Walter Imahara

A day in the company of seventy-seven-year-old garden designer Walter Imahara is one long story that begins with “Good morning” and ends with “See you later.”

Walking back to his truck after lunch at the Audubon Café off U.S. 61 in St. Francisville, he half-turned to say, “One last story.” Then he laughed. “OK, maybe not ‘last story.’”

The son of American-born, California parents, Imahara spent part of his childhood in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. The Imaharas, American citizens, were interned at two camps in Arkansas. They were moved from the first camp to make room for German prisoners of war.

Following his family’s internment, Imahara’s parents moved the family of nine children to New Orleans; then to Afton Villa in St. Francisville, where Imahara’s father, James, was the gardener; and finally, to Baton Rouge, where James Imahara started a landscaping business.

These days, Walter Imahara conducts some of the tours at his five-year-old, fifty-four-acre botanical garden on Mahoney Road between St. Francisville and the Mississippi River. He and wife Sumi consider the garden their gift to the people in this part of the state who supported them in their Baton Rouge landscaping and nursery business. In the last year, Imahara reluctantly began charging admission to the garden to help offset the cost of maintenance.

Sumi Imahara and Wanda Chase, a landscape architect who’s more daughter than niece to the Imaharas, keep a wary eye on Walter.

“I thought it was an investment,” Sumi said three years ago of Imahara’s land purchase. “[The garden] just keeps growing like a big old mushroom.”

Chase, only half-jokingly, says her uncle is spending her inheritance. Imahara, with his wife’s approval (“All the money goes through her”), is happily spending some of the wealth from his landscaping and nursery business and real estate investments.

The land for the garden was cheap because it consisted of ravines and ridges covered with thick vines, brambles, hardwood, and parasol trees, Imahara said. A bulldozer was used to move and shape the land. Imahara and hired hands cleared the ravines, built beds, planted trees and bushes, dug ponds, and built bridges. Much of the plant material has been donated by friends in the nursery and landscaping businesses, Imahara said. A former classmate at Istrouma High School, construction company owner Kenny Lindsey, donated heavy equipment and labor.

Imahara knows the thought of keeping the garden going is overwhelming to his niece, who has her own landscaping business to run. As long as he’s able, Imahara will oversee the running of the garden. Eventually, he’d like to see the garden’s operation in the hands of a foundation.

“I think that would be the best way to keep it open to the public,” he said. “I’d like to see the garden mature, without expanding, over the next five to seven years.”

Meanwhile, Imahara greets visitors from the Mississippi Queen riverboat and other tours planned in advance, which kept him quite busy this spring. When he’s not guiding tours, Imahara’s at work in the garden off Mahoney Road (also called Tunica Road), overseeing planting and, occasionally, moving an offending tree.

Imahara patrols the hilly garden on foot and behind the wheel of an elongated golf cart. He talks about “views,” stopping to point out why a view works or why a tree interferes with where the designer wants the eye to go.

“No big deal to move a tree,” he said. “Get the root ball when you dig it up and move the tree.”

Imahara’s compact, weightlifter’s body suggests he yanks trees out of the ground unassisted, but he uses a machine designed for the purpose.

Though the garden’s future troubles Imahara’s sleep, waking to the garden’s needs each morning gives him joy. The garden’s conference center doubles as the Imahara family museum. There are his father’s haiku carvings, weightlifting trophies, mementos of travel to Japan and China, and the duffel bags his family used to carry their possessions into the World War II internment camps.

The botanical garden itself rises from swamps forty-two feet above sea level to a 122-foot ridge. From the ridge line, you look down to the top of Imahara’s version of Mt. Fuji. The little mountain juts into space from the wall of a ravine. A rock seat atop the mountain affords a bird’s eye view of the garden, its trees, beds, bridges, and ponds far below.

From the giddy heights of Imahara’s Mt. Fuji, a visitor can look down upon a series of nine descending ponds, one for each of Imahara’s brothers and sisters, as well as the garden designer. Laid out below are the gardens Imahara dreamed about before putting his hand to making them real: camellias, azaleas, magnolias, palms, hollies, weeping trees, topiaries, and crape myrtles.

There are more than forty varieties of camellias and three thousand azalea bushes in the garden. More than thirty-five varieties of crape myrtle in bloom are the highlight of the garden in early summer.

The next big section of the garden was to have been a Japanese garden.

“What do I know about a Japanese garden?” Imahara asked without irony. “They’re intricate, lotta water, bridges, ponds, koi, very expensive garden to build and keep up.”

Like few other people, Mike Richard, owner of Rip Van Winkle Gardens on Jefferson Island in New Iberia, can appreciate what Imahara has done at 5341 Mahoney Road.

“He’s helped me more than anyone with the garden,” Imahara said. “He sent me two trailer loads of trees dug up at Live Oak Nursery at Rip Van Winkle. He helped me with the ponds. He has a big knowledge of bamboo.”

“You’ve already got a Japanese garden,” Richard told his friend. “This whole place is a Japanese garden.”

He took Richard’s observation to heart. “He’s right,” Imahara said. “The whole place is a Japanese garden.” 

Details. Details. Details. 

The garden is located at 5341 Mahoney Road and is open to the public for self-guided tours. 

The garden’s thirty-five varieties of crape myrtle trees are in bloom in June and July.