A Moveable Feast

“Wait, you want me to eat this leaf?”

“Yes, you’ll find it’s delicious,” says Phaedra Ledbetter, who’s standing in what may be the most opulent and eclectic private garden west of the Mississippi — almost all of it edible. Ledbetter, hostess and chef extraordinaire, is showing a visitor around her four acres in the Linda Vista section of Pasadena, where she lives in a Greene & Greene house with her businessman-husband, Mark, and their year-old twin daughters.

Here, on land dramatically perched at the edge of the Arroyo Seco, she grows an exotic array of spices, herbs, vegetables, fruits, flowers and trees in an undulating series of aromatic outdoor rooms that look more like living artwork than a functioning farm. If you’re picturing the usual geometric rows of food crops, forget it. Ledbetter wants to nourish her guests “through all their senses, not just through their mouths.”

The garden, unlike any you’d likely find in a public space, is a harmonious convergence that celebrates nature’s simple abundance. It’s chock full of unlikely blends growing together in artlessly artful combinations. A Meyer lemon tree is embraced by a magnificent ring of red beets. Purple heliotrope (inedible) grows with deep-green curly leaf kale. Statice flowers mingle with cabbage, Swiss chard with lilies, poppies with borage.

“It’s all mixed together, just like the universe,” Ledbetter says.

The garden may be the heart of her household. It is out here that Ledbetter harvests much of the food she prepares for family and friends, here where she offers guests drinks and hors d’oeuvres or hosts small lunches and dinners and the occasional fundraiser. Simply put, Ledbetter’s guests eat what she grows, and they often eat it right on the spot where she grows it.

Her gardens contain banana trees (she makes banana butter for her daughters), beans, corn, cauliflower, cabbage, zucchini, tomatoes, basil, lemon grass, plums, peaches, blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, Granny Smith and other apples, pumpkins, loquats, pluots, pomelos, tarragon, rosemary, figs, pomegranates, persimmons, key limes, peaches, beets, Brussels sprouts, artichokes, celery and possibly Pasadena’s only papaya tree — and that list is far from complete. Her flowers include irises, hyacinths, lilacs, roses, mums and poppies — all mixed together in a magical hodgepodge that could easily have sprouted from the imagination of a talented set designer. Who knew artichokes could be so ornamental?

Sometimes, to replace what has been consumed, guests do a walkabout in the garden to disperse the seeds Ledbetter collects at the end of each growing season — an act of replenishment that enhances one’s connection to the elemental order of things, she says. “I have many friends who come back just to see how their squash or celery is doing.”

And perhaps most important, it is here in the garden where Ledbetter indulges her personal celebration of the natural universe. It is that passion that dictates her philosophy of entertaining — and of almost everything else, she says. “The garden is a metaphor for life. By connecting with nature, you learn so much about yourself. Watering connects you directly with the earth; weeding eliminates material destructive to growth; planting generates new life and a plan for the future.”

Dotted throughout this wooded wonderland, she has created clearings large enough for groups, and also many small rest spots — oases where birds warble, waters burble, leaves rustle and individuals can sit (or swing in a hammock) in solitude, absorbing and enjoying the myriad mysteries and miracles of nature. When she entertains in her garden of many different rooms — some safe and sheltered by trees or arbors, some unprotected or on the edge of the arroyo’s precipice — she says guests gravitate to environments where they feel most comfortable. “I’m very interested in archetypal spaces, those that recall childhood and the kind of places you liked to be in. Was it a corner, a cave-like spot, open grass or meadows, or a place close to water?”

Ledbetter isn’t working on instinct alone. She’s a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, a horticultural therapist who has worked with special needs children at Descanso Gardens and a licensed marriage and family therapist. She’s also an interior designer and food photography stylist. And if that’s not enough to chew on, she’s a poet who’s working on a book about the art of gracious living.

All along her garden tour, Ledbetter plucks leaves and flowers, offering them for her guest to inhale and/or ingest. And with each one, she spouts a recipe for food preparation. “Taste this,” she urges, proffering a delicate pink nasturtium she picked herself.

Her parties often start in the rose garden, she explains, where she serves rose-scented champagne and other flower-infused drinks. To accompany them, she might offer an appetizer of stuffed nasturtiums — edible flowers filled with a mixture of cream cheese, honey, walnuts and vanilla.

She might also serve shrimp marinated in kaffir lime and olive oil, which “makes the shrimp taste exactly like roses after they’ve been barbecued.” Then the group might move on for more appetizers in the vegetable garden. “If eggplants are in season, I might serve vegetarian sushi, which looks exactly like the real thing except it’s made of eggplant rolled around feta cheese, tomato and avocado and dipped in balsamic vinegar.” In the kale field, she might serve kale feta pie or pasta with artichokes and fennel in a lemon egg sauce.

Main courses are usually taken indoors — either in the main dining room, the sushi room outfitted with a sushi bar, the wine-and-cheese room or one of the many other eating areas. A main course might be black cod, which Ledbetter marinates for two days in a blend of sake, sugar and miso. “You take it out, rinse the marinade off and roast it on a strip of cedar,” she says. Or she might serve the meal in a bento box, its compartments flush with hot-and-cold delicacies she has prepared from garden ingredients. Dessert might be served around the fire pit or in the covered patio overlooking the arroyo and a historic bridge nearby.

Ledbetter says she and her husband designed the gardens. “I’d make a path with my hands and he would follow me with a rake,” she explained. Then they’d decide what each segment of the path should be made of — tile, brick, sand, decomposed granite. It’s a symbol of Ledbetter’s exquisite attention to detail that she based her decision not just on appearance, but also on the sound human feet make treading on the path.

It took seven years (and more than 300 huge dumpsters) to fully reclaim and restore the 1905 house and land from the state of decrepitude in which the Ledbetters found it. And to create the built portions of the garden, which include two meandering streams, bridges, a beach, multiple ponds, islands, pergolas, two outdoor kitchens, a meditation garden, a palm garden, an orchard and lilac garden, a swim-up bar in an infinity pool, vegetable and rose gardens, sand and camellia gardens and a teepee garden (with a huge, furnished teepee), to name just a few. Then there’s a beer garden — Ledbetter grows her own hops (and also the plums from which she brews a magnificent plum wine). 

Her eclectic outlook is part nature, part nurture. Ledbetter’s mother is Greek, her father a Japanese-American architect. She lived with them in Japan until age 18, when she came to the United States to continue her education. She speaks Greek and Japanese and married Mark 17 years before becoming a mother. Since that life change, she says, the couple has cut back considerably on entertaining. In the garden and in life, the babies now take priority. She concedes, after carefully weighing the matter, that, while not green or leafy, they might be her best crop yet.

Nasturtiums Stuffed with Honey, Cream Cheese and Walnuts | Basil Tabouleh in Lettuce Cups 

Spaghetti with Artichoke & Fennel Avgolemono Sauce | Pakistani Mulberry and Saturn Peach Pie | Rose Martini