From turf to teaching campus
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County today unveiled plans to convert former lawn into a 3.5 acre living wilderness exhibit. According to the press release, eleven thematic zones—Urban Edge, Transition Garden, Car Park, Living Wall, Entrance Plaza, Urban Wilderness, Pollinator Garden, Shadow Garden, Get Dirty Zone, Home Garden and 1913 Garden—will be interwoven with landscape features such as a pond and dry creek, groves of trees, and walking paths. Click here for more information on the gardens, which are expected to open next year.
The pond is one of the North Campus’ centerpieces, where visitors and school groups can engage in living habitat filled with animals ranging from Western Pond Turtles to dragonflies. Rendering by Mia Lehrer + Associates. Courtesy of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Phantom boxing with faceless bureaucrats
The Los Angeles Times reports today that the Mayor is lashing out at “unidentified high-level bureaucrats” within the city’s Department of Water and Power.
It is these mandarin civil servants, we are to believe, who are to blame for thwarting reform, for the mixed messaging about our City finances and for failure of clean energy initiatives.
Did he mention how they run around at night and purposefully cause water main breaks?…
Christmas in April
Homeowners unite for water conservation and environmental quality. This garden on Redwood Avenue in Los Angeles is one of the 80 on the Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase tour this Sunday, April 25, from 2-6pm. Admission Free. Click on the image for more information.
Poppies and artichokes at a Redwood Avenue garden in Los Angeles, part of Sunday's Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase. "What says California better?" asks homeowner-designer Marilee Kuhlmann. Photo: Leigh Curran. Click on the image for a map to the Kuhlmann-Curran garden.
Regular readers of this site know its aversion to chronological gimmicks. Water Day. Ride Your Bike to Work Day. Ignore the Days Day. But this Earth Day event is so damn impressive, so much more than an empty hoorah by self-styled goodniks, that it amounts to Christmas in April. Every year residents of Mar Vista invite the public into their gardens to help anyone who …
Boston ferns and birds of paradise
As a somber Mayor of Los Angeles delivered his State of the City address this afternoon, the set dressing said as much as the speech. Los Angeles is a place flagging as much from failure of imagination as from a monetary crisis. Fluffing out the rim of the podium were a mix of Boston ferns and birds of paradise. Behind the Mayor were crumpled-looking American flags.
This is not the stage set worthy of our Mayor, our city or our region. There is no reason for gratuitous greenery when announcing painful budget cuts, or any other occasion. Better no plants than the wrong ones. Better no flags than rumpled ones.
But, if we must decorate, then let’s decorate with our best asset, our natural beauty. Let’s fly our city flag for State of the City addresses. When our Mayor speaks of stalwartness, let’s surround him with rugged agaves instead of …
Unqualified? You’re hired
UPDATE WEDNESDAY APRIL 21, 2010: New interim LADWP general manager Austin Beutner will guest on KCRW’s “Which Way LA?” tonight at 7.27pm. Click here for details.
For those who missed today’s article in the Los Angeles Times about the appointment of First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner as interim head of the Department of Water and Power, here’s the best line. “With this appointment, Beutner becomes the DWP’s ninth general manager in the last 10 years.”
Whatever one thought of Beutner’s two predecessors, H. David Nahai, or S. David Freeman, both men knew water and Freeman also understood power.
Beutner, described by a local public radio affiliate as a former Wall Street trader, knows neither, prompting the blog Griffith Park Wayist to ask, “Will he look at the safety of the City’s water supply as a risk-v.-return proposition?” LA Observed business columnist Mark Lacter put it this way: “While Beutner has …
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