Gardening and Surfing: Stacy Peralta Says They’re More Related Than You Think

Zen and the art of landscaping may not exactly jive with your image of the Venice Beach surf/skate rat, former Z-Boy, and inveterate film director that is the constant mover and shaker Stacy Peralta. But then again he’s lived so many lives, sometimes simultaneously, that maybe it shouldn’t be such a shock, either.

When Peralta began discussing gardening with me, I thought maybe this was some sort of newfound passion at which he’d arrived at a time in life when people start to do such sorts of things. I half expected him to bring up golf next. But no, he’s been gardening, avidly, for several decades.

“For food?” I ask. “No, I’ve been a plant collector for 30 years,” he answered flatly. “To me—and I don't mean to sound too lofty here—being in the garden is the only painting I get to walk into and be a part of. And so I'm constantly rearranging the colors in my garden and the shapes of my garden based on clipping and planting and replanting and moving things and stuff like that. And I love doing it.” 

“Gardening is an art form. Everything we do is art in some form or another. And the more we do one thing, the more I paint, the better I get at surfing, the better I get at surfing, the better I get at gardening. It's all the same thing, because the way I approach all of these things is the same.”

“It leads to a certain zen,” I add, reflecting on the intersection of the spectrum of my own interests and pursuits. “Yes,” attests Peralta. “And what I have found in my life is that you can inhabit creative spaces. And the great thing about creative spaces is you can inhabit them, but you cannot control them. And that's probably the best and most important reason why one should pursue a creative craft. Surfing is a never-ending learning process. Skateboarding the same way, painting the same way, gardening the same way.” Each comes with its own form of grit, to be sure.

Of course, we could all stand to keep a garden and foster some modicum of feng shui around our homes and maybe more importantly in our heads. That certainly can’t hurt to make the lineup (or the world) a less hostile place.

But then there’s another virtue of gardening that Peralta hasn’t quite tapped. We could all stand to grow and cook more of our own food, too—another art form, one might put forth. Peralta may have plenty on his plate at the moment, what with the dozen or so boardsports, filmmaking, painting, and so on, but I’ll challenge him here and now. After all, who hasn’t seen and heard about enough of Laird’s superfood creamers? It’s time for a new celebrity surfer on the food scene, one with the capacity to embrace their kookdom in the kitchen, a place that—particularly in this day and age what with social media running wild with food content—could use a little of the likes of his humility? Surfing, painting, gardening, cooking, it’s all the same in Stacy Peralta’s world. One hand washes the other.