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The Star
22-05-2025
- General
- The Star
US woman transforms trash patch into a fragrant habitat garden
Some people see trash and weeds and walk on by. Others rail against the slobs of the world, or agencies that don't do their jobs. And some, like environmental scientist Marie Massa, roll up their sleeves and get to work. In Massa's case, that's meant spending six to nine hours a week since early 2023 working mostly alone to transform a long, trash-filled strip of no-man's land between Avenue 20 and Interstate 5 in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles, the United States into a fragrant, colourful habitat of California native plants. She's named the garden the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor and features it on her Instagram page, ave20nativeplants, exulting every time she spots a native bee, caterpillar or some other creature visiting the space for food or shelter. 'You see all these horrible things happening in the world,' she said, 'the loss of rainforests, of plants and animals and insects. ... It's so much and sometimes I can't handle all this bad news,' Massa said. 'That's why I feel compelled, because I can make a difference here.' Massa is slender and just 5ft (1.5m) tall in her work boots, with strands of grey lightening her dark hair. Years ago, she helped build the Nature Gardens at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. She wrote about wildflower blooms for the Theodore Payne Foundation's Wild Flower Hotline and volunteered to help renovate UCLA's extraordinary Mathias Botanical Garden, a project that was completed in 2024. Native sticky monkey-flowers come in two colours at the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor on Avenue 20. These days Massa is a stay-at-home mum to Caleb, age eight. Her husband, Joseph Prichard, one-time lead singer for the LA punk band One Man Show Live, now runs his own graphic design company, Kilter. Most weekdays, Massa walks her son to and from school, makes her husband's lunch and tends her own private garden. But Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between 8.30am and 11.30am, Massa becomes a determined eco-warrior. With her garden gloves, buckets, hand tools and a spongy cushion to protect her knees as she weeds, Massa is doggedly transforming a strip of public land roughly 8ft (2.4m) wide and around 380ft (116m) long – longer than a football field. She fills bags of trash from around her planting strip and calls 311 to have them hauled away. She drags 200ft (61m) of hose to water her new plantings a few times a month, from a spigot made available by Alliance Susan and Eric Smidt Technology High School next door. The native plant corridor on Avenue 20 has many clumps of showy penstemon, native perennnials that live up to their name with their deep-throated, vibrantly coloured flowers in electric purple and pink. She's spent days digging up garbage buried three feet (0.9m) deep in the garden and even muscled an old oven from the planting area to the curb after someone dumped it during the night. When graffiti appears on the retaining wall below the freeway, she takes a photo and uploads it to MyLA311 to get it painted over. She's lobbied for plant donations, potted up excess seedlings for people to carry home and recruited work parties for really big jobs, such as sheet mulching the parkway between the sidewalk and the street to keep weed seeds from blowing into the habitat corridor on the other side of the sidewalk. The project started slowly in the fall of 2022. As she walked Caleb to school, less than a mile (1.6km) from their Lincoln Heights home, Massa noticed this long strip of neglected land between the freeway's retaining wall and the sidewalk. 'It was full of weedy dried grasses, all kind of brown, and lots of trash,' Massa said. 'There were also four planter beds in the parkway (the strip of land between the sidewalk and street) with a few buckwheat and encelias (brittlebush), but every time the LA Conservation Corps came to mow the weeds down, they gave a huge horrible buzz cut to the native plants.' Clusters of deep blue California bluebells are among the many vibrant flowers blooming at the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor. — Photos: TNS Massa has spent three years transforming a long, weedy strip of trash-filled public land into a fragrant native plant garden. When the buckwheats in the parkway got mowed down, she said, they blew seeds into the wider planting strip on the other side of the sidewalk, and Massa said she noticed some buckwheat seedlings coming up, trying to make space for themselves among the weeds. 'I thought, 'Native plants could do really well here,' and I started developing this idea that the strip would be cool as a native plant garden.' That November, she bought some wildflower seeds and sprinkled them along the corridor, to see whether the soil would support their growth. After the heavy rains that winter, she was delighted to find them sprouting in the spring, fighting through the weeds along with buckwheat seedlings. She wrote a letter to people who lived near the untended land, outlining her idea to create a native plant garden to beautify the area and support pollinators. She invited neighbours to help her and included her email address. 'I didn't get any responses,' she said, 'but when I went out to weed, people would come up to me and say, 'We got your letter and this is a cool idea'.' In the spring of 2023, as her wildflowers were sprouting, Massa called the office of Los Angeles Council District 1 and told them about her project. She asked them to stop the Conservation Corps from mowing down the emerging plants and requested help from the Conservation Corps to suppress the weeds along the long strip of parkway between the sidewalk and street. Tall stems of rosy clarkia, a native wildflower, add to the riot of spring colours at the native plant corridor. The council agreed, so between May and October of 2023, Massa organised six work sessions to sheet mulch the parkway between the sidewalk and street, laying down cardboard and city-provided mulch with help from members of the LA Conservation Corps, Plant Community and Aubudon Society. The goal was to suppress the weeds on the parkway so they didn't add more seeds to the habitat she was trying to create on the other side of the sidewalk. 'The sheet mulching took a looong time,' she said, 'but I wanted the parkway to look nice, with cleaned up planters, so people could park along the street, easily get out of their cars and see the corridor.' But she still needed plants. She went to her former boss at the Natural History Museum's Nature Gardens, native plant guru Carol Bornstein, with her design, and Bornstein helped her choose colourful, fragrant and resilient native shrubs, perennials and annuals that could provide habitat for insects, birds and other wildlife. The response to her plant quest was heartening. The Los Angeles-Santa Monica Mountains Chapter of the California Native Plant Society gave her a US$500 (RM2,163) grant, and several nonprofit and for-profit nurseries donated plants. By November she had more than 400 plants, and the help of a friend, Lowell Abellon, who wanted to learn more about native plants. Working about six hours a week, they slowly began adding plants to the 380ft (116m) strip, weeding around each addition as they went. By March they had added about half the plants, but they had to stop before it got too warm. 'If you plant them too late, they don't have time to get good roots down into the ground (before it gets too hot),' she said. 'I tried to be on top of the watering, but during the summer about half of them died, so I had to do a lot of replacement planting in the fall.' During the summer, Massa mostly worked alone keeping the newly planted sections of the corridor weeded and watered. Because school was out, she brought her young son to help her each week. Sometimes neighbours with children would join them, she said, giving her son someone to play with, but once or twice, she resorted to offering him US$5 (RM22) for his weeding work. When school resumed in the fall, Massa was ready to start planting again, this time working mostly alone because her friend Abellon had a family emergency that took him out of state. She began in October, planting and weeding the rest of the corridor, including adding 100 plants to replace the ones that died. Now, in the garden's third spring, the plants are filling out. There are large mounds of California buckwheat, tall spires of sweet hummingbird sage and incandescently purple clusters of showy penstemon. Monkey flowers in orange and red, scarlet bugler, purple and white sages and coffeeberry shrubs are coming into their own. And there's so much California buckwheat Massa has had to thin out some of the plants and put them in pots for others to take home. She hopes her work will inspire others to create their own native plant gardens and even tackle a project like hers, beautifying a neglected public space. But she says it's important that people understand such work is more than a passion; it's a long-term commitment. Guerrilla gardeners have great intentions, she said, but it usually takes at least three years for a garden of native plants to get established, and those young plants will need water, whether it's a nearby water spigot or jerricans of water lugged to the site. 'If you just plant and go, you might as well throw the plants in a trash can, because it's not going to work,' Massa said. 'If you don't water them, if you don't weed and pick up trash, people aren't going to respect the space, especially if you don't put in the effort to keep it looking good. For a garden to be successful, you have to commit to putting in the work.' Passerby Eimy Valle walking through the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor. Massa's son goes to another school these days, but she figures she'll keep up her three-mornings-a-week schedule at the garden for at least another year, until she's confident the plants are established enough to thrive on their own. For instance, she wants to make sure the narrow leaf milkweed she planted gets big enough to attract endangered monarch butterflies and provide a place for them to lay their eggs and plenty of food for their caterpillars every year. 'My hope is that this will become a habitat that's self- sustaining,' she said, 'so I can step away and be OK just picking up trash every once in a while.' Will she start another project somewhere else? Massa rolled her eyes. 'My husband says I can't take on another project until this one is done, and this one has been a lot of work,' she said, laughing, 'buuuut I do actually have my eye on another spot.' And then suddenly she's serious, talking about this weedy strip on Main Street, not far from where she's working now. She's a little embarrassed, struggling to explain why she would want to tackle another lonely, thankless project, but defiant too, because, clearly, this is a mission. 'People in this neighbourhood don't seem to know about native plants,' she said, 'so maybe I can show them their value, the value of having habitat and space around you that's beautiful. 'Maybe it could be a way of educating a new audience about the value of appreciating the environment.' Maybe so. Better watch your back, Johnny Appleseed. – By JEANETTE MARANTOS/Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
Los Angeles Times
01-05-2025
- Climate
- Los Angeles Times
Bask in rare lilacs for the last time on this spring weekend roadtrip
Somehow it's May, and I hope you, unlike me, have already planted your warm-season veggies. As usual, I bought too many tomato plants and, as I write this in late April, they are still sitting on a table in my backyard, impatiently waiting for me to get them in the ground. Please don't judge. Since I live in Ventura, I have a little window of time before summer's excessive heat starts stressing my young plants, and last weekend's rain was a welcome bit of moisture after our dry winter. However, inland gardeners know May can bring surprise blasts of horrible heat before we settle into June Gloom. So if you're a procrastinator like me, keep an eye on the weather forecast, water deeply before fiery temps arrive and make a plan for how to shade your tender seedlings so they don't get fried in a sneak heat attack. Speaking of rain, many thanks to everyone who visited our L.A. Times Plants booth at the Los Angeles Times' Festival of Books last weekend. We had a huge turnout despite Saturday's deluge as visitors poured in to learn about California native plants from the experts at the Theodore Payne Foundation and California Native Plant Society. I was thrilled to meet so many readers, and to sign up more than 700 new subscribers to the newsletter! Welcome to all you newcomers, and please send me your story ideas. I have lots of plant-related activities for May listed below, but first here's a heads up about a soon-to-be-gone soul-satisfying opportunity: a chance to wander in fragrant memory at Gary Parton's lush Alpenglow Lilac Garden in Idyllwild. As he's done for 15 years, Parton is opening his garden to the public tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day through June 8 except Mondays and Tuesdays. He's also putting his property up for sale this month, so this is your final chance to stroll his sloping ¾-acre lot on Fern Valley Road and savor the 300 mostly rare lilacs that come in an eye-popping range of colors, from a silver that fades into white to various shades of cream, yellow, violet, orchid, purple, pink, salmon and blue. By mid-May, he said, the fragrance from all those blooms is so intense, you can smell it on the road. Admission to the garden is free, but come prepared for emotion: There's something about the evocative, nostalgic scent of lilacs that makes people come undone, Parton said. 'They walk all the way down here [to the bottom of the garden] and honestly, they break down,' he said. 'That's why I always have to have tables and chairs so people can sit, because they get overtaken by memory, and that's when the tears come.' However people react, Parton is satisfied. His goal is to share these grape-like clusters of flowers and give visitors a chance to reconnect with their past in a beautiful setting. Many of his visitors grew up in places where lilacs grow more profusely, such as the eastern U.S., Europe and Asia, and they come just to sit and recollect. The expense of opening his garden and prepping it for visitors has grown over the years, but Parton said he's never wanted the bother of charging admission. He accepts donations, sells potted seedlings for $25 apiece or special high-potassium lilac fertilizer for $15 a bag, but this year he has only a few seedlings potted up. He hasn't had the time or energy to gather any more since he's been so busy preparing his home for sale. The plants were given to him by another Idyllwild resident, concert pianist and lilac collector Reva Ballreich, former president of the International Llilac Society, who grew or hybridized more than 800 different varieties. It wasn't until recently, he said, when he was offering cuttings to Descanso Gardens for its lilac display in La Cañada Flintridge, that he learned almost all the lilacs she gave him were coveted varieties hard to find anywhere else. Ballreich's passion for lilacs was vast and relentless, Parton said. Her gifts to him include the butter yellow lilac known as Primrose, considered one of the rarest varieties in the world. And when she went to Russia to perform Beethoven, he said, she smuggled out a fully rooted cutting of the Nadezhda lilac, a Russian variety famous for its blue color. The Russians didn't permit exports of Nadezhda at that time but Ballreich wanted to bring one home, Parton said. So she bought a baguette, sliced it in half and hollowed out enough of the interior to hold the cutting. Then she glued the two halves together 'and just smiled and went right through customs. They didn't stop her at all,' he said, laughing. Parton now has a plant propagated from that smuggled cutting in the section of his garden devoted to Russian lilacs. He also has a large seating area nearby, shaded by giant cedars and pines, where he shares stories and advice about lilacs every day at 1 p.m. (except Mondays and Tuesdays, when he's closed). He met Ballreich at the Idyllwild Garden Club in 1996, when he was still teaching art at North High School in Torrance and part-time at El Camino Junior College. He loved visiting the mountain community, so when he retired after 35 years of teaching in 1998, he made Idyllwild his new home. He'd never grown a lilac before, but for reasons he said he's never really understood, Ballreich decided he should carry on her legacy. They became close friends and she began giving him lilacs in colors he'd never seen before — salmon and pinks, violets, deep purples and true blues, sometimes edged in white. She died in February 2009, and that spring, Parton's plants were mature enough that he hosted his first lilac festival, a tradition that lasted until 2018, when the job became too big. Parton is 86 now, and although he still loves his yard, he can't stand the cold winters anymore in Idyllwild, or the work involved in keeping his garden safe for visitors. 'I don't want to break a hip working down there,' he said, motioning to his backyard where most of the lilacs reside. 'And I don't want my kids to find me lying on the ground.' He's philosophical about what will happen to his property once he moves to Boulder City, Nev. It would be lovely, if the new owners decide to continue the lilac garden, 'but what they do is out of my control,' he said. Sorting through all the things he's accumulated has been a challenge, but it helps, he said, to think about the next chapter of his life, and what adventures lie ahead. 'I've lived in this [Idyllwild] box for nearly 30 years and experienced all these things, but I can't keep everything,' he said. 'I'm getting acquainted with the ability to open your hand and let things go, and not feel bad about it.' Lilacs feel particularly special in Southern California because they usually require freezing temperatures to bloom. Parton said there are three tricks to get lilacs to flower in more temperate, nonfreezing areas: 1. During hot weather, withhold water until the plants begin to wilt to shock the plant into setting flowers for the following spring. Water them deeply after that, he said, but try the shocking technique at least three times during the summer 'to make sure you're setting the button for the next year.' 2. Avoid fertilizers with high nitrogen. 'If you give them nitrogen, all you'll get is this glorious, wonderful leafy bush and it will never bloom,' he said. Instead, use a fertilizer high in phosphorous. Look for the NPK levels listed on fertilizer bags to determine nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) levels. 3. Don't plant lilacs too close to the ocean; they should be back a mile or two from the coastline. It's a day trip from L.A. to visit Parton's garden but well worth the drive. If you want to stay overnight, be sure to arrange accommodations ahead of time because Idyllwild gets very busy in the spring and summer. Try to arrive before 1 p.m., so you can listen to Parton's talk about the garden, but be aware that on-site parking is very limited, and street parking is challenging. Carpool if you can, and be prepared to walk a few blocks to get from your parking spot to his home. Gathering at Kuruvungna, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kuruvungna Village Springs and Cultural Center in Sawtelle. Gates close to new admissions at 2 p.m. The event includes tours of the garden and natural springs, as well as workshops, music and food. Admission is free, but reservations are required. Crescent Farm 10th-Anniversary workshop: Change and Adaptation at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, 10 a.m. to noon at the Arboretum in Arcadia, a tour of the Arboretum's regenerative Crescent Farm garden and discussion about its history. Registration required; included with $15 admission to the Arboretum ($11 seniors 62+ and students with ID; $5 children ages 5-12, free for members and children 4 and under.). Succulent Arrangement in a Vintage Silver Teapot Workshop, 10-11:30 a.m. at Sherman Library & Gardens in Corona del Mar. This hands-on class will guide participants in using a variety of succulents to create a low-maintenance succulent display. Register online for $120 ($110 for members). Southern California Horticultural Society presents a talk by Amy Stewart, New York Times bestsellling author of 'The Drunken Botanist,' 'Wicked Plants' and her latest book, 'The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession,' in its Ruth Borun Lecture Series, at 7:30 p.m. at the Witherbee Auditorium at the Los Angeles Zoo. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Register online; tickets are $15 (free to members). The Orange County chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers annual plant sale, 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Costa Mesa Women's Club. Plants include unusual varieties of avocados and rare fruit trees. A complete inventory will be listed online a week before the sale. Admission is free. Sow and Grow! Transplanting Seedlings Into Your Garden, a Centennial Farm class taught by Kylie Gilliam of Blue Ribbon Garden edible garden design, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Orange County Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa. Learn how to successfully transplant young seedlings. Register online by May 2; $30 fee covers all materials including a small container box, soil and seeds. Placerita Canyon Nature Center Open House & Native Plant Sale, 10 a.m .to 2 p.m. in Newhall, includes games, crafts, panning for (fool's) gold, presentations about local wildlife and a variety of food trucks. Admission and parking are free. Citrus and Berry Class at Otto & Sons Nursery, 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the nursery in Fillmore. Learn the best techniques for growing citrus and berries, from pruning and fertilizing to harvest. Registration is not required. Irrigation Basics for Native Plants, a walk-and-talk class led by Theodore Payne Foundation horticulture educator Erik Blank, 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the foundation in Sun Valley. Register online, $39.19 ($28.52 members). Geranium Society Mother's Day Show & Sale, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 10 and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 11 at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia. Free with $15 admission to the Arboretum ($11 seniors 62+ and students with school ID, $5 children 5-12 and free to members and children ages 4 and under.) Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy Native Plant Sale, 10:30 a.m. to noon at the George F. Canyon Nature Center in Rolling Hills Estates on May 10 and at the White Point Nature Education Center in San Pedro on May 24. Admission is free. Fruit Trees and California Native Plants: Landscaping Together, a course in how to landscape with fruit trees and native plants taught by Fruitstitute founder Joanna Glovinsky, 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley. Register online, $39.19 ($33.85 members) Make It, Take It — Food Preservation with UC Cooperative Extension Master Food Preservers of Orange County, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Orange County Fair & Event Center's Centennial Farm in Costa Mesa. Learn how to process and store food safely. Register online by May 9. The $45 fee covers ingredients, handouts and two canning jars with lids and rings. Knives will be provided but you may bring your own. Hair must be tied back and closed-toe shoes are required. 39th Bug Fair at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, a two-day festival celebrating insects, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days at the museum in Exposition Park. Admission is included with $18 admission to the museum ($14 seniors 62+ and students with ID, $7 children ages 3-12, free for members and children 2 and under). Eco-Friendly Foraging: Plants Walk / Wild Food Tasting & Drinks, 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. both days at Reptacular Ranch in Sylmar. These are two separate classes taught by forager, potter, author and wildcrafter Pascal Baudar, whose work 'focuses on finding ways to turn non-native and invasive wild edibles into nutritious, delicious and healthy tasty food.' Register online; classes are $65 each. Epiphyllum Society of America Flower Show and Sale, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. the the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia. Free with $15 admission to the Arboretum ($11 seniors 62+ and students with school ID, $5 children 5-12 and free to members and children ages 4 and under). South Coast Cactus & Succulent Society monthly meeting features speaker Kelly Griffin, succulent hybridizer, discussing his plant-hunting trip to the Outback and Cape York areas of Australia, 1 to 4 p.m. at the South Coast Botanic Garden in Rolling Hills Estates. Admission is $15 ($11 seniors 62+ or students with ID, free to members of the garden and club). Ikebana Flower Arranging Workshop, 10 a.m. to noon at Sherman Library & Gardens in Corona del Mar. Instructor Valeria Brinkers will use seasonal spring flowers to explain how to create a Moribana-style ikebana arrangement. Participants will receive an ikebana kit, vase, medium pin frog and bowl to cut branches; they must bring their own scissors, hand towel and a bucket. Register online, $130 ($120 members). Buzz & Bloom: Getting to Know California Native Bees, a class about the life cyles, nesting habits and favorite flora of California's more than 1,600 species of native bees, and ways to create bee-friendly habitats, taught by Theodore Payne Foundation director of public programs Maryanne Pittman, 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the foundation in Sun Valley. Register online, $39.19 ($28.52 members). All About Native Bulbs, a course about the culture and care of California native bulbs in containers or in the ground and the seed propagation and division propagation of bulbs, taught by Tim Becker, Theodore Payne Foundation's director of horticulture, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the foundation's propagation shed in Sun Valley. Register online, $44.52 ($33.85 for members). Botanical Portraits with photographer Marie Astrid Gonzalez, a class in the best techniques for photographing wild flowers and native plants, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, register online $65.87 ($49.87 members). Pollinator/Perennial Class at Otto & Sons Nursery, 10 to 11 a.m. at the nursery in Fillmore. Learn companion planting techniques for perennials that attract pollinators and beneficial insects into the garden. Registration is not required. Understanding and Adapting to Climate Change, a comprehensive look at how Southern California's changing climates are impacting our plants and native landscapes, taught by Santa Monica College earth sciences professor William Selby, author of 'The California Sky Watcher: Understanding Weather Patterns and What Comes Next,' from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley. Register online, $39.19 ($33.85 members). Santa Anita Bonsai Society Bonsai Show, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Los Angeles County Arboretum displays maples, junipers, pines and other trees trained to look like miniature forest giants. Free with $15 admission to the Arboretum ($11 seniors 62+ and students with school ID, $5 children 5-12 and free to members and children ages 4 and under.) The Art of Botanical Printing on Silk Chiffon, a class taught by artist Linda Illumanardi from 1:30 to 4 p.m. at the Theodore Payne Foundation's demonstration gardens in Sun Valley. Participants will take a short walk through the garden to identify dye plants used by the artist, and then choose specific leaves and flowers to make a personal design on a 60-inch-long silk chiffon scarf. Students must be 18 or older. Materials will be provided but participants are asked to bring their own scissors and any California native leaves or wildflowers from their own gardens that they'd like to use. Register online, $92.55 ($81.88 for members). San Gabriel Valley Chrysanthemum Society Plant Sale, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia. Society members will offer classes each day at 11:30 a.m. about how to grow chrysanthemums. Free with $15 admission to the Arboretum ($11 seniors 62+ and students with school ID, $5 children 5-12 and free to members and children ages 4 and under). Bonsai & Fuchsia Shows & Sale, 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days at Sherman Library & Gardens in Corona del Mar. The Orange County Fuchsia Society will be displaying and selling a variety of fuchsias and members will be available to answer questions about fuchsia selection and care. A special class about fuchsia care is scheduled for 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. on May 31, and at 1:30 p.m. on June 1, Sherman Gardens' senior horticulturist Carol Younger will lead a tour of the garden's fuchsias. The Coastal Bonsai Club will present a display of bonsai trees and offer talks from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. about Shohin bonsai on May 31 and and succulent bonsai on June 1. The shows are free with $5 admission to the garden. (Members and children 3 and younger enter free.) Recovery is ongoing from the Eaton and Palisades fires, and the revelations just keep coming. We tested soil at eight burn-area locations in Altadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu to see what if any toxins were left by the fires. We learned three things: 1. The results varied considerably. 2. Much of the soil in urban L.A. was already polluted or uprooted by development, industrial or agricultural uses as well as old fertilizers, house paints and gasoline. And 3. There are options besides scraping the soil away, such as bioremediation. Some people look away when they see trash and weeds in public spaces. Not Marie Massa. This Lincoln Heights mom, wife and botanist has worked for three years to transform an ugly stretch of wasteland between Avenue 20 and the 5 Freeway into a lush native plant garden. Oaks are majestic no matter where they grow, and writer ML Cavanaugh penned a beautiful ode to our coast live oaks' mossy, miraculous neighbors to the east: the southern live oaks of the Southeastern U.S.
Los Angeles Times
13-04-2025
- Science
- Los Angeles Times
Immerse yourself in native plants at the L.A. Times Plants booth at Festival of Books
Want to learn more about California native plants? Take a deep dive with experts from the Theodore Payne Foundation and California Native Plant Society April 26-27 at the L.A. Times Plants' Native Plant Booth at the Festival of Books, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 26 and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on April 27. The booth will be brimming with displays of California native plants provided by the Theodore Payne Foundation, along with handouts in English and Spanish about how to create fire-resilient landscapes using native plants and how to avoid and/or replace invasive (and highly combustible) plants. On April 26 only, the California Native Plant Society will provide visitors with free customized lists of native plants based on their particular ZIP Code and landscape needs. The Theodore Payne Foundation will offer chances to take home stickers, tote bags, native poppy and chia seeds and 4-inch pots of native plants. L.A. Times Plants will be handing out free packets of native (and very easy to grow) sunflower seeds to current subscribers of the L.A. Times Plants Newsletter, as well as people who register on the spot to receive our free monthly email newsletter. We'll also have stickers and pins.
Los Angeles Times
09-04-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
How one woman is doggedly transforming a trash patch into a fragrant habitat garden
Some people see trash and weeds and walk on by. Others rail against the slobs of the world, or agencies that don't do their jobs. And some, like environmental scientist Marie Massa, roll up their sleeves and get to work. In Massa's case, that's meant spending six to nine hours a week since early 2023 working mostly alone to transform a long, trash-filled strip of no-man's land between Avenue 20 and Interstate 5 in Lincoln Heights into a fragrant, colorful habitat of California native plants. She's named the garden the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor and features it on her Instagram page, ave20nativeplants, exulting every time she spots a native bee, caterpillar or some other creature visiting the space for food or shelter. 'You see all these horrible things happening in the world,' she said, 'the loss of rainforests, of plants and animals and insects. ... It's so much and sometimes I can't handle all this bad news,' Massa said. 'That's why I feel compelled, because I can make a difference here.' Massa is slender and just 5 feet tall in her work boots, with strands of gray lightening her dark hair. Years ago, she helped build the Nature Gardens at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. She wrote about wildflower blooms for the Theodore Payne Foundation's Wild Flower Hotline and volunteered to help renovate UCLA's extraordinary Mathias Botanical Garden, a project that was completed in 2024. These days Massa is a stay-at-home mom to Caleb, age 8. Her husband, Joseph Prichard, one-time lead singer for the L.A. punk band One Man Show Live, now runs his own graphic design company, Kilter. Most weekdays, Massa walks her son to and from school, makes her husband's lunch and tends her own private garden. But Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between 8:30 and 11:30 a.m., Massa becomes a determined eco-warrior. With her garden gloves, buckets, hand tools and a spongy cushion to protect her knees as she weeds, Massa is doggedly transforming a strip of public land roughly 8 feet wide and around 380 feet long — longer than a football field. She fills bags of trash from around her planting strip and calls 311 to have them hauled away. She drags 200 feet of hose to water her new plantings a few times a month, from a spigot made available by Alliance Susan & Eric Smidt Technology High School next door. She's spent days digging up garbage buried three feet deep in the garden and even muscled an old oven from the planting area to the curb after someone dumped it during the night. When graffiti appears on the retaining wall below the freeway, she takes a photo and uploads it to MyLA311 to get it painted over. She's lobbied for plant donations, potted up excess seedlings for people to carry home and recruited work parties for really big jobs, such as sheet mulching the parkway between the sidewalk and the street to keep weed seeds from blowing into the habitat corridor on the other side of the sidewalk. The project started slowly in the fall of 2022. As she walked Caleb to school, less than a mile from their Lincoln Heights home, Massa noticed this long strip of neglected land between the freeway's retaining wall and the sidewalk. 'It was full of weedy dried grasses, all kind of brown, and lots of trash,' Massa said. 'There were also four planter beds in the parkway [the strip of land between the sidewalk and street] with a few buckwheat and encelias (brittlebush), but every time the L.A. Conservation Corps came to mow the weeds down, they gave a huge horrible buzz cut to the native plants.' When the buckwheats in the parkway got mowed down, she said, they blew seeds into the wider planting strip on the other side of the sidewalk, and Massa said she noticed some buckwheat seedlings coming up, trying to make space for themselves among the weeds. 'I thought, 'Native plants could do really well here,' and I started developing this idea that the strip would be cool as a native plant garden.' That November, she bought some wildflower seeds and sprinkled them along the corridor, to see whether the soil would support their growth. After the heavy rains that winter, she was delighted to find them sprouting in the spring, fighting through the weeds along with buckwheat seedlings. She wrote a letter to people who lived near the untended land, outlining her idea to create a native plant garden to beautify the area and support pollinators. She invited neighbors to help her and included her email address. 'I didn't get any responses,' she said, 'but when I went out to weed, people would come up to me and say, 'We got your letter and this is a cool idea.'' In the spring of 2023, as her wildflowers were sprouting, Massa called the office of Los Angeles Council District 1 and told them about her project. She asked them to stop the Conservation Corps from mowing down the emerging plants and requested help from the Conservation Corps to suppress the weeds along the long strip of parkway between the sidewalk and street. The council agreed, so between May and October of 2023, Massa organized six work sessions to sheet mulch the parkway between the sidewalk and street, laying down cardboard and city-provided mulch with help from members of the L.A. Conservation Corps, Plant Community and Aubudon Society. The goal was to suppress the weeds on the parkway so they didn't add more seeds to the habitat she was trying to create on the other side of the sidewalk. 'The sheet mulching took a looong time,' she said, 'but I wanted the parkway to look nice, with cleaned up planters, so people could park along the street, easily get out of their cars and see the corridor.' But she still needed plants. She went to her former boss at the Natural History Museum's Nature Gardens, native plant guru Carol Bornstein, with her design, and Bornstein helped her choose colorful, fragrant and resilient native shrubs, perennials and annuals that could provide habitat for insects, birds and other wildlife. The response to her plant quest was heartening. The Los Angeles-Santa Monica Mountains Chapter of the California Native Plant Society gave her a $500 grant, and several nonprofit and for-profit nurseries donated plants, including the Audubon Center at Debs Park, Theodore Payne Foundation, Santa Monica Mountains Fund native plant nursery, TreePeople, Descanso Gardens, Plant Material, Hardy Californians, Artemisia Nursery and Growing Works Nursery, which even delivered the large cache of plants from its nursery in Camarillo to Lincoln Heights. By November she had more than 400 plants, and the help of a friend, Lowell Abellon, who wanted to learn more about native plants. Working about six hours a week, they slowly began adding plants to the 380-foot strip, weeding around each addition as they went. By March they had added about half the plants, but they had to stop before it got too warm. 'If you plant them too late, they don't have time to get good roots down into the ground [before it gets too hot],' she said. 'I tried to be on top of the watering, but during the summer about half of them died, so I had to do a lot of replacement planting in the fall.' During the summer, Massa mostly worked alone keeping the newly planted sections of the corridor weeded and watered. Because school was out, she brought her young son to help her each week. Sometimes neighbors with children would join them, she said, giving her son someone to play with, but once or twice, she resorted to offering him $5 for his weeding work. When school resumed in the fall, Massa was ready to start planting again, this time working mostly alone because her friend Abellon had a family emergency that took him out of state. She began in October, planting and weeding the rest of the corridor, including adding 100 plants to replace the ones that died. Now, in the garden's third spring, the plants are filling out. There are large mounds of California buckwheat, tall spires of sweet hummingbird sage and incandescently purple clusters of showy penstemon. Monkey flowers in orange and red, scarlet bugler, purple and white sages and coffeeberry shrubs are coming into their own. And there's so much California buckwheat Massa has had to thin out some of the plants and put them in pots for others to take home. She hopes her work will inspire others to create their own native plant gardens and even tackle a project like hers, beautifying a neglected public space. But she says it's important that people understand such work is more than a passion; it's a long-term commitment. Guerrilla gardeners have great intentions, she said, but it usually takes at least three years for a garden of native plants to get established, and those young plants will need water, whether it's a nearby water spigot or jerricans of water lugged to the site. 'If you just plant and go, you might as well throw the plants in a trash can, because it's not going to work,' Massa said. 'If you don't water them, if you don't weed and pick up trash, people aren't going to respect the space, especially if you don't put in the effort to keep it looking good. For a garden to be successful, you have to commit to putting in the work.' Massa's son goes to another school these days, but she figures she'll keep up her three-mornings-a-week schedule at the garden for at least another year, until she's confident the plants are established enough to thrive on their own. For instance, she wants to make sure the narrow leaf milkweed she planted gets big enough to attract endangered monarch butterflies and provide a place for them to lay their eggs and plenty of food for their caterpillars every year. 'My hope is that this will become a habitat that's self-sustaining,' she said, 'so I can step away and be OK just picking up trash every once in a while.' Will she start another project somewhere else? Massa rolled her eyes. 'My husband says I can't take on another project until this one is done, and this one has been a lot of work,' she said, laughing, 'buuuut I do actually have my eye on another spot.' And then suddenly she's serious, talking about this weedy strip on Main Street, not far from where she's working now. She's a little embarrassed, struggling to explain why she would want to tackle another lonely, thankless project, but defiant too, because, clearly, this is a mission. 'People in this neighborhood don't seem to know about native plants,' she said, 'so maybe I can show them their value, the value of having habitat and space around you that's beautiful. Maybe it could be a way of educating a new audience about the value of appreciating the environment.' Maybe so. Better watch your back, Johnny Appleseed.
