The Dry Garden: At lawn-loving UCLA, a small yet seismic shift in the landscape

Nobody ever said that doing the right thing was easy. Students in UCLA Extension’s landscape architecture and horticulture program now learn this before leaving with a certificate. “All of our advanced design classes used to be make-believe,” said Stephanie Landregan, appointed program director two years ago. “Now every one of our advanced classes is involved with the community. Every one of our students has real projects and reality checks. The big ideas get tested.”

Just such a test happened in November, when an undergraduate from UCLA’s environmental science department contacted Landregan wanting to know how his class might introduce a water-efficient landscape somewhere on the 400-plus-acre campus. Landregan partnered his class with a group of her graduate extension students, and the team soon learned that although UCLA might teach environmental ideals, facilities managers practice something else entirely. Every inch of waterlogged sod, every rose bed, was sacrosanct, she said.

Before UCLA boosters bristle, I'll add that hypocrisy is hardly unique to Bruin culture. It is ingrained in institutions across Los Angeles, be it City Hall, the Department of Water and Power, the Los Angeles Unified School District or the county and city parks departments. All preach water and energy conservation, but all tend their own premises like climate-change deniers.

Progress toward more sustainable practices is excruciatingly slow. After seven months and five plans, Landregan's students have indeed installed a dry garden in the tangle of green that is the UCLA campus. In the closing weeks of May, a tiny strip of the campus border at the intersection of Wynton and Hilgard avenues was newly planted with water-efficient copper pinwheels, fox tail agave and blue fescue.

The dimensions of the new garden, about 15 by 40 feet, are small by domestic standards, never mind institutional ones. As if aware that the new planting might be seen as trivial, even depressing, Landregan arrived to a site meeting carrying a roll of student drawings that recounted a series of design defeats. An early, slightly larger iteration of the plan that would have taken out a ficus mangled by campus tree crews was nixed. Accent boulders called for by the students didn’t make it off the drawing board. Neither did the flax, sage or kangaroo paws. The students not only fought for this patch, she said, “they did it for free, all on their own time.”

Spend time with this pixie-like 60-year-old and one can understand why her students busted a gut for free. Landregan is a hope monger. Hear her story and anything seems possible. Landregan trained in the arts and only took up landscaping in midlife by taking the UCLA program herself, which she completed over four years while working a full-time job.

After graduating from the UCLA program in her 40s, she served as chief landscape architect for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, during which time she took a lead role in creation of the Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park.

Enter this 8-acre park and you could be forgiven for thinking that you were in Pasadena. Grassy reception areas surrounding a Craftsman-style learning center give way to a cactus garden and wetlands. An amphitheater's seats are covered by mosaics made by local children. Recent budget cutbacks showed in the dormant state of a vegetable garden, but the total impression was of a park that is thriving. Families lolled over picnics. Fathers bounced babies. Little girls chased through a cactus garden whose plants were donated by the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino.

The spaces around the entry were but a portal. Soon the park ended and wild lands began, intersected by paths where older children reconnoitered and lovers canoodled. The sense of mystery was enhanced because of the hilly terrain. (The parks bluffs were built out of soil trucked in from Pacific Coast Highway mudslides.)

After emerging from the oaks and sage, Landregan asked two children careering around the grassy areas on bikes what they liked best about the park. “We like nature,” said one.

“Cool,” said Landregan.

After working on the Hawkins park, Landregan’s other projects with the conservancy included one of the state’s first large-scale uses of porous concrete in a water-trapping project for the gateway to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Since taking over the directorship of UCLA’s landscape program, she also has consulted with the Los Angeles Department of Public Works on a low-impact development ordinance, which may become law this year.

Landregan drove off in her dirty white Prius after leading the Hawkins park tour, and it was impossible not to rethink the import of the new water-wise patch done by her students. It may be but a postage stamp on the outsize envelope of UCLA, but suddenly this student project didn’t look puny. It didn’t look puny at all.

-- Emily Green

Green's column on sustainable gardening appears here every Friday.

CORRECTED: An earlier version of this post implied that Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park is in Compton. The park is in a South Los Angeles neighborhood that The Times classifies as the Central-Alameda, about five miles north of Compton.

Photo credit: Emily Green

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Comments

[Charlie H]

These tiny gardens sound like a step in the right direction, but I have to ask: why no native plants? Why no edible plants?

[Maggie L]

I am a current student in the Landscape Architecture program at UCLA Extension. I did not work on the project mentioned in this article (my advanced design classes are still ahead of me - but only if I can complete my Design 6 final project due next week!). I just want to express my admiration for Stephanie and all the work that she does for us in the program and also for the community at large. She is a huge advocate for the students and the profession. She is one of the most dedicated people I've known and she is creating great opportunities for our collaboration with other organizations. I'm grateful to be in program at this time, under her direction.

[Denis Cagna]

The Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park is not "in Compton". It's about 7 - 8 miles north in Los Angeles off Slauson.

C'mon LA Times, where are your fact checkers??

[Emily Green]

Denis, you are absolutely right. The park is at 5790 Compton Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90011, at the intersection of Compton and Slauson. My apologies. The mistake was mine.

[Rich Ohara]

Times: I’m the guy who maintains the "water logged sod, the bed of roses and the mangled ficus tree” at UCLA. Please go to UCLA Facilities Management and click on Landscape and Grounds to see our Grounds services for the campus.
Getting back to Ms. Landregan's self serving article, she needs to get her facts correct- what about the two UCLA undergrad students: Ross Bernet and Sunny Tsou who proposed the Sustainable Landscape, received approval from the ingrained institution, and got a group of neophyte students, including themselves to install this ambitious Landscape project right before spring finals.
In view of the fact that it dealt with landscape and irrigation on campus, it became my project to administer by default. In addition, Art Tieck, (a register Landscape Architect) from UCLA Housing became involved given that the new landscape project overlapped on to UCLA Guest House existing landscape. Art and I worked with Ross and Sunny through Dr. J.Cully Nordby, director of Institute of the Environment. To make a “long story short,” Ms. Landregan needs to give credit where credit is due: Ross, Sunny and Dr. Nordby.

Rich Ohara, MS, ASLA, PCA, IA
Senior Superintendent, Grounds
Design, Landscape and Project Management
UCLA Facilities Management
731 Charles Young Drive South
Los Angeles, CA. 90024
310 825-1827

[Cully Nordby]

We appreciate your column highlighting a water-efficient landscape project at UCLA. To provide a complete picture, we wish to emphasize a few points:

-- UCLA is committed to creating a sustainable campus and has saved over 70 million gallons of water annually since 2000 through water conservation and recycling. UCLA has installed more efficient plumbing fixtures (e.g., ultra low-flow urinals) and captures condensate from laboratory equipment and air conditioning systems, and has installed drip and smart irrigation systems on many areas of campus.

-- The UCLA Sustainability Committee has a Landscape and Natural Areas Taskforce (includes staff, faculty and student members) that is working to better incorporate sustainable landscaping practices on campus, including more drought-tolerant features.

-- Undergraduate students involved in the UCLA Institute of the Environment's Education for Sustainable Living Program played a leadership role in the project. These students conceived of and executed this project with UCLA Extension landscape architecture students.

-- UCLA staff from Facilities Management, Housing, and Capital Programs all contributed many hours to this project and were enthusiastic from the beginning.

While progress requires patience, this collaborative partnership between students, faculty and staff represents the creative teamwork necessary to enhance sustainability not only on campus but in our communities as well.

For more information, please visit www.sustain.ucla.edu and www.environment.ucla.edu

Dr. Cully Nordby
Academic Director, UCLA Institute of the Environment
Chair, UCLA Sustainability Committee