Sneak peek: New gardens at Natural History Museum's North Campus

Los Angeles is the “birdiest” county in the United States, said Karen Wise, vice president of education and exhibits for the Natural History Museum. One hundred sixty-eight types of birds have been documented in Exposition Park downtown alone, but the museum is hoping to attract even more with its new North Campus gardens. The 3.5 acres are designed to entice critters of all types, so the massive museum that, for 99 years, has documented the history of life on Earth transforms itself into a hands-on outdoor lab.

“We decided the best thing for our visitors was to build a landscape that could serve as a central field site and natural experience in the heart of the city that really allows us and all of L.A. to gather and document the real wildlife that’s living in L.A. today,” said Wise, whose museum houses more than 35 million natural and cultural objects indoors.

Everything in the new garden is designed to foster life. Winding through the space is the Living Wall, right, constructed from spears of stone that were installed vertically and planted with succulents to entice lizards. The 1913 Garden, so named for the year the museum opened, is a mosaic of colored flowers that is sure to delight hummingbirds.

Passion vines and Burmese honeysuckle grow in 12-foot-tall chain link cages that form the garden’s Urban Edge. The plants were selected because they are most effective at attracting butterflies. And a pond at the garden’s center will be populated with Western pond and red-eared slider turtles.

Palm Springs Art Museum plans architecture and design annex

The Palm Springs Art Museum plans to create an architecture and design exhibition and study space by restoring a Midcentury Modern building by E. Stewart Williams. The 1960 glass-walled building in downtown Palm Springs, a short walk from the museum, was built in the International style to house the Santa Fe Federal Savings and Loan. In its new incarnation,the building will be called the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Edwards Harris Center for Architecture and Design.

“It’s incredibly unique," museum spokesman Bob Bogard said. "All of the walls are glass. It’s a really elegant building.”

Los Angeles architect Leo Marmol, whose Marmol + Radziner Architects will oversee the restoration of the building, called Williams "an incredibly powerful Modernist who yet had grace and sensitivity" in his designs. The museum, Marmol said this week, will be one of the few stand-alone architecture and design spaces in the country; in a time of economic uncertainty, the project is a message of hope, showing that the museum is "committed to our future by preserving our past."