This slight man, all of 123 pounds, loves leftovers and eats the same thing every single day, only changing his lunch selection once a year. I never worry about paying the bills because I am frugal and I manage my money wisely and, yes, you can succeed in America by working hard.”įrugal and quirky, humble and a self-described introvert, Donovan Lee has a style that puts him in the “artist” category. “I wondered at one time, how will I make money? I have no vacation leave, no sick leave, no retirement benefits, but I don’t worry about it. One referral led to another, and his business grew from Sacramento to the foothills and the Bay Area. Soon, the homeowners who saw his backyard swimming pool drawings began referring him to friends and neighbors. I like people, nature, art and psychology. That’s what I put on my Berkeley application, and that hasn’t changed. I wanted to make the world a better place. Sometimes I never got paid a penny for a job I did. “Sometimes I would stay up all night drawing a plan. “I liked that idea of security, but I needed more adventure and wanted to meet more people. He wanted something different. “My father worked for the post office and my mother for the DMV,” Lee says. His parents’ government jobs did not interest him. He made $5 a drawing and was paid an extra $5 if the customer bought the pool project. They looked so cheerful and beautiful.”Īfter graduating from Cal, Lee moved home and started working part time, drawing backyard designs for a swimming pool company. “But she cared for plants, and while she was taking me to McClatchy High School, driving through neighborhoods, I would see these very nice yards in Old Land Park. “South Land Park landscapes at that time were thrown together,” he explains. He credits his mother’s love of plants for his passion. (Lee bought a house not far from his childhood home.) With racial discrimination, the Chinese could not buy a house in South Land Park until it opened up in the 1960s.” That’s when the family bought the South Land Park home where his 93-year-old mother still lives. I was the first generation to go to college-very fortunate to be born when I was. “There were rats in the house, no air conditioning, no college. “My mother grew up poor on 5th and P streets,” he says. But I would rather work with my hands. Do people cook with machines? What’s more valuable? Something made by hand or by machine?”ĭonovan Lee is a second-generation Sacramentan.

“Maybe drawing with my hands is harder work than using a machine to do the drawing. Maybe I am like an ancient dinosaur,” he says. “People talk about missing craftsmanship. Case in point? Records show he used a cellphone exactly one time last year. He’s a low-tech lover of the arts who prefers everything the old-fashioned way. He has a mind that puts the computer to shame. Never mind it may have been 35 years ago. Files are stuffed with sketches organized chronologically so that Donovan Lee can easily put a finger on a specific plan simply by remembering the day he drew it. Hundreds more are simply filed away not by the homeowner’s name or address but in the order they were created. Some plans are painted and ablaze in color.

Sacramento landscape design