ROOTED IN CHINESE CULTURE
Chi-minded gardening dynamo turns her Davis
Streng home into a tranquil healing haven

From the pages of the Eichler Network newsletter
By David Weinstein

In Davis a hard-working woman in a broad-brimmed red hat has transformed her Streng home into a tranquil space for meditation and healing -- if lipstick-red couches can be considered tranquil. Now, Huei Young plans to similarly transform her other home, an Eichler in Palo Alto.

With their open plans and walls of window that open to the outdoors, both houses make ideal canvasses for Huei's personal though very community-oriented designs. She hasn't been working on her Streng home for 15 years simply to create something beautiful. Her goal is deeper -- to provide family and friends with health and prosperity through feng shui, by harnessing the power of chi, that vital energy force that scientists are unable to detect but that she feels so strongly.

"Everybody who comes to my home," Huei declares, "it's a benefit to them." Many agree, including Stephen Chroniak, who experienced the benefits after his first hour in her garden. "I was totally in awe of the sense of peace," he says. "There was an almost tangible sense of peace flowing from the garden into the house."

A visit to Huei's garden suggests the degree to which Streng and Eichler homes can be transformed by a personal vision rooted in Chinese culture without compromising their modern Californian aesthetic. It can also provide practical tips about gardening large in a small space -- not to mention spiritual inspiration. "Everything has a reason," Huei says of her décor both inside and out. "It looks simple, but it's very complex."

Huei's aesthetic is far from strictly 'modern' -- her sense of design is intensely personal, owing more to Chinese philosophy than to the tenets of European modernism or Frank Lloyd Wright. But the way she has transformed two modern California homes suggests just how resilient, and how very Asian, such homes really are.

Huei, as everyone calls her, remembers what an architect friend advised her 15 years ago, when she thought about remodeling her Streng house. "Huei," he said, "go for it."Huei, 59, is a dynamo of a woman, a horticulturalist, self-taught interior designer, cook, and mini-real estate magnate who is hampered not at all by a thick accent. She has won fame in Davis, which is opened to the public on garden tours to benefit Davis Community Meals, STEAC (Short Term Emergency Aid Committee), the Davis Arboretum, and the nonprofit Pence Gallery. She also opens the garden for private tours by arrangement, also to benefit these causes.

"She saw her garden as not only something she would enjoy, but as something that had a wider connection to the community," Chroniak says. The garden was also the lead garden in the recent book 'Great Gardens in Small Spaces: California Havens.' "Such a small yard," Huei brags. "I make it so big."

When Huei and Frank Young, her husband of 36 years, moved into their new Streng home in 1980, the backyard was bare. They added a lawn and a few trees. Huei was too busy raising a pair of boys, Jesse, now 28, and Cliff, 26, to spend much time in the yard. It wasn't until 1990 that she really turned her attention to the house.

Today her garden is an ever-changing paradise that wraps around the house and seems to come inside. Huei has opened up the already relatively open Streng design with new windows and sliding glass doors. "The main thing is the flow, just like my house," she says. "When you flow well, that means you're full of energy."

Huei spends five hours most mornings in her garden -- this is after jogging with her friend Judith Blum -- weeding, clipping, watering, planting, and often meditating. "Huei can meditate while busy," Blum says. "Jung used to say that tilling the garden is like tilling the soul." When Huei works in the garden she often thinks of her late father, a calligrapher and pilot in Taiwan, who loved to garden but didn't have enough room. He and Huei's mother passed their love of plants onto their daughter. "This was in his dream," she says of her garden. "I fulfilled his dreams."

Her garden is ever-changing, but the theme remains the same. Visitors enter along the side, beneath a freeform trellis and a parade of red Chinese lanterns providing a sense of pageantry and prosperity. Bamboo poles in diamond patterns in the wisteria also provide a sense of peace. Australian ferns add lovely scents that drift into the front bedroom. The mirrors that are everywhere in the garden and the home, she says, enhance the energy flow by reflecting chi.

Whether a visitor is chi-minded or not, the effect is entrancing. The garden has a series of distinct destinations, each with its own mood and feeling, and the visitor is guided carefully through them. As you turn into the main garden, a sweet olive tree provides scent, a stained glass image of a turtle suggests longevity, and a curved trellis supporting purple-flowered lavender trumpet provides height. Stands of weeping bamboo and black bamboo welcome the visitor. "Bamboo waves to you, says hello, smiles to you," Huei says. "The trees, they are waving to you, a soft look. These are all my children."

"Everything I planted here," she says, "I have a reason." The main garden, surrounded by a shoji-like fence, features three waterfalls, a koi pond and low bridge, a Buddha in a pavilion, a Hollywood juniper trimmed like a bonsai, a pair of red foo dogs for protection and a pair of red dragons serving as bodyguards. The landscape is layered and structured for height, with raised beds and a variety of ever-changing plants to get maximum interest out of a small space. Huei changes the garden every three months. She changes the color scheme to fit the year. The current Year of the Ox represents metal. "So for me, more white or blue," Huei says.

Huei is a private person and doesn't open her home itself for tours. But her design for garden and home is one. She called in contractor Bert Bangert to open several rooms to the out of doors. Every room opens onto a garden. An extended trellis shades the south-facing living area and master bedroom, providing shade for outdoor living. It's draped with wisteria. "I wanted it to look like a curtain," Huei says.

Huei opened up the kitchen by removing a center island, removed a bank of cabinets to create an open tea room, added skylights, and created a moon gate doorway between kitchen and hall. Cliff had his doubts when he saw the plans for the moon gate. "But it turned out great," he says. Bangert paneled the master bedroom and baths with beautifully grained redwood. The same reds that race through the garden are found in the house, from the plush leather furniture of the front living area to the sunken red Jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom. Huei loves red, the cheerful color of healing, power and fame. `

Her Eichler home in Palo Alto's Los Arboles subdivision is proving a challenge. Huei, who also owns several rental properties in Davis, bought it for her sons, who work on the Peninsula. Built in 1960, the low-gabled home provides great raw material. But Huei has just started its transformation. She's lightened some of the woodwork, added skylights, red rugs and chairs, a Chinese garden gate and a jacaranda tree. But, she says of the garden, "To my eye, I don't think it has life. This, 1 to 10, I'd give it a 6."

Huei was born in China's Westlake district. Her father, who served in the Nationalist air force, fled to Taiwan after Mao came to power. She came to the United States as a young woman, and met Frank Young, a draftsman, through a relative. The Youngs were Davis's first Chinese family and ran the popular Sacramento Café. Huei credits the home's improved chi with healing her husband, who was crippled by a fall in 1997. Today he walks and drives, and helps Huei deliver meals to needy families in the area. This is on top of her cooking for Davis Community Meals, which serves food to those in need every Tuesday and Friday.

"It's not like she does this because, 'Aren't I great?' " says Jane Matteson, a volunteer and former dining coordinator for Davis Community Meals. "She does it because she wants to do it."

Patrick Widner, executive director of International House, which provides programs for international students and the wider community in Davis, remembers the time Huei opened her home for a group of agricultural scientists from China. "It was one of the most elaborate lunches I ever experienced. The food never stopped coming," he says. "I thought that was the end of it and the food kept on coming." He also remembers her cooking for benefit dinners for 80 at International House. "All the time she's doing it," he says, "she's also dancing in the kitchen. She's very upbeat."

Heui says she has no choice but to work hard. "I feel I have so many people I want to help. If I don't do enough to help people, I don't sleep well. A lot of people need my help."

"Nothing holds me back," Huei says, "because energy is a power."

Photos: David Toerge

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