Wow, hard to believe it’s been 5 years since we renovated the landscape at the Sunland Welcome Nature Garden. Time flies! Enjoy the memories, it’s been quite a project!
This garden got its start as an off-handed comment in an email thread between community members, grew to collecting seeds and cuttings from our local trails and a propagation effort that necessitated a whole new approach to potting containers, and resulted in a few dozen community members taking part in a wholescale renovation of the community entrance garden.
It’s been five years since about 50 people got together to rip out the invasive exotic Fountain Grass that the City had planted a decade before, and install the local native plants that now support the local bees, birds, lizards, and hummingbirds, grace the site with authentic beauty, and do so with minimal supplemental irrigation.
In February of 2013, after a several-month-long process, we adopted this property from the City. In March of that year we replaced the plants in the majority of the garden. It was hard work removing the hundreds of mature Fountain Grass plants, some of them growing inbetween rocks that were cemented in place. The replacement plants were tiny, and almost invisible among the mulch, but they grew well, and within a few months some were already blooming. In the fall we planted the rest of the garden, and the flowers haven’t stopped – pretty much every day of the year, something is blooming!
In 2014 we adopted and planted the parcel across the street, having been inspired by the Wildflowering LA art project. This Wildflowering Annex, as we call it, has its own challenges, with a surplus of weeds and no irrigation. We solarized the slopes in the summer of 2014, planted the top bench in December, and the Buckwheats and Sages have performed admirably on rainfall alone. When we get some real rain in the winter, the wildflowers are pretty in the spring.
In 2015 we ran a crowdfunding campaign, which combined with a grant from the Metropolitan Water District, enabled us to install interpretive signage to explain the motivation behind the garden and inspire people to take the message home to their own gardens.
In 2017 we trimmed the trees and bigger shrubs to open up sight lines and make the garden less attractive to the local transients. After some struggles with one particularly belligerent person, the City’s homeless task force prevailed and things have been mostly quiet. A couple weeks ago we planted 75 little plants, filling in holes from plants that either hadn’t survived, or that we haven’t been able to propagate. While we were planting, the hummingbirds were serenading us. Ahh, music to our ears!
-roger
Sunland Welcome Nature Garden 