Have a blooming good time
take a walk on the wild side or explore manicured grounds at the region’s many and varied public gardens
Once upon a time, Arlington Garden was the site of a grand 50-room mansion known as Durand House, which was demolished after 1964 so Caltrans could extend the 710 Freeway. When community opposition halted that project, the 3-acre lot of compacted dirt stood vacant until 2005. That’s when the garden’s founders, Betty and Charles McKenney, worked with Pasadena officials to create a public, water-wise Mediterranean-style garden. Its designers used organic and regenerative growing techniques such as leaving leaf litter on the ground to help build up the depleted soil. They also packed in nearly as many garden “spaces” as there were rooms in the old mansion, with lots of quiet shady spots for reading, trails and a labyrinth to stroll, a citrus grove, an oak grove, a vegetable patch, a pond, a cactus garden, a pine forest and a French-feeling allée lined with silvery olive trees and furniture you can move about for personalized seating. And, of course, the garden is laced with lots of habitat-creating native plants, as is obvious from the birdsong and pollinators flitting throughout. This is a garden where you can bring a book or a picnic, let children safely run free or find a sheltered corner for coffee and intense conversation. During a visit late on a fall Friday afternoon, one young woman sat in a corner of the allée with her sketch pad; a slender walker, obviously a regular, gaped at the white barrel-shaped blooms oozing with bees on a tall San Pedro cactus (
California Botanic Garden considers itself an 86-acre living museum, the state’s largest collection of native plants. The easy-to-roam area is divided into multiple regions such as a fan palm oasis and clumps of serrated agaves, a wildflower meadow, redwood groves, waves of Matilija poppies (whose fried-egg-looking blooms are the size of a hand) and a dizzying collection of manzanita and wildflower blooms in the spring. Be sure to visit the massive 250-year-old majestic oak, the largest and oldest in the garden’s oak woodlands. There are many sturdy benches that invite reflection and maybe a snack, but food is permitted only in the parking area. This is a lovely garden to learn how native plants look when they’re mature. The garden’s website lists what’s currently in bloom and, from October to May, you can purchase many of the plants you admire in the on-site Grow Native Nursery. Note: This is a great place to appreciate the heady fragrances of many California native plants. A slight stroke of a branch can fill the air with scent. Just be gentle when you walk by. Info: 1500 N. College Ave., Claremont, (909) 625-8767,
Think of Descanso Gardens as part chameleon, part sanctuary. Walking through its towering oak woodlands and ancient forest is kind of a religious experience — silent, awe-inspiring and very intimate. But then there are the flower gardens, starting with 5 acres of roses — more than 1,600 varieties — and a Japanese Garden with a teahouse and delicate blooms from cherry and plum trees and other plantings native to Asia. There are also the California Garden designed by native plant advocate Theodore Payne, masses of blooming tulips in the spring and one of the country’s largest collections of camellias, blooming best in January and February, when most flowers are resting. Descanso’s Sturt Haaga Gallery has rotating exhibits throughout the year, and the gardens often host original compositions and performances, sometimes with music piped through the trees. The garden, which is owned by L.A. County, also hosts popular seasonal events such as the Halloween-season Carved, featuring hundreds of pumpkins intricately carved by artists, and the annual holiday light show Enchanted. Visit often to check out the changing gardens because there’s always something blooming at Descanso. This is a garden you can visit according to your mood. Whether you’re feeling reflective or joyous, it will always be uplifting. Info: 1418 Descanso Drive, La Cañada Flintridge, (818) 949-4200,
What a surprise to find such a lush 26-acre garden on the campus of California State University, Fullerton, bounded by the Titan Stadium and the always busy Yorba Linda Boulevard and 57 Freeway. With all the traffic noise and the sound of cracking bats during practice at the stadium, it’s hard to believe there can be anything tranquil inside the garden gates. However, once inside, past the waterfall and banana trees heavy with fruit, it’s easy to forget all that other stuff and just get swept away by this garden’s “living collection.” Wide lawns near the entrance lead to two ponds full of sunning turtles, connected by a shallow, fast-moving stream that burbles through the west side of the gardens. It might be hot outside, but the temperature drops significantly inside the bamboo forest, redwood grove and a collection of huge and wonderfully twisted fig trees. Don’t miss the spectacular rock fig with its pale green trunks rising ghostlike from the heavily leaf-littered ground. At the east side of the garden is the thorn forest with truly bizarre plants such as the silk floss tree with its thorn-studded branches and trunk and delicate lilylike blooms. Suddenly, after all the forests, you are smack in the desert, studded with barrel cactuses, towering agave blooms and also some shade from massive Chilean mesquite trees. The rare fruit orchard and citrus groves remind us we live in Southern California, and if you’re lucky, you can purchase some of the bounty at the gate, such as bags of fresh fuyu persimmons, sapotes, star fruit and pomegranates. Info: 1900 Associated Road, Fullerton, (657) 278-3407,
The Getty Center is one of L.A.’s most renowned art museums, but the four surrounding gardens are worth a visit all by themselves. Most spectacular is the large Central Garden, a kind of living artwork designed by California artist Robert Irwin that involves paths that follow and cross a fast-moving stream that ends in a waterfall into a pool at the bottom of the hill. Brilliant bougainvillea cascade out of tall iron trellises like colorful giant umbrellas, and the foliage and plantings change with the seasons to live up to Irwin’s statement about the garden: “Always changing, never twice the same,” carved into one of the stepping stones. The gardens also include a variety of cactuses and succulents, as well as sculptures, all framed by the Getty’s austere, otherworldly architecture. Admission is free, although these days, because of COVID-19, you need to reserve an entry time to keep visitor numbers low. Info: 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, (310) 440-7300,
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens is the grand dame of Southern California botanic gardens. (It’s as large and formidable as its name.) This is a place for extensive research in its libraries or art gazing in the museum, where visitors can see the Huntington’s new commission, “A Portrait of a Young Gentleman” by L.A. native Kehinde Wiley (the artist who painted President Barack Obama’s famous portrait), through Jan. 3, in the same room as its inspiration, Thomas Gainsborough’s iconic 18th century painting, “The Blue Boy.” If you go, plan a day devoted to just wandering the Huntington’s 130-acre gardens, a sprawling collection of extraordinary roses, authentic Chinese and Japanese gardens, and areas dedicated to Australian plants, Shakespearean plants, herbs, desert plants, jungle and subtropical plants (you can almost hear Tarzan bellowing somewhere in those towering, vine-dripping trees) and, of course, a whimsical garden to enchant children. The food options are varied and very good. The Jade Court Cafe in the Chinese Garden offers a range of cuisine, plus beer and wine. There’s also the 1919 Cafe near the entrance and the Red Car coffee shop for grab-and-go coffees, ice cream cones and sandwiches — and outdoor seating options. (The Rose Garden Tea Room is closed for renovations until winter 2022.) If you want a free-day ticket (the first Thursday of every month), you’ll need to be ready to jump on a reservation at 9 a.m. the Thursday before. Due to the huge demand, people are assigned a random number after they enter the online waiting room for free tickets. If your number is selected, you can receive up to five tickets per household (babies also need tickets on free days). Info: 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, (626) 405-2100,
Maybe it’s the L.A. Arboretum’s early history as an Indigenous Tongva settlement named Aleupkigna on Baldwin Lake and then as the Mexican land grant Rancho Santa Anita, where cattle, grains, vineyards and fruit trees were nurtured, that gives this sprawling 127-acre botanic garden a kind of proletariat feel. There are plenty of beautiful places to wander here, such as the aquatic gardens that include the Meyberg Waterfall, the Meadowbrook Garden (filled with deciduous trees whose colorful blooms and leaves change every season, as well as evergreens), the tropical greenhouse with thousands of orchids, and the plantings grouped by geography — South American, Mediterranean, South African, Australian and Asiatic-North American. But the Arboretum also has extraordinary demonstration gardens such as the Crescent Farm, a onetime compacted lawn transformed into a lush, drought-resistant garden of California native plants and low-water fruits, vegetables, ground covers and shrubs by using lasagna mulching and hugelkultur beds to rebuild the soil. Peacocks nonchalantly roam throughout the gardens — they’re descendants of the three birds imported by Rancho Santa Anita’s last owner, Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin. There are historic buildings as well, such as the relocated Santa Anita Depot and the Queen Anne Cottage built by Baldwin. Little-known fact: This L.A. County-owned garden is also a great place for botanic research, thanks to its extensive library that you can search online and to Frank McDonough, a full-time botanical information consultant whose job is to answer the public’s questions about plants. (Call McDonough at (626) 821-3236.) The garden has regular wellness classes such as forest bathing and yoga. It also provides room for many plant-related conventions and clubs and offers a popular wintertime holiday light show called Lightscape. It’s truly a garden for the masses, especially if they have a taste for wonder. Info: 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia, (626) 821-3222,
Sherman Library & Gardens is only 2.2 acres — one of the region’s smallest botanic gardens — but it packs a punch with its many intimate, intensively planted gardens, ranging from 130 varieties of begonias and a tropical conservatory with orchids, carnivorous plants and a koi pond to an almost quiltlike succulent and cactus garden, a perennial garden and a magnificently massive and gnarly pepper tree. The gardens were founded by businessman Arnold D. Haskell in 1966 and named after his mentor, Moses H. Sherman, the streetcar and real estate developer who brought Angelenos the Hollywoodland sign. Haskell loved plants and acquired an entire block in Corona del Mar to create a central garden, conservatory, library (his former office), gift shop and cafe. Sherman Gardens often weaves classes and art among its plants, hosting sculpture installations and performances by a contemporary dance troupe. The library specializes in the history of the Pacific Southwest, including Southern California, Arizona and northern Mexico, with 15,000 books and a collection of California Impressionist art. It’s easy to spend a few hours in this small garden. Maybe that’s because its intimacy and easy access invite you to linger and savor what you see. Info: 2647 E. Coast Highway, Corona del Mar, (949) 673-2261,
South Coast Botanic Garden celebrated its 60th birthday this year, marking its transformation from a county landfill covering an old diatomaceous earth mine to 87 acres of lush, diverse collections of extraordinary plants. The plantings include an almost spiritual banyan grove, with its tangle of huge Moreton Bay fig tree roots and massive canopy, along with gardens dedicated to a variety of botanic wonders such as roses, California native plants, dahlias, agaves, ginkgoes, eucalyptus and grass (yes, grass). The children’s garden has a nursery rhyme theme with a large dollhouse, a charming bridge and plants matched to the stories. You can visit the compost demonstration site to learn how to make your own at home. All in all, the garden has more than 2,500 different species of plants and 5 miles of trails, but if that feels overwhelming, the garden’s website offers a downloadable map for easy planning, along with suggestions for what to see based on how much time you have to visit. The garden also has two popular seasonal events that require an additional fee: SOAR, its butterfly pavilion and garden that is currently focused on monarch butterflies, and GLOW (Garden Lights & Ocean Waters), its second winter light show that features food, drink, music and thousands of lights designed to transform the garden into a water-themed locale through Jan. 17. If you have only 45 minutes, you can see a lot at this garden, but it’s an easy, fragrant place to while away an afternoon. Just remember to bring something to eat. Info: 26300 Crenshaw Blvd., Palos Verdes Peninsula, (424) 452-0920,
This tiny jewel of a garden was once part of a palatial Pasadena estate designed by Japanese landscaper Kinzuchi Fujii for his wealthy patrons, Charles and Ellamae Storrier Stearns. Fujii transformed two flat tennis courts into a mounded space featuring a grand “12-tatami-mat tea house” (a dozen 3-foot-by-6-foot mats signifying a house of great importance) along with a 25-foot waterfall, two ponds, four bridges and numerous plantings shaded by sprawling sycamores and oaks. It’s a restful place to wander by day, but it’s even more magical at night, with just enough lighting to help you find your way along the paths. If you’re looking for a special evening out, grab your favorite takeout and a bottle of wine and watch the day melt into night, with strings of lights reflecting off the koi pond. (Bring your own cups, bottle openers, cutlery and plates to the garden, and take it all with you when you leave.) The teahouse is lighted and open for visitors day or night. Just remember to remove your shoes. Info: 270 Arlington Drive, Pasadena, (626) 399-1721,
William M. Wrigley Jr., the man who made his fortune with Juicy Fruit, Spearmint and Doublemint gum, loved Catalina Island so much that he bought most of it in 1919. He developed the area around Avalon with public utilities, a hotel and casino, new steam-ships and a tile and pottery plant. He also loved riding horses in Avalon Canyon, and after he died in 1932, his wife, Ada, built a tower and mausoleum there as his final resting place. Wrigley’s remains were later moved to Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, but the memorial tower and 38-acre botanic garden are still there, with succulents, desert plants of the Americas and a large swath devoted to native plants endemic to the island — meaning they are native only to Catalina — along with plants endemic to the other Channel Islands. The garden also is the primary gateway to one of Catalina Island Conservancy’s most popular hikes, the Garden to Sky trail. Info: 1400 Avalon Canyon Road, Avalon, (310) 510-2897,
