A growing interest: 'The Gardens of Los Poblanos' explores the plants in this Los Ranchos staple

Los Poblanos is short for Los Poblanos Historic Inn and Organic Farm, the current descriptor of 25 acres in the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque.

The land is abuzz with enterprises (restaurant, spa, shop, a center for private celebrations, meetings and retreats, and a lavender farm and distillery).

One of the evolving and long-lasting endeavors is the subject of the new book “The Gardens of Los Poblanos.” The cultivated gardens spill over with flowers, fruit, vegetables, shrubs and trees.

The author is Judith Phillips, a noted Albuquerque landscape designer, garden writer, teacher and a self-described activist. By activist, she means promoting water conservation and preserving native plants and habitat.

Phillips is intimately familiar with the gardens of Los Poblanos. She was a consultant on plant selection for two of its landscape expansions in the last 15 years.

The book integrates landscape issues from the past, the present, and into the future through a readable text and photographs.

Tawny daylillies, for example, are blooming in one photograph atop page 54. Next to it is a photo of daylillies lying flat, cut for the kitchen, meaning as food. On the same page is a recipe for Fried Daylilly Flowers Tempura. A dozen large flowers are an ingredient in the recipe, but with the stamens removed.

Draping Lady Banks roses, described as the signature plant of the gardens, are in a photo on another page of the book.

Among the plants are ornamental, medicinal and edible flowers. Lavender has become Los Poblanos’ major crop. Its oil is distilled on the grounds and is the basis for its line of body care products sold in Los Poblanos Farm Shop. Los Poblanos has become a major player in the annual Lavender in the Village Festival.

The book explores in depth the history of the gardens within broader contexts — of gardening in the Rio Grande Valley and of the human history of the valley going back to the ancestors of the pueblo people.

The land Los Poblanos is on, Phillips writes, was once part of the original Elena Gallegos land grant in the early 18th century, extending from the Rio Grande to the base of the Sandia Mountains.

In the 1930s Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms hired Rose Greely, one of the first female licensed architects and landscape architects in the nation, to create a landscape design for Los Poblanos, the book explains. Simms was the second wife of Albert Simms, owner of Los Poblanos at the time. It was Greely’s only landscape project in the West.

Here, Phillips writes, Greely “freely combined Beaux Arts formality and Arts and Crafts regionalism, setting a precedent for xeriscape, a landscape design style that developed 50 years later in response to Western water constraints.”

Greely’s design of the gardens complemented John Gaw Meem’s famous Santa Fe style architectural designs. Albert Simms hired Meem to remodel buildings on the property; especially noteworthy is the still-admired La Quinta Cultural Center.

The book also reveals Los Poblanos as an example of the American Country Place era of landscape architecture.

Country Place is a designation referring to the estates built by the newly wealthy from 1870 to 1930 nationally. However, Phillips writes, the era extended for about another decade in the Southwest. Los Poblanos was one such estate, and with a working ranch and dairy.

Other Country Place era estates in New Mexico, according to the book, included Castle Huning in Albuquerque, the Batten House in Albuquerque’s North Valley, Las Acequias Farm near Nambe, El Rancho de la Mariposa in Taos, The NAN Ranch in Faywood, the Coe Ranch in Glencoe, and Rancho Los Luceros, north of Española in Alcalde.

Los Poblanos takes its name from the early Spanish Colonial settlers who traveled north from the Mexican city of Puebla to farm in the middle Rio Grande Valley. Poblanos were those from Puebla.

“The Gardens of Los Poblanos” is part of the University of New Mexico Press’ New Century Gardens and Landscapes of the American Southwest series.

“It’s pretty rare in New Mexico for people to develop elaborate, extensive gardens, and that last (nearly) 100 years,” said series editor Baker Morrow.

Morrow said he chose Phillips to write the “Gardens” book because of her reputation as a writer and an author of books on related subjects, among them “Plants for Natural Gardens: Southwestern Native and Adaptive Trees, Shrubs, Wildflowers and Grasses.”

For an overview of Los Poblanos’ facilities, visit lospoblanos.com.