Japanese Flower Gardens

Japanese Flower Gardens

By Janice Bryson

Arizona residents and tourists alike grew to love the South Mountain flower gardens on Baseline Road in Phoenix. The Japanese-American farmers and their fields of flowers and vegetables are an important part of Arizona’s agricultural history as well as the history of Japanese- Americans in our state. For many years, each spring, over 300 acres of brightly-colored fragrant blooms turned the desert into a kaleidoscope of yellow, white, light pink, bright fuchsia and violet-lavender.

Although the fields now grow housing and shopping centers, one flower shop remains on the site of one of the original fields. I met with Nick Nakagawa at Baseline Flowers located at 3801 E. Baseline in Phoenix. The flowers in his shop are no longer grown in his own fields but come mostly from California and South America. Nick is 95 and says he keeps the shop so he has something to do.

The first Japanese-Americans involved in farming in the Phoenix area were a group of laborers brought into the Salt River Valley to establish a sugar beet farm in 1905. The crop failed to thrive due to the heat and many Japanese farmers left the Valley by 1915. The remaining farmers settled permanently, growing fruit and vegetable crops such as cantaloupe and lettuce.

The rocky soil in the South Mountain area was considered undesirable for farming. The Japanese American families were willing to establish farms there even though they had to uproot rocks with their bare hands and create irrigation systems. A microclimate was created at the foot of South Mountain as the mountain created a down draft that kept the warm air on the ground to protect their crops.

The Japanese-American farmers in Phoenix were Issei, the first generation to immigrate, and Nisei, the children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants. Nick was a Nisei, born in Idaho, and when he was three years old his family moved to Utah. In the late 1930’s, Nick’s aunt encouraged the family to move to Phoenix; his father’s health was suffering in Utah.

In 1936, the Kishiyama family began growing flowers on their leased land at 36th Street and Baseline. The Nakagawa family farmed fruits and vegetables but turned to growing flowers in 1940 including longstemmed flowers called stocks, sweet peas and flowering purple-gray cabbages. They grew vegetables including cucumbers, tomatoes and summer squash. Eventually, the Maruyama, Nakamura, Sakato, Iwakoshi and Watanabe families also grew flowers along Baseline Road.

During World War II, 120,000 Japanese Americans were removed from their homes and interned in camps. The Nakagawas were given only 48 hours to prepare for their move to the Poston War Relocation Center. All the families were forced to abandon their homes and farms. Nick was seventeen when he arrived at Poston. Nine months later, a farmer in Glendale needed help on his farm and Nick was released from Poston and allowed to work at the Glendale farm. After the war, the families were released with few possessions. Some of them returned to Phoenix and settled once more near the foot of South Mountain. The farms were located on Baseline Road between 32nd and 48th Street. During this time, the Japanese-American farmers and other Asian Americans were prohibited from purchasing land due to the Alien Land Laws which prohibited “persons ineligible for citizenship” from owning land. This included Asian Americans who were born in the United States but remained alien in the eyes of the nation. Many families were only able to lease land or purchase it through family members with different names. The Alien Land Laws were declared unconstitutional in 1952.

As a result of the law, when the Nakagawa family returned from Poston, Nick’s father was unable to buy the land he had helped nurture. Nick, as the oldest son and a U.S. citizen, took care of the business. He took out loans to lease and later buy land for farming and living.

By the 1950’s, the farmers were shipping 250 boxes of flowers a day around the nation and the flower gardens became a Phoenix tourist attraction. Small stands and tin buildings were built to sell flowers to the public. Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Christmas were the busiest holidays for sales. Vegetables were also sold as well as western tourist items from Arizona and rice bowls and tea sets from Japan. Cactus candy and Japanese rice candy were popular items.

Nick said some San Francisco shippers heard about the flowers and came to Arizona to check out the gardens. After their visit, about eighty percent of the flowers were sold wholesale to San Francisco buyers and shipped to eastern markets. In the 1970’s many of the farmers had made enough money to buy the farms they had leased for so long. By then, Nick owned more than forty acres of farm land. He says “all of us grew the same type of flowers so it just...it was enough business for everyone.”

In 1969 Nick put concrete walls and large glass windows around his shed. He installed air conditioning and a refrigerated display case. A three story pagoda tower was built and people could climb the steps to a viewing platform to see the fields of flowers in bloom. The pagoda tower was destroyed years ago in a fire along with many pictures and mementoes of the farm and shop.

Nick’s daughter Kathy is an associate professor of Asian Pacific American Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She remembers their business opening to the public at eight in the morning. Her dad arrived early to check on the crops or meet the workers. Her mother Ann divided her time between their home and the flower shop. When the three children, Kathy, Mark and Naomi were too young to be left alone after school, she would bring them to the shop. The large storage cabinets were a great place for a nap or to read a book. As they got older, they would help on weekends and holidays. On busy times like Valentine’s Day, the family would be there until ten or eleven at night preparing for the next day. The children would also work in the shop waiting on customers and taking orders.

The location of the farms created relationships between the Japanese- American farmers and the Mexican-American and Yaqui Indian families from Guadalupe. They picked and bunched flowers or sold flowers and vegetables in the shop. Kathy says the farm and shop could not have survived without their labor and support.

The flower business began to fade in the 1980’s. The Arizona farmers could not compete with the growing flower industry in South America. The farmers slowly began selling their land and children chose to go off to college instead of staying and working the fields.

Nick was the last to sell out, “We can call it progress. We all have to change with time.” If you miss the colorful Japanese gardens on Baseline Road, the City of Phoenix is home to the Japanese Friendship Garden located at 1125 North 3rd Avenue. The three and a half acre garden was created to express the positive bond between the people of the United States and the people of Japan.