From their nest in a Chinese elm that reaches 65 feet to the sky, a pair of red-shouldered hawks have the birds' eye view of a garden that time and curiosity have created.

Nearly a century has passed since that elm began its ascent to towering heights. Stalwart stone walls have withstood the assault of decades of winter rains and summer suns. And shrubs and trees planted from seed have, with supreme patience, achieved their maturity in leaf and blossom.

But for all its age, this is a garden with the vitality of an inquisitive mind. It's a landscape that grew, the gardener says with a smile, "by process of elimination."

That much-admired gardener is Corrine Bromberger. Steve Morgan, curator of the UCR Botanic Gardens, dubs Corrine "the doyenne of horticulture for the Inland area." Betty Mallonee, a past president of the Redlands Horticultural and Improvement Society, calls her "our guru."

When Corinne and her husband, Fritz, moved in 1991 to the old house on a half-acre thick with overgrowth, she brought a vast knowledge of horticulture and an interest in uncommon plants that she continues to share today.

The fruits (and flowers) of the Brombergers' efforts will be showcased April 15 and 16 on the Redlands garden club's annual garden tour. The tour, as well as a flower show and plant sale on the same days, will take note of this presidential election year. Six past presidents of the horticultural society, including Mallonee and the Brombergers, will open their gardens to visitors.

The Brombergers' garden welcomes visitors with cooling shade and bursts of color, benches and trellised decks, and with information. Corrine has labeled nearly every plant not by its common name, but by its more precise botanical name. The labels are a saving grace, Corrine explains, in a garden of the unfamiliar, where visitors are apt to point and ask, again and again, "What's that?"

In the Brombergers' garden, "that" might be a Canary Island laurel, looking much like an avocado tree, but with small, inedible seed pods. "That" might also be a Pink Ball Dombeya, with hydrangea-like blooms drooping from its limbs. Or it might be a tabebuia, bursting with yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers. Corrine started the tabebuia from seed and now looks up, into the sun, to see its top branches.

"Everywhere you look, there's some little thing growing somewhere,"

Corinne says. More often than not, that "little thing" is to a visitor a newfound delight.

A serious gardener for nearly 35 years, Corrine traces her interest in horticulture to the late S. Stillman Berry, a renowned marine zoologist who hybridized irises as an avocation. "The first few years, I grew only vegetables," Corrine says. "Then my aged neighbor, Dr. Berry, began hauling me around, showing me plants, and that kind of started it."

Today, she is herself the erudite pitchwoman for uncommon plants. Through 10-minute talks at meetings of the horticultural society and through its propagation workshop, she nudges others to try plants that are out-of-the-ordinary.

The Brombergers' own garden is always in flux, as Corrine, a self-described "plant nut," tests this plant and that one, to see whether it will succeed and whether its growth pattern is as advertised. "Someone once said nothing stayed put in my yard 'til it had been moved three or four times," Corrine says.

Besides their work with garden clubs and on civic committees, tending the garden is the Brombergers' main occupation. At age 82, Felix is long-retired from the University of Redlands after 40 years of teaching English literature. He now accepts with good humor the title of Chief Composter and Jelly Maker, for it is Felix who puts to good use the fruit of the Brombergers' overachieving pineapple guava tree. At 77, Corrine is resident propagator, cultivator, pruner and docent.

Neither complains about their labors. In fact, they moved to their Hilton Avenue home because its half-acre was manageable, compared with the seven acres they had lived on, higher up in Redlands' southern hills. Corrine operated a mail-order iris nursery on their property for about 10 years. The Brombergers' garden today boasts about 200 varieties of iris, each labeled by botanical name, hybridizer and date of hybridization.

The iris are among the newcomers to the grounds of the Hilton Avenue house. Built in about 1892, the house was moved down the block to its current location in 1903, and nipped and tucked at various times by various owners as the area changed from orange grove to subdivision. Asked to describe the home's architectural style, Felix replies, laughing, "A topsy house. It just grew."

That might be said, too, of the garden when the Brombergers took possession. Its venerable trees and bushes, faithfully watered but otherwise disregarded, had grown wild and free. Early on, the Brombergers began taming the overgrowth and in '91 set about renovating the east side of the garden. They had that section bulldozed to bare earth, tore down an old barn, and added a gazebo and a building that is combination garage/guest house/workshop.

Over the years, Corinne has worked and reworked all the grounds, cherishing the old and relishing the new. She has a special fondness, however, for the sunny east garden. It's there that her irises bloom, and her roses and citrus, and the tabebuia Corinne started from seed -- to see whether she could make an uncommon beauty grow.

Judith Graffam can be reached by e-mail at jgraffam@pe.com or by phone at (909) 782-7512.

Published 4/8/2000