I'm a Friend of Mrs Bobbs
“I’m a Friend of Mrs. Bobbs” *
by Peggy Rudberg
Santa Fe Living Treasure, philanthropist, and gardener extraordinaire Elspeth Grant Bobbs died on November 26, 2019, at her home, La Querencia (the Beloved Place). She was 99 years old. Her 4.3-acre garden between East Alameda and Canyon Road manifests half a century of labor through which she transformed alkaline, calcic soil into an eclectic collection of specialty gardens she called “funky shui,” mingling features of English gardens with plantings sensitive to our Santa Fe environment.
Born in England in 1920 to an English mother and an American father, Elspeth began losing her hearing at age 11; by the time she was in her 20s, she was completely deaf. She mastered lip reading and read law at Oxford, but “thank God, never had to practice.”
Around 1942, during World War II, she and her parents moved to San Francisco, her father’s hometown. She learned about New Mexico from writings by Mabel Dodge Lujan and fell in love with Santa Fe when she arrived by train in 1943.
Elspeth settled in and befriended Polish physicist Joseph Rotblat, who had been sent to Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project. She offered him support and refuge from the stresses of that life. As foreigners, they were both suspected of being spies, a notion that was eventually discredited. “Who has ever heard of a deaf Mata Hari?” she would later quip. After learning the Axis powers did not have the bomb, Rotlat left New Mexico and years later he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his nuclear nonproliferation work.
In 1945 Elspeth met artist and builder Howard Bobbs, whom she married in 1946. They opened a bookshop and gallery on Canyon Road and had three daughters. Some years later they moved to California for better educational opportunities for the girls, but in 1967 the couple returned to Santa Fe and bought the property off Canyon Road. It had an orchard, a burro corral, bindweed, and neglected buildings, which Howard worked on while Elspeth learned to garden. Over time she improved the soil by adding organic matter and started growing herbs and vegetables, any extras going to neighbors and local nonprofits. She experimented and embellished, learning from her failures and discovering her tastes—“I don’t like prickles and I don’t like pink,” she once proclaimed—and her imagination took off. Captured rainfall and a drip system sourced from her wells provided water.
After Howard Bobbs died, in 1984, Elspeth devoted herself to perfecting her gardens. Those lucky enough to have been to La Querentia have found sculptures and a miniature railroad, a Love Garden full of aphrodisiac herbs, and a Fairy Village hidden under drooping branches, as well as murals, theatrical props, and artifacts placed throughout, along with 100 varieties of roses, one of which is named after Elspeth. During the 2001 drought, lawn was replaced with scientific and mathematical art installations. She called her south-facing rock garden, visible from Canyon Road, “Machu Picchu del Norte.”
I was fortunate to visit in August 2007 with a Master Gardener tour and met Mrs. Bobbs, who was generous and playful. In addition to her accomplishments as a gardener, she was a committed supporter of various causes, and in 1999 she was named New Mexico’s Philanthropist of the Year. She was honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure in 1984.
* The article’s title comes from a bumper sticker produced for Elsbeth Bobbs’s 71st birthday.
References:
Chasing Santa Fe, In Memoriam: Elsbeth Bobbs, by Cynthia Whitney-Ward
High Plains Gardening, La Querencia—Elsbeth Bobbs Garden, by Angie Hanna
New Mexico Magazine, The Secret Garden, by Kate Nelson
Voices of the Manhattan Project, Elsbeth Bobbs’s Interview, by Cindy Kelly