Scott Wilson: In Memoriam

Image from Los Angeles Times.  All Rights Reserved.

Sad news for the entire landscape of Los Angeles today as Scott Wilson, the founder of North East Trees died suddenly.  His impact was felt in his beloved neighborhood of Eagle Rock and throughout Los Angeles.  From the EagleRockPatch:

Scott Wilson, a longtime Eagle Rock resident, retired Eagle Rock High School teacher and landscape architect who was instrumental in the greening of large parts of the neighborhood, died Monday morning after a fatal fall sustained while cutting flowers from a tree in the garden of his Olson Street home. He was 89.

In 1989 Wilson founded North East Trees, a nonprofit environmental group devoted to planting at least five trees a day for the rest of his life—more than 50,000 so far—as well as ensuring jobs in the green industry for at-risk youth. He was trimming flowers on a tree in his Eagle Rock home for the altar of his Pasadena-based Unitarian church when he fell to the ground on Saturday, his daughter Catherine Richards said.

For more information about North East Trees, visit their website, and read a nice profile about their quiet, prolonged impact on Los Angeles from this past July by Emily Green at the Los Angeles Times:

Unless you are active in the field of urban greening, you probably haven’t heard of North East Trees. Unlike the better known TreePeople, North East Trees has not seen its founder land on "The Tonight Show."

Rather, the nonprofit that Scott Wilson started in 1989 by planting 700 oaks at Occidental College in Los Angeles' community of Eagle Rock has quietly been planting many more trees (50,000 at last count), working with low-income communities to create parks, and partnering with city and county agencies on water-harvesting projects. North East Trees has been at the cutting edge of L.A.’s ecological makeover.

As Wilson sees it, what sets North East Trees apart is that he was a landscape architect when the group started. He built a staff of foresters, designers and educators with the goal of strategic greening, going far beyond planting a tree streetside and hoping that it lived.

“It’s not about how many trees you plant,” said Wilson, right, during a brief meeting last week in the courtyard of the Department of Public Works in Alhambra (more on that later). “It’s about the right tree in the right place and about how many of those trees live.”

In Honor of the Carpocalypse (or Carmageddon, if you prefer) . . .

Interactive Before and After images of construction of the Sepulveda Pass.  Courtesy of the LA Times - All Rights Reserved.

 . . . . The LA Times brings us extensive coverage of the 405 closure this weekend, including two interesting presentations on the history the 405 Sepulveda Pass featuring historic photos of the development of the pass.  Definitely worth reading up on the complete history if you have time, but you can also get the short visual version thanks to their interactive image history.

Reading LA

Image from LA Times - from the 1997 PBS series based on "Cadillac Desert." Credit: Skeet McAuley.  All Rights Reserved.

Wow - for some reason I had missed the start of this series, but the LA Times architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, has a great year-long reading series called "Reading LA," that focuses on classic books about the planning, design, and urban form of Los Angeles.  Included on the list are acknowledged master studies of LA's historic growth such as "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies" (written by the British architectural historian and critic, and LA admirer, Reyner Banham) and Mike Davis' 1990 "City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles,"  but so are niche books about noted architects, growth periods, or icons in the history of Los Angeles.  Hawthorne provides a nice introduction to each work, as well as a personal book report of the highlights and lowlights of each installment in the series.  Definitely some good reads on the list that I'll have to check out.  You can find a running log of all of the books at the series homepage, and should be able to find all of them in the LA Library system.  Here's to some good reading . . .

Landscapes for Living

In response to the Cultural Landscapes Foundation's recent symposium "Landscapes for Living: Post-War Landscape Architecture in Los Angeles," Christoper Hawthorne had a great article pondering why landscape architects and their work remains so anonymous in Los Angeles and beyond.  Definitely worth a great read to ponder some ideas as to exactly why landscapes are valued so different than architecture in a city full of such great designers.  Below is an excerpt:

"In Southern California," the architect Charles Moore wrote in 1984, "the part that is planted is very likely to be more sophisticated than the part that is built."

If that's the case — and I'd say it has been in nearly every phase of the region's design history — how to explain the fact that Los Angeles architects have for so long been much better known, locally and around the world, than their counterparts in landscape architecture? Why have our best gardens tended to be even more susceptible to neglect or demolition than our best houses, which are themselves infamously vulnerable?

Why is it that everybody in L.A. seems to remember that Bertram Goodhue designed the original Central Library downtown, but few know that the acclaimed landscape architect Lawrence Halprin is responsible for the Maguire Gardens at the building's feet, added when the library was restored and extended by architects Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer in 1993?

. . . .

Explanations for that obscurity came in a rush all day long. Landscape architects don't publish or promote their work the way architects do. They don't create objects, easily photographed and quickly understood, the way architects do. And perhaps most obvious of all: Their work is ephemeral by definition, quicker to decay and easier to modify than buildings are, to say nothing of a painting, a symphony or a novel.

All those explanations make sense, but they are mostly universal: They don't say a whole lot about the particular battles fought, and often lost, by landscape architects in Southern California.

. . . .

To get at the peculiar anonymity of the Southern California landscape architect, it seems to me, requires exploring a notion that barely got a hearing at "Landscapes for Living," at least during the panels I attended: the L.A. garden as a vehicle for — and expression of — a certain democratic impulse.

Because Los Angeles was built from its earliest days around the primacy of the single-family house, garden space here has always been widely available to families with a range of incomes and backgrounds. Instead of a Central Park by the famous Frederick Law Olmsted at the very heart of our metropolis, we developed tens of thousands of private amateur parks in our backyards, to go with a relative handful of parks and plazas by prominent designers.

Another question I didn't hear any of the panelists address directly, though they seemed to circle around it all day, was this: In a world quickly turning every artistic discipline into digital form — even architecture, with fancy computer renderings of unbuilt projects now routinely splashed across the front pages of newspapers and the covers of books and magazines — how can landscape architecture possibly compete? If gardens are nearly impossible to appreciate in two dimensions, they are also best understood over time.

Santa Monica Civic Center Parks - Sustainable Park Workshop

Tomorrow at 1pm, the design team for the Santa Monica Civic Parks project will be hosting an educational workshop on sustainable park landscapes.  The talk will focus on, among other things, how native plants and ecologies in Southern California work, and how they can inform and participate in the Santa Monica Civic Park project.  More on the workshop from the project's website below:

As part of the series of workshops to engage the Santa Monica community in the design process for two new Civic Center parks, an educational workshop on sustainable park landscapes will be held on January 29. Members of the park design team under the leadership of James Corner Field Operations will make in-depth presentations on sustainable landscapes and discuss opportunities for the new parks. (pdf announcement)

Speakers: 
Bob Perry, professor, author and preeminent expert on ecology, water conservation and California native plants

John Greenlee, internationally-recognized horticulturalist, grass and meadow expert, author and lecturer

Lisa Switkin and Sarah Weidner Astheimer, lead park designers with James Corner Field Operations

When:   Saturday, January 29 at 1 pm
Where: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, East Wing (1855 Main Street, Santa Monica 90401)
Questions? Email ccs@smgov.net.

Replace Your Lawn Workshops all Month!

Image, and bumper stickers, from Tree of Life Nursery.  All Rights Reserved.

Is your 2011 resolution to finally get rid of your lawn?  Well, you are in luck!  Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano is hosting "Replace Your Lawn" workshops every Saturday during the month of January.   And, it's all FREE!

Sadly, this post is too late for the first workshop, but three great workshops remain.  Definitely worth checking out for expert advice on re-imagining your front yard without lawn, and the opportunity to find quality native plants for your new outdoor space. Upcoming workshop descriptions are presented below.  But, don't worry, if you can't attend the workshops, Tree of Life has handouts for every workshop (see the link below the descriptions), and a great cheat sheet on 30 California Native Plants to help you get started: Thirty Basic California Native Plants.   Go Green - Plant Natives!

Replace Your Lawn!

Start the New Year right by getting rid of that expensive water-guzzling, care-intensive lawn, and make way for a gorgeous native landscape!  Back by popular demand, we are presenting our Replace Your Lawn (RYL) workshop series in a four part installment about the basics of converting your lawn into a beautiful, carefree, sustainable habitat.

These workshops will be held SATURDAYS at 10 AM in the month of January, beginning January 8, 2011.  This RYL series is unique because we will hold two sessions on plant selection covering evergreen native plants and flowering perennials seperately.

All of these workshops are FREE of charge and each session lasts about an hour and a half, (depending on questions!).  Hopefully you will be able to attend each of the sessions at least once.  No reservations are required.

Saturday, January 8, 2011 - 10:00 AM
Replace Your Lawn I: Kill the Grass

Step one - get rid of it!  This may be more involved than you would expect and the methods to get rid of a lawn are quite varied.  Avoid unnecessary labor and learn several successful methods for lawn removal, depending on you turf type, budget, and timeline. First in our popular four-part series.

Download the handout: Replace Your Lawn: Kill the grass!

Saturday, January 15, 2011 - 10:00 AM
Replace Your Lawn II:  Creating and Caring for Your Native GardenSecond in a four-part series about Replacing your Lawn. Now that you have killed your grass, what are supposed to do?  Mike Evans will share from our booklet, "Creating and Caring for your Native Garden", that you can download here.  Learn how to create a thriving native garden.

Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 10:00 AM
Replace Your Lawn III: Plant Selection - Foundation Plants Learn about the backbone of every native garden: neat, evergreen and carefree foundation plants.  While California’s flora offers a wide variety of flowering perennials to choose from, be sure to use plenty of hearty evergreen woody shrubs to provide an attractive backdrop to showcase your flowers as well as to keep your native landscape looking full, lush and neat.


Saturday, January 29, 2011 - 9:00 AM
Replace Your Lawn IV: Plant Selection - Flowering Perennials
After you have determined the look and feel you wish to achieve in your garden, the fun begins – plant selection!  We will present a group of plants we call our Thirty Plants.  These are the “must-haves” for any native California garden.  This selection of thirty plants represents a handsome mix of the most authentic native plants for Southern California gardens.  As we discuss the Thirty Plants, we will expand our knowledge of natives in general, and learn how to chose the right plants for any particular design theme.
Download the handout: Thirty Basic California Native Plants

Break-up Billboards

Billboard on Venice Blvd just west of the 405.  Image from AdiosLA.  All Rights Reserved. 

Map of Billboard Locations - all locations are tagged in Google Maps for easy directions.  Image from AdiosLA.  All Rights Reserved. 

In the spirit of change and new beginnings, an LA-bred designer brings some year-end cheer to LA with AdiosLA, an art project using billboards and the web to publicly break-up with the City of Los Angeles as he prepares to move to New York for a new job.    Curbed LA has the story:

Designer Jon Jackson grew up in Glendale and has lived in and around Los Angeles his whole life (right now he's in Santa Monica), but recently he decided to take a job as a creative director at an interactive advertising agency in New York, and he's breaking up with his long-time lovah via billboard. You couldn't have texted, Jon? Jackson tells Curbed in an email that he thought this was an appropriate way to say goodbye to "a city where art is always tough to find, but rewarding when you do." He writes: "I hope that there will be a bit of inspiration from the boards, intrigue and definitely a laugh. I think we all have things in our lives big or small that we know we need to 'break up' with." While a friend at a billboard company helped him out with the project, he says that prices are low right now and "I paid what anyone else would pay." Jackson's five designs went up yesterday and will stay up until January 15. You can see some outtakes here.
· Adios LA [Official Site]

Definitely a funny way to say goodbye to your hometown, and a nice way to use an iconic feature of LA to communicate your message, similar to the MAK Center's billboard-based art exhibit earlier this year.  Good luck to Jon in New York,  although I have a feeling LA will be happy to take Jon back if he changes his mind sometime in the future. She is a forgiving mistress. 

Year End Review

Near the top of the list of year-end, best of lists has to be the Curbed Awards 2010 at Curbed LA.  My personal favorites worth checking out:

• Top Ten Weird and Wonderful Celebrity Houses
• Nine Nuttiest Architecture Renderings of 2010

Although, really, the whole list is worth a good look.  Hopefully, with a (slightly) rebounding economy, 2011 should bring an even better group of nutty renderings and real estate offerings to enjoy.

US Census Mapping

Image produced at NY Times website.  All Rights Reserved

As we near the new year, nothing like a bit of reflection on where we are at now, and what may lay ahead.  The best way to understand where you might be going is to know more about where you are, and the NY Times, with the help of Google Maps, has a great tool showcasing the results of the US Census in a graphic, interactive map.  Find out a bit more about your neighborhood demographics here.

Tejon Wilderness Conservation Easements Approved

The state of California approved the purchase of conservation easements for 62,000 acres in Tejon Ranch a few weeks ago, ensuring the preservation of at least 62,000 acres, but hopefully laying the groundwork for more than 240,000 acres to be protected in the future.  This initial, but critical step, is vital to helping preserve ecologically diverse open space in Southern California for future generations.  The LA Times has the fully story:

The state on Thursday approved the purchase of conservation easements on 62,000 acres in Tejon Ranch, the first step in implementing an agreement that would protect up to 240,000 acres of wild lands in one of the largest pieces of private property in California.
The $15.8-million grant from the state Wildlife Conservation Board will establish one of the largest conservation easements in California's history.

"If the Tejon Ranch is the Holy Grail of conservation in California — and it is — the Wildlife Conservation Board is the people's knight in shining armor," said Joel Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of five conservation groups that signed the 2008 agreement with the Tejon Ranch Co., which owns the 270,000-acre ranch that stretches from Los Angeles County to Kern County and is thought to contain some of the state's most ecologically rich landscapes.

The conservation board's grant will be used by the Tejon Ranch Conservancy, which was created to manage the newly protected lands, to purchase easements on five parcels that include Joshua tree and oak woodlands, Mojave Desert grasslands, riparian woodlands and San Joaquin Valley grasslands.

Graham Chisholm, chairman of the Tejon Ranch Conservancy board of directors and executive director of Audubon California, said Thursday's announcement ensured the original deal will be honored.

"While the 2008 agreement was a landmark achievement for the conservation of these lands, the purchase of these easements really cements the victory," he said.

The conservation easements will prevent the Tejon Ranch Co. from future development of the properties but allows ranching and hunting activities to continue. The conservancy will have authority to plan for conservation of the land and public access to the property.
The Tejon Ranch Co. has agreed to place 178,000 acres in conservation easements, but that process is dependent on approval of the company's development projects elsewhere on the ranch.

Paper or plastic? How about just Paper

Image from LA Times. All Rights Reserved.

This past Tuesday, Los Angeles County officially banned all plastic carryout bags from use in unincorporated portions of the County.  The vote marks a big environmental victory for LA County, with the potential to severely reduce the amount of plastics polluting our waterways and urban landscapes.  Admittedly, the ban remains imperfect, particularly because it only affects unincorporated portions of the County, but with more than 1.1 million residents being affected, the scale of the ban is still quite significant.   The LA Times has great coverage and recap of the vote, including comments from its detractors, and comparisons of the ban to similar efforts in California and beyond.  Below is an except:

. . . .

The ban, which will cover nearly 1.1 million residents countywide, is to the point: “No store shall provide to any customer a plastic carryout bag.” An exception would be made for plastic bags that are used to hold fruit, vegetables or raw meat in order to prevent contamination with other grocery items.

If grocers choose to offer paper bags, they must sell them for 10 cents each, according to the ordinance. The revenue will be retained by the stores to purchase the paper bags and educate customers about the law.

“Plastic bags are a pollutant. They pollute the urban landscape. They are what we call in our county urban tumbleweed,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said.

Mark Gold, president of the Santa Monica environmental group Heal the Bay, said previous county efforts to promote recycling of plastic bags at grocery stores was a failure.

“You cannot recycle your way out of the plastic bag problem,” Gold said. “The cost of convenience can no longer be at the expense of the environment.”

The measure is a significant win for environmental groups, which suffered a major defeat in Sacramento at the end of August with the failure of the state Senate to pass a sweeping plastic bag ban that won the support of the state Assembly and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger amid heavy and costly lobbying by plastic bag manufacturers.

But the ban could cause confusion. The action by the Board of Supervisors only covers the unincorporated areas of L.A. County, covering some neighborhoods like Altadena, Valencia and Rowland Heights, but doesn't cover 88 cities in L.A. County. City councils could adopt a similar ordinance.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich  raised the prospect that small mom-and-pop shops could suffer financially because they won’t be able to buy paper and reusable bags in great volume, and could force low-income people to buy bags to pick up pet waste or carry their lunch.

“At a time of economic uncertainty, with a large number of businesses leaving our state and community this would not be an appropriate time ... to impose this additional regulation,” Antonovich said.

Opponents of the ban told the supervisors that a legal challenge to the ban is still a possibility.

With the Tuesday vote, L.A. County’s measure is more stringent than similar bans adopted elsewhere in California, Gold said.  

San Francisco’s ban, which passed three years ago, is less restrictive because it still permits grocers to offer bioplastic bags made from corn starch, which are imperfect because they also do not degrade in the ocean, Gold said. Bans in San Francisco and Malibu also do not add a surcharge on paper bags, Gold said, which does not give consumers an incentive to switch to reusable cloth bags.

. . . .

Predock Building Doomed

Image from Tom Zasadzinski and The Architect's Newspaper.  All Rights Reserved.

The iconic Antoine Predock-designed Classroom Lab Administration building on Cal Poly Pomona's campus is slated for demolition. Built in 1993 and featured in a number of movies and television productions, the building appears to be little loved by its users on the Cal Poly campus.  The Architect's Newspaper reported the news, including direct responses from Antoine Predock:

In recent weeks, it has become clear that Antoine Predock’s iconic Classroom Laboratory Administration (CLA) Building on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona is likely to meet every building’s nemesis: the wrecking ball. The university claims it is structurally compromised and poorly designed for education. While demolition is not yet scheduled, on September 21 the California State University Board of Trustees voted to construct a new building in its place.


Meanwhile, Predock fired back in an interview that the CLA is not only structurally sound but an “irreplaceable” part of the campus. “In their haste to find a quick solution to common structural problems, university officials have chosen to raze this important visual landmark and, by doing so, will demolish a vital part of the university’s identity,” he told AN.


Designed in 1993 to be what Predock called “the new campus gateway” and “a pivotal, landmark building,” the CLA is composed of an eight-story triangular tower and an attached seven-story rectilinear structure. The tower, with its soaring form, is visible from the I-10 freeway and also doubles as a wayfinding device on campus, helping visitors move through a school that university president Michael Ortiz calls “difficult to navigate.” The structure has been featured in numerous films and television spots, and is even integrated into the university’s logo. Its presence will not be easily replicated.


While Ortiz admits that “the removal of the CLA will leave a void in the skyline,” he contends that “those who have to interact with the structure on a daily basis are not as fond of the structure.” The building, he and other administrators argue, is confusing to navigate, cramped, and plagued with problems. According to Mike Sylvester, Cal Poly’s vice president of facilities, the university was forced to pursue “a latent defect claim for design and construction deficiencies” shortly after the building opened, due to extensive water damage. That damage, he said, has still not been completely fixed.

Renovating the building would mean updating it for new seismic codes, among other things, and the university says it would cost $80 million, the same price they have estimated for a new building. 

Predock, who completed his plans for the building under the supervision of a California State University review board, is understandably upset by the news. “It is devastating,” he said, “to imagine that this iconic structure, one of the most important of my designs, might be demolished, creating a void in the Cal Poly campus fabric, an irreplaceable loss.”

Responding to the administration’s charges, Predock staunchly defended the CLA’s structural and figural integrity, calling his building “a project of which I am extremely proud…not to mention the fact that the structure survived both the Northridge and Chino Hills earthquakes unscathed.” He added that the school itself signed off on the building’s design. “During the construction drawing phase, the project underwent intense scrutiny by the university and its peer review panel,” he said, “continuing into the construction phase with a team of university inspectors.”

Cal Poly’s Sylvester differs with Predock about the university’s oversight of his work, revealing some underlying tension. “Although there were reviews during the development of the project, the liability for design and construction is the architect’s, engineer’s, and contractor’s professional responsibility,” he said.

Around campus, reaction to the impending loss seems surprisingly ambivalent. University message boards have been quiet, while local preservation groups have been mum. Said Sylvester: “There are many people in the university community that are disappointed that the building may be demolished, but overall most people agree with the university’s decision and are looking forward to a new replacement facility.”

According to Cal Poly’s Office of Public Affairs, construction on the CLA’s successor is estimated to begin in 2013, and will take approximately 18 to 24 months to complete after groundbreaking. An architect has not yet been named.

From the article, it appears to be a classic example of an aesthetic approach clashing with user needs, but it is hard to tell how much Predock's design or perhaps proper construction is really lacking in this situation.  Certainly the building satisfied a number of larger programmatic needs on campus, including wayfinding and identity, but did not function to the satisfaction of its daily occupants on a practical level.  Right or wrong, the design will be replaced, and it will be interesting to see what fills the void. 

M56 - A Window into the Life of an Urban Cougar

Map from LA Times.  All Rights Reserved. 

The LA Times has an engaging and challenging story about M56, a 20-month old cougar tagged in Orange County back in March by researchers from UC Davis.  The story highlights his journey of almost 100 miles over two months through the urban matrix of Southern California before eventually being trapped and euthanized after attacking livestock.  It draws out the difficult realities of integrating wildlife, particularly predatory animals, into the urban matrix, while underscoring the profound capacity of certain wildlife to adapt and navigate through the urban landscape.  An excerpt from the article is provided below, and a slideshow of M56 and places he wandered during his journey is available here:

For eight weeks, M56 moved relentlessly, guided by a primordial compass. He covered more than 100 miles and climbed from sea level to a mile high. He traversed saw-toothed mountains, navigated busy highways and furtively skirted suburban neighborhoods.

The 20-month-old mountain lion, wearing a tracking collar affixed by UC Davis researchers, left his mother in the foothills of Orange County in early March and struck out on his own.

He traveled south through Camp Pendleton, then turned east toward the high country of eastern San Diego County, which opens on the horizon like a centerfold in a coffee table book.

M56 stunned scientists by becoming the first cougar in a decade of study to cross Interstate 15 — most likely via an underpass where signs point to housing developments that have pushed deep into Southern California's mountain lion habitat. Weeks later, M56 emerged from chaparral-choked wilderness and ducked under Interstate 8 about 45 miles east of San Diego.

Like any juvenile cougar, M56 was searching for food, potential mates and territory unclaimed by another male. Above all, he avoided people. He was learning to survive.

The night of April 24, he moved through a wooded area and stopped a few miles from the Mexican border, just north of Campo. After two months of moving south and east, M56 turned and headed northwest back into the woods.

Maybe it was the light of ranchettes less than a half-mile away. A stray dog might have spooked him. Or maybe he had picked up the scent of another cougar and turned to avoid a fight.

One thing is clear: M56 was about to make his first — and last — mistake.

California Scenario turns 30

Famed artist, sculptor, and landscape designer Isamu Noguchi's California Scenario project in Costa Mesa is celebrating it's 30th anniversary this year.  The Dirt reports that to commemorate the milestone, the Noguchi Museum in New York has a new exhibition discussing the work, complete with photographs, models, and video. 

The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York, has marked the thirtieth anniversary of famed modern artist Isamu Noguchi’s California Scenario with a new exhibition. The public garden, commissioned by developer and philanthropist Henry T. Segerstrom, is located in Costa Mesa, California. The exhibition explores the design of garden through photographs, models, and video.

In 1979, Segerstrom asked Noguchi to design a public garden to enhance two office towers built on family land once used as a lima bean farm. While Segerstrom initially wanted a lush retreat, Noguchi instead created a simple stone plaza with a few green spaces. The Noguchi Museum writes that the artist first conceived the project as an “abstract metaphor for the state of California, from the Sierras, to the desert, to the woods. In addition to including redwoods and cacti, among other native plants, it encompasses a number of individual elements designed by the artist to evoke some of California’s salient characteristics.”


The garden features a crack filled with water and stones, which functions as a stream beginning at the thirty-foot-high sandstone triangle named “Water Source” and ending at “Water Use,” a granite wedge. ”Forest Walk” takes visitors past a patch of California redwoods and “Desert Land” features a “symmetrical mound planted with a variety of cacti, agave, and other desert plants.” The sculpture “Spirit of the Lima Bean,” twelve-feet-high carved granite boulders, educates visitors about the earlier use of the site.

Segerstrom and Noguchi worked on the project for two years. Today, it’s a well-visited (and well-maintained) site open to all. In fact, Segerstrom “personally ensured” California Scenario was well-preserved over the long-term.  The exhibition is open through October 24, 2010.

Sadly for us, the exhibit is in New York, but fortunately for us, the actual work is still open to the public in Costa Mesa. So, while you can't go to the exhibit without a plane ticket, you can enjoy the unique sculpture garden in person with a short drive to Two Town Center next to South Coast Plaza.  While there, you can also see a classic Peter Walker design. 

(images from The Dirt, courtesy of The Noguchi Museum, New York.  All Rights Reserved.)

Gas Station or Stealth Bomber?

This is easily my favorite gas station in all of Los Angeles, and let's be honest, there are a lot of them.  Located at Robertson and Olympic, this gas station takes filling up to another level.  I can't tell if it is an ode to Frank Gehry, the Stealth Bomber, or America's obsession with stainless steel appliances, but its kitschy, unique, kinda awesome, and I love it. 

Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase

This Sunday was the 2nd Annual Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase.  The tour is hosted by the Green Committee of the Mar Vista Community Council, and features over 80 different homes.  As the website describes:

This free, self guided garden tour is all about water conservation. These homeowners have all made choices to eliminate or reduce turf lawns and have created gardens that thrive in our Southern California climate while using minimal water. Many are investing the water they use to grow fruits and vegetables for their families to enjoy.

Fortunately, I live just down the road from part of the tour, so was able to hop on my bike, and enjoy the afternoon seeing about 10 houses that ranged from highly designed, horticultural gardens to self-described rock gardens.  Each garden provided a different look at water conservation, but all featured permeable surfaces, and low-water use plants.  Some of the yards had been converted to edible gardens, growing artichokes, lettuces, snap peas, chards, strawberries, and tomatoes among others.  I was also able to stop by the Venice High School Learning Garden, one of the more extensive school gardening programs in Los Angeles.  It was a great facility that features a range of demonstration gardens and plots tended by students at the high school.

Although I really enjoyed the aesthetics of some of the professionally or highly-designed gardens, there was something sort of wonderful about the home grown "rock people" and like-minded, willing amateurs who took a lot of pride in pulling out their lawn and putting in a few plants.  While the yards were certainly not showpieces, the owners took as much if not more pride in it as people might talk about their lawns.  But it wasn't simply about aesthetics, they felt a real sense of empowerment and pride about doing their part - displaying a sort of DIY ethos for sustainability.

Overall, it was a great event that not only provided inspiration for people to rethink their yards, but also a forum for community members to interact with each other.  Look forward to attending next year.

  Raised bed made out of straw waddles (erosion control devices)

  Traditional raised bed

 The Desert Garden at the Venice Learning Garden

Classes on Edible Gardens

 (image from US Forest Service.  All Rights Reserved)

The LA Times shared some exciting news yesterday about the UC Cooperative Extension's new "Grow LA Victory Garden Initiative." Beginning in late-March and early April, they will be offering classes at 11 locations in LA on growing your own food.  The classes run on 4 consecutive weekends, and at the completion of the program, participants will be certified Victory Gardeners. It should be a great opportunity to learn more about tending your urban garden from your fellow citizens.

No seasons in LA? Think, or smell, again

 (image from LA Times)

I was pleased to see a little article from the LA Times about the allure of jasmine (especially their reference to an earlier piece about it as the harbinger of spring in LA) because I have been soaking it in the past three weeks on my walk to work.  One of the true pleasures of living close enough to work to be able to walk (in LA of all places), is getting a chance to engage in the world up close and through all five senses.  You are provided a chance to follow that tried and true advice to stop and smell the flowers.  And, about two minutes into my walk to work, a mature jasmine vine towers over a front fence, permeating the street with its sweet scent.  Or, in the more eloquent words of LA Times staffer Emily Green:

 It might happen tonight. Or tomorrow. But it won't happen gradually. It will come all at once. All over Los Angeles, the first pink buds of jasmine will erupt into sprays of new white flowers. The display will be chaste enough for a wedding arbor -- until nightfall. Then those blameless blossoms will let rip with a decidedly frank perfume, a mix of sweetness and musk that will refuse to be upstaged by any other smell L.A. can throw at it. Exhaust. Fire. Freshly manured lawns. At that moment, the first great swelling of spring will rise over the city in a sudden night fog of jasmine.

It is definitely the most memorable part of my walk in the early morning, and one of the most of my entire day. I look forward to it each morning eagerly, and sorely miss it on those few days I need my car.  Walking past the jasmine each morning also left me intrigued by measurements of seasonality in a climate like Southern California.  How do we mark the seasons in Los Angeles, and stand witness to the passing cycles of nature?  For the rest of the country, we mark it by weather, and obvious visual cues.  Winter is white, cold, dark, snowy, and full of "barren" landscapes.  Spring provides wet rains, warming temperatures, and the leafing out of new growth, while Summer is the bonanza of hot, sun-filled days.  Fall marks the arrival of a chill in the air, and the changing colors of deciduous leafs as they prepare to drop for the winter. But how do we understand the passing of the seasons in a place like Southern California, where seasonal temperature shifts are subtle, and where, due to moderate temps and constant irrigation, our landscape remains largely unchanged to the eye? Where life continues "uninterrupted" by weather? 

Smelling the jasmine every morning left me thinking that perhaps, here, our appreciation for the seasons might be measured by other senses. Perhaps our seasons can be understood by smell, even the smell produced by an exotic plant such as jasmine.  The smell of its new flowers resulting from winter rains and just enough of a chill to shoot out a rich bouquet to attract pollinators.  Perhaps we can remember Spring is coming each year by the smell of jasmine.  Or, as Emily Green added in her great piece about it:

We no longer need jasmine for the historic reasons: to cover up bad smells of open sewers and unbathed bodies. However, in so many other ways, we need jasmine more than ever, first for the romance, but also to pierce our infernal sophistication. Jasmine seduces us back into a state where we are capable of wonder at the pulses of the natural world. Aroused, we are suddenly alerted to the profound mysteries unfolding nightly in our own backyards.

California Adopts Mandatory Green Building Code

More good, green news from this past week.  California adopted a set of mandatory green building codes called Calgreen.  A draft of the legislation is available here, and it will take full effect Jan. 2011.  While some local standards are actually stronger than this statewide legislation, this establishes a comprehensive, coordinated statewide effort to build greener.  One downside, though, will likely be a rise in costs to the consumer, but is there really an acceptable outcome of not building green? The Dirt provided this recap: 

Last week, California adopted the U.S.’s first mandatory green building codes called Calgreen, which are expected to help the state reach its goal of cutting CO2 emissions by a third by 2020. According to The New York Times’ Green Inc. blog, every new building will have to “reduce water usage by 20 percent and recycle 50 percent of its construction waste instead of sending it to landfills. Commercial buildings will be required to have separate water meters for indoor and outdoor water use. Mandatory inspections of air conditioner, heat and mechanical equipment will be also be instituted for all commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet.”


Tom Sheehy, acting secretary of the state Consumer Services Agency and chair of the California Building Standards Commission, the group that passed the rules, told The San Francisco Chronicle: “This is (something) no other state in the country has done – integrating green construction practices into the very fabric of the construction code. These are simple, cost-effective green practices. California should be proud.”
The California Building Standards Commission unanimously approved by new rules, which also allows cities with stricter codes to keep their independent standards.
Importantly, to offset the cost of meeting the new code, developers will not be required to get green building certification from the U.S. Green Building Council or other organizations. Still, the new codes are expected to increase the cost of building homes. As a result, new home prices are expected to rise by $1,500.

The U.S. Green Building Council’s Northern California chapter told The San Francisco Chronicle its group was ”concerned that parts of the new code lack the rigor of existing local regulations, possibly making it difficult for cities and counties to adopt more stringent standards.” However, state officials said it was necessary to create a “single comprehensive code, clearing up confusion over varying regulations, and it allows builders to receive green certification without paying a third party.”

California’s Building Standards commission passsed similar rules in 2008, but now that they are mandatory, it’s expected they will remove three million metric tons of emissions from the air by 2020.  Read the article

"Women in the Dirt" Trailer

Here is a preview of "Women in the Dirt," an upcoming documentary film exploring women in the field of landscape architecture through the lens of seven of California's most famous women landscape architects.  Should be a great film, and certainly well-deserved recognition of these great designers.