Garden

A garden with a natural stream and an English Tudor home featuring portions of a 17th century church are just a couple of highlights of the second home and garden tour this Sunday benefiting Verdugo Mental Health. The 2008 Gardens of Glendale and Beyond will offer a self-guided tour of five gardens and one home, with proceeds going to the center’s mental health programs, said Susan Eyraud, director of services and admissions at Verdugo Mental Health. The homes are in Glendale, La Crescenta and Los Angeles.

Darleene Barrientos A nearby sun-dappled picnic bench cooled by a refreshing breeze beckoned, but Jessica Aldana ignored the sweaty hair falling into her eyes and continued hacking away at a stubborn root. Jessica, 15, and several members of Hoover High School's Summer Peace Institute were busy Wednesday removing tree roots from the southwest corner of the William B. Murphy classroom garden. The gardens have grown out nicely, but Jessica believes preparing the dirt for the plants is the hardest part.

A dozen volunteers toiled over a barren dirt lot Saturday on Monterey Road to prepare it for what will soon be Glendale’s first community-run garden. There are other neighborhood gardens in Glendale, but the 11,000-square-foot lot at 870 Monterey Road will be the first to be organized by a nonprofit organization and operated under a co-op comprising its gardeners. Volunteers with the Los Angeles International Church of Christ and Coalition for a Green Glendale, the nonprofit in charge of the site, worked to clear the ground of rocks and chunks of asphalt Saturday in one of the final days of dirt grading before crews start building the infrastructure required to support a large-scale community garden.

The garden outside Eric and Elisa Callow’s Lloyd Wright home is awash in colors befitting the beginning brush strokes of a Monet landscape. Bright orange, green, red and purple dapple the back yard of the 2/3 acre lot along La Cañada’s Journey’s End Drive, which the couple has turned into a beautiful yet quiet haven of peace and solitude.   But the family isn’t keeping its lovingly cared for gardens to itself. On April 12 and 13, the Callows’ native plant garden will be one of 38 Los Angeles area home gardens featured in the 5th annual Theodore Payne Foundation Native Plant Garden Tour.

CITY HALL — Coalition for a Green Glendale, on a 4-1 vote, got approval for its first community-run garden Tuesday, and without even asking for it, seeds were sown for a second site nearby on the Verdugo Wash. The garden site approved Tuesday will be at 870 Monterey Road, on a vacant city-owned, P-shaped lot near the corner with Cordova Avenue that can accommodate up to 40 raised plots for organic produce farming. Unlike two other public gardening sites at Palmer and Verdugo parks, the 11,000-square-foot Monterey garden will be the first in Glendale to be independently run with bylaws and a lease agreement with gardeners, all under the administration of a local nonprofit, Coalition for a Green Glendale.

This year's Rose Parade will include a brotherly duo unlike any other - one is an astronaut and the other a rose expert, and both will greet onlookers from the fifth float in the Tournament of Roses. Rex Walheim, 49, has five space walks under his belt and has journeyed to low earth orbit three times on space shuttle Atlantis - including its final run in July. (He once joked on Twitter: “I don't fly in space often, but when I do, I only fly on Atlantis.”) Lance Walheim, 59, oversees a 17-acre citrus farm outside of Visalia, and when he's not tending to his blood oranges and mandarins, he's writing books on how to grow roses.

LA CRESCENTA — Two Strike Park has a new addition to the landscape this summer in the form of some eye-catching murals. Brianne Johnson, 15, a member of La Crescenta’s Girl Scout Troop No. 290, recently completed her Gold Award project, which included the creation of Two Strike Park’s new pond and garden, as well as a series of colorful and informative murals. The murals, which also serve to educate the public on native plants, were temporarily placed on the outer walls of the park’s restroom facilities last week, and that’s where they will hang permanently once the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department procures the necessary protective glass and frames.

Gary Moskowitz When she looks back on her junior year in high school, 16-year-old Joyslin Poe-Jones will remember what she learned while helping create the school's "friendship garden" this summer. At a special awards luncheon Wednesday at Clancy's Crab Broiler, the Glendale Host Lions Club honored Joyslin and three other members of Hoover High School's Spirit Council for helping to create the garden. "I had to find peace within myself," Joyslin said when asked what the hardest part of working on the garden was. "I like the fact that we are a diverse school with a lot of different people."

Darleene Barrientos The Glendale Police Officers' Assn.'s Cops for Kids program will soon have a physical presence at Hoover High School after officials donated money for a bench in the school's unity garden. With a $700 check in hand, Glendale Police bunco/forgery Sgt. Todd Stokes said Wednesday that Cops For Kids wanted to help with the new section of the garden by giving money to buy a bench. "Our motivation is to add our piece of help to your garden," Stokes said as about 15 Hoover High students listened.

Students in Hoover High School's spirit council have been working for more than two weeks to complete a new "friendship garden" in time for freshman orientation today. The 20 or more students in the group have been working with Linda Maxwell and Jose Quintanar, program coordinators for We Care for Youth. The 300-square-foot garden contains Mexican daisies, sour grapes, large sunflowers and lilies of the Nile, among other flowers. The garden is designed to provide a place for relaxation, peacefulness and reflection for students and faculty.

About 400 people took part in the Great American Cleanup project in Glendale on Saturday, volunteering to help with a variety of beautification projects throughout the city. Participants gathered in the 100 block of North Isabel Street, where they were matched up with a city staff member or a volunteer leader before they went on their way to their assignments. Projects included construction of a new community garden next to a Habitat for Humanity project on Geneva Street near the Ventura (134)

A new literacy garden opened at John Muir Elementary School in South Glendale on Friday, and campus kindergartners joined members of the Glendale Sunrise Rotary Club and school faculty to celebrate. Rotarian Stephan Ropfogel headed up the project, along with John Muir Principal Linda Junge. Rotarians used their professional skills and connections to design the 2,500-square-foot plot near the school library, obtain insurance and purchase plants and soil, all at no cost to the school.

Glendale's community garden on Monterey Road has been such a hit, the 70-person waiting list grows by the day, organizers reported this week. That interest prompted city leaders on Tuesday to call for another garden locale following a presentation on the program's progress at City Hall. “Let us know if there's room for [another] garden,” Councilman Ara Najarian said. The garden, split into two plots just north of the Ventura (134) Freeway, got its start in 2008 when the city leased the land at 870 Monterey Road to the Los Angeles Community Garden Council.

This year's Rose Parade will include a brotherly duo unlike any other - one is an astronaut and the other a rose expert, and both will greet onlookers from the fifth float in the Tournament of Roses. Rex Walheim, 49, has five space walks under his belt and has journeyed to low earth orbit three times on space shuttle Atlantis - including its final run in July. (He once joked on Twitter: “I don't fly in space often, but when I do, I only fly on Atlantis.”) Lance Walheim, 59, oversees a 17-acre citrus farm outside of Visalia, and when he's not tending to his blood oranges and mandarins, he's writing books on how to grow roses.

A tranquil garden area built by a local teenager in honor of her grandmother, a breast cancer survivor, will serve as a cancer treatment refuge for other patients at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. Kristine Seuylemezian, a junior at La Cañada High School, built the garden area to earn her Gold Award in the Girl Scouts, but the reward has been about much more than a one-time honor, she said. Kristine said she wanted to create something for people to enjoy for years to come.

It's transition time at the Monterey Road Eco-Community Garden (West) in Glendale, and plot partners Lindsey Hansen and Tom Selling are putting in lettuce, peas, potatoes, onions and garlic. But before anything new got planted, they harvested their most important crop of the year: compost from a pair of stackable bins they got free from the Glendale Integrated Waste Management Section. Hansen and Selling, at right, are part of a team of seven who have made composting a group project at the garden.

Lucy Taliaferro Yarick wore many hats during her lifetime. A resident of this city for some 75 years, she was a member of several civic organizations and lent her artistic talent to many causes. She was a longtime Disney artist, hired by Walt Disney Studios in 1935 to work on such animation classics as “Pinocchio” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Her husband, Alfred Taliaferro, also a Disney employee, worked on the Donald Duck comic strip and created Donald Duck's nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, according to the Glendale News-Press, June 19, 2008.

The Monterey Road Community Garden will host a quarterly work day on Saturday. Organizers are asking volunteers to come equipped with hats, sunscreen and water bottles for the work day, which starts at 8:30 a.m. and runs to 12:30 p.m., starting with the east portion of the garden. Volunteers will be treated to a pancake breakfast midway through the workday. To RSVP, email abartrosouf@hotmail.com. Photo: Workers at the Monterey Road Community Garden in Glendale.

E. Manchester Boddy, owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News, was a legend not only for his sharp editorials and shrewd business skills, but for the fantastic parties he threw in his backyard. Of course, it wasn't just any backyard. In 1937, Boddy purchased 125 acres of land in La Cañada and commissioned famed “architect to the stars” James Dolena to build a home for his family, which included his wife Berenice and the couple's two sons, Bob and Calvin. Dolena constructed a 12,000-square-foot, 22-room home on hillside with sweeping views of the valley.

I have always wanted to visit Descanso Gardens but never had the opportunity until this past week. Although the weather has been sweltering, I waited until the late afternoon to go and enjoy a nice walk through the gardens. And since they have extended summer hours until 8 p.m., it was a perfect time to beat the heat. Living in the heart of the city, I sometimes crave the calm and beautiful setting of nature. The serene setting of Descanso Gardens truly satisfied that craving.