Week 10 March 4 - Bachelor Uncle

Willi Reinier Peelen circa 1934.

Returning to the ancestor challenge after many months away, finally posting the week 10 prompt.

My favourite and only bachelor uncle, Bill Paylen was born in 1917 in Semarang, the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. He was originally named Willi Reinier Peelen, but he anglicised this to William (Bill) Paylen, later in life.

Bill grew up on the coffee and cocoa plantation in Central Java managed by his father, Reinier Peelen. Even as a child he showed great affinity for plants and had his own little garden, which his mother promised him she would look after for him when he had to go back to the Netherlands to commence his higher education at about fourteen years of age. Very likely this was at the Middelbare Koloniale Landbouwschool in Deventer.

When World War II broke out his parents and his brothers and sisters were still in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Back in the Netherlands he did not know whether they were alive or what had happened to them. When the family connected again he discovered that his beloved mother Meta Peelen-Reith had perished in the Japanese civilian POW camp Banjoe Biroe in Java, on 25th August 1945.  A month later he had an address to mail his first postcard to his father and sisters, who were now living in Bandung. In 1946 they were repatriated back to the Netherlands and the family was reunited.

He migrated to the USA, to Los Angeles in 1952 where he got a job as a gardener and this is where his instinctive understanding and love of plants set him apart. Over time he established a reputation as an expert and built a thriving garden design business. He was employed on a number of notable gardens, contributing his knowledge and ideas.

His specialty was bromeliads and he was actively involved with the Bromeliad Society of Los Angeles, as President for a couple of terms in the 70's and other roles within the Society. He enjoyed travelling to Costa Rica and other South American places to find plant specimens in their original habitat.

His own small suburban garden seemed much bigger - a lush verdant mini jungle, where he displayed his bromeliads and they were perhaps also a recreation of his childhood memories when he would roam for hours from early morning to afternoon in the surrounding jungles of the coffee plantation Ngobo.

My mother remembered once at Ngobo, he came home after a day's roaming, feeling feverish and very unwell. He had probably been bitten by a snake but didn't want to tell his parents, for fear of being grounded. Nevertheless, Bill was fond of snakes and even kept one as a pet for a while at his home in Brentwood.

I stayed with him for a few weeks when I was nineteen and couldn't help but notice this cage that took up most of the floor space in his kitchen. "That was my snake's cage, a python, but it got away," he explained casually. He couldn't go around asking the neighbours if they had seen a snake on the loose because he had kept it a secret.  So he accepted that it probably was dead by now and he would not see it again. Until some months later, his neighbour, an elderly lady came to him greatly agitated; there was a snake under her car, what was she to do? Bravely, he went out to see for himself and found his long lost snake! Of course he caught it, becoming the neighbourhood hero and offered to keep it until a new home could be found. So he advertised, 'free to a good home' and to his amazement he was inundated by offers and the snake was adopted by a young family.

In 1994 he was appointed advisor to the establishment of the Azalea Maze in the Central Garden of the Getty Center.  The creator, artist Robert Irwin valued his input; "... we began to double check everything with an old-time horticulturist named Bill Paylen who, as luck would have it, lived less than a mile from the site and had his fingers on the pulse of all the plant life in the area." (p. 119, Robert Irwin Getty Garden, Lawrence Weschler, published by The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angelos, 2002)

He travelled widely through Central and South America, but also Malaysia, Borneo and came as often as he could to catch up with his family in New Zealand and Australia. He liked to come in spring so he could see the abundant azaleas and rhododendrons in bloom around Melbourne and Sydney. In his opinion their counterparts in Los Angelos were never as splendid.

Bill retired to a hill-top residence in Camarillo where once again he established a lush tropical garden.  He had several avocado trees and when my mother and I visited him there for what was to be the last time, we could find our perfect fresh avocado to have for lunch dressed with his favourite brand of Japanese rice wine vinegar.

He passed away 30 June 2004 at home in Camarillo. His name lives on in the bromeliad Tillandsia 'Bill Paylen'.


References:
Journal of the Bromeliad Society, Vol XXIII, Nov-Dec 1973, no. 6
Journal of the Bromeliad Society, Vol 49, May-June 1999, no. 3 - The many gardens of Bill Paylen, Seth Napel.
Robert Irwin Getty Garden, Lawrence Weschler, published by The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angelos, 2002
Peelen Family Archive - personal recollection.