. After Baldasare died, in 1946, the Forestiere family kept his gardens open for a number of years. But Fresno was growing - Baldasare's property, once remote, was now a prime development site. There were lawsuits, the gardens were closed, they were vandalized. Four years ago, Lorraine, her husband, Rick, and their children restored the gardens and reopened them. "I know I'm the dumbest lady in town," Lorraine says. "But God suckered me in. Every time I wanted to take off, God did something to make me stay."

We come to the end of the tour. I stand looking at Baldasare's lifework and ask what every visitor must ask: Why?

Lorraine Forestiere leads me back to a patio where kumquat, lemon, and grapefruit trees intertwine. "See," she says. "Three trees. This represents the trinity. He had a deep love of God. But nobody wants to talk about that in this day and age."

At the entrance, Lorraine's son, Andre, is greeting some new visitors. I ask him the same question. Why? "I doubt that I can give you a satisfactory answer," he says after a long pause. "I can't. In one article he was quoted, 'The visions in my mind almost overwhelm me.'"

I start to leave but find myself unwilling to exchange Baldasare's underground visions for Shaw Avenue. Andre notices my hesitation. "It's like two different worlds sitting side by side," he says. "You don't realize the modern world when you're down here. Anti the opposite. Once you leave the gardens, it doesn't take long for it to go away. It's like it was all a dream."

Forestiere Underground Gardens. $6. 5021 W. Shau, Ave., Fresno, CA. Open weekends in spring, weather permitting; Wed-Sun in summer. Reservations needed; (559) 271-0734.

Garden of earthly delights - Western Wanderings - Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, CA

Sunset, March, 1999 by Peter Fish

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