Welcome to Arlington Garden
Arlington Garden is Pasadena's only dedicated public garden. Pasadena has 25 parks and great natural open spaces in the Arroyo Seco and Eaton Canyon. Pasadena also has several plazas and significant public landscaping. But Pasadena has only one dedicated public garden. Arlington Garden is an example of urban open space, which are uses called for in Pasadena's Green Space, Recreation and Parks Element and Open Space and Conservation Element to the General Plan, such as plazas, paseos, and gardens, that are appropriate throughout the City where sites are too small or expensive for traditional parks.
Arlington Garden is an educational laboratory. Arlington Garden educates the public about rare plants and their communities, to champion their conservation in nature while encouraging their use in California friendly landscaping. USC School of Landscape Design observes the Garden each season to understand its seasonal nature. Local elementary, middle and high schools use Arlington Garden as a place to learn of drought tolerant plants, low water use, the seasonality of plants and trees. And history essay writer from essayservice can help you with your essay. Girl Scout troops have harvested wildflower seeds and replanted them elsewhere, Eagle Scouts built water saving berms and swales, Mayfield Senior School sophomores built a 7 circuit classical labyrinth, which people use each day. Homeowners and landscape designers get ideas from the Garden, and photographers and painters come alone or with a class to record the seasonal beauty of the Garden.
Arlington Garden came about through an exceptional public/private collaboration. Arlington Garden is a collaboration among Betty and Charles McKenney, the City of Pasadena, and Pasadena Water & Power, who combined to create Pasadena's only dedicated public garden, on property leased by the City from Caltrans. This rare collaboration has encouraged others to recognize that urban open spaces are a valuable kind of land use and to embark on similar projects throughout Pasadena.
Arlington Garden is identified in Pasadena's Green Space, Recreation and Parks Element and the Open Space and Conservation Element of the General Plan as an example of urban open space. With the increasing scarcity and cost of land, Pasadena's General Plan has recognized that creative kinds of land use can provide open space akin to park space for people to gather and obtain serenity in an urban setting. The online essay writing service specializes in writing articles in the field of gardening and not only. You can contact and get advice on your work.
Arlington Garden has introduced the most advanced system of signage and information delivery by using mobile technology. The system, using a specially designed Arlington Garden Guide app, identifies plants and their characteristics, various areas of the Garden, using a scanner, a camera and an "audio tour." The system is being copied and introduced in several gardens and park sites in Southern California.
About the Garden
This 3 acre lot is owned by Caltrans and is leased to the City of Pasadena. The site was to have been a staging area for the construction of the 710 Freeway but had been vacant since 1961. Council member Steve Madison from District 6 initiated the project, requesting Betty and Charles "Kicker" McKenney to head up a steering committee to determine the best use of the site. Betty suggested a garden since the neighbors were interested in a passive development.
This garden is inspired by Jan Smithen's book Sun Drenched Gardens: The Mediterranean Style and is designed by Mayita Dinos. It has been developed by a collaboration among Arlington Garden in Pasadena, a nonprofit corporation, the City of Pasadena, through its Public Works Department, and the Pasadena Water and Power Department, with help from the Mediterranean Garden Society and Pasadena Beautiful Foundation. Support has come from the Metropolitan Water District, garden clubs, local business, nurseries, neighbors, and friends.
Our basic aim is to develop a water-wise garden that is in harmony with our mediterranean climate. The garden's colors and cover attract and show butterflies and birds to this formerly barren lot and show the community how beautiful, practical, water-wise and satisfying a well planned and maintained climate-appropriate garden can be. There are many things to consider when creating a garden. To do this, study natural history at universities. By the way, if you have problems with essay writing, you can use paper writing service. But everyone who teaches this topic should delve into the study and understand what can and cannot be done.
The Garden has demonstrated to private property owners, commercial developers, and those who drive past the site each day the beauty and practicality of drought tolerant gardens. The City has used our experience to plan and develop small gardens and to landscape public places throughout Pasadena and provided guidance to developers and property owners.
Local public and private school students learn horticulture. College and universities use the garden as a laboratory and classroom to train their landscape architecture and horticulture students. Residents have the opportunity to plant and help maintain the garden according to our plan.
Best of all, Arlington Garden in Pasadena allows visitors and passersby to enjoy the beauty and serenity of a garden in our urban setting.
Labyrinth
A Classical 7 Circuit Labyrinth built with the help of the Sophomores at Mayfield Senior School on October 8th, 2010.
This Classical 7 Circuit Labyrinth pattern is more than 5,000 years old and is the oldest and most prevalent of labyrinth designs. Enter through the mouth and then walk on the paths, or circuits. The walls keep you on the path. The goal is in the center of the labyrinth. When you reach it, you have gone half the distance – you now need to turn around and walk back out. It takes roughly 5 minutes walking at a slow pace to navigate this labyrinth.
Keep in mind that a labyrinth is NOT a maze. Be assured that there is no wrong way to walk the path; you cannot get lost—there is only one way in, and one way out—there are no tricks to it and no dead ends. A labyrinth is merely a circuitous route to the center of the labyrinth (which is sometimes seen as the center of your inner thoughts, or of the world, or of the universe) and back, and is NOT difficult to navigate.
Walking the labyrinth is more about the journey than the destination (we know we are going to get to the center.) Walking a labyrinth helps achieve a contemplative state, as you enter with your troubles or issues, achieve the center where you can let them go, and leave refreshed. A labyrinth is a single path tool for personal, psychological and spiritual transformation. Labyrinths are thought to enhance right brain activity. Labyrinths can be helpful to children, because while walking along the back-and-forth route, children lose track of the outside world, and thus become quiet of mind.
History of the Property
On this site, at 275 Arlington Drive, once stood one of the most elegant homes on South Orange Grove Boulevard, Pasadena's "Millionaires' Row." In April of 1902, John Durand purchased 10 acres-half a block of property known as "Arlington Heights." Originally laid out in 1885, Arlington Drive extended 1,012 feet from South Orange Grove to Pasadena Avenue. After the existing Victorian home was removed, a team of skilled workmen spent more than three years executing architect F.L. Roehrig's reconstruction of a chateau in France admired by Mr. Durand. Almost every piece of wood in the home was hand carved, and the exquisitely finished interiors of oak, walnut and mahogany were complemented with the "dull glitter of gold" - a gold alloy was freely used on doorknobs, handles of drawers and hinges on the first floor.
With 17,000 square feet of floor space - fifty rooms in three stories - the home was said to be the largest in Southern California, if not the entire southwest, presenting a "baronial" appearance. Red Arizona sandstone, brought in from Flagstaff, was an exterior feature of the French Norman Architecture. A setback of more than 600 feet from South Orange Grove allowed landscape architects to create a "tropical paradise" in front of the mansion, with "palms, cacti and century plants besides hundreds of varieties of flowering bushes, including roses and chrysanthemums." A hedge of Cherokee roses extended along Arlington Drive, toward the Busch home on the opposite side of Orange Grove. A small orange grove was set out in the rear of the home, along Pasadena Avenue.
The property remained with the family until John M. Durand III died in 1960. The furnishings and art objects were then sold at public auction in 1961, and the home was razed. Today, a century after the Durand home was completed in 1905, gardens are again being planted on the remaining three acres of the original site. Portions of the red sandstone have been uncovered - reminders of a time when Pasadena's "Millionaires' Row" was known throughout the nation, and the Durand home was pointed out to visitors as one of the finest in the city.
The First Seven Years
Arboretum, the Washington DC headquartered American Public Garden Association, and Pacific Horticulture. The City has thrice recognized Arlington Garden, and the West Pasadena Residents' Association donated a solar powered fountain and recognized Betty and Kicker with their inaugural Community Service Award.
The Garden has had great support from the neighbors and community. The McKenneys have received benches and a birdbath from friends and neighbors, furniture from local stores and from Ken Colburn, who helped build the fence around the garden and built the herb beds and comfortable Adirondack chairs. A donated bench, set under a trellis supporting a Don Juan Rose, faces Mr. Baldy, which is spectacularly visible on clear days. Marco Barrantes and La Loma Development have created functional and artistic urbanite walls and amphitheater, and Rob Miller has donated a sculptured cap that will soon be covered with shade giving vines and is graced by a 36" wide stained glass window the color and shape of a pomegranate donated by Tico Tech of Altadena.
Sequoyah School, Pasadena High School Interact Club, Mayfield Senior School, and Westridge School have performed community service at Arlington Garden. Three Eagle Scout projects have retained water on site with berms and a swale in the Arlington Drive parkway strip, and South Pasadena Girls Scouts picked 200 lbs of oranges from which we made 1300 jars of Arlington Garden Sweet Orange Marmalade. Pasadena Girl Scouts harvested wildflower seeds, which we gave to friends and donors and sowed them in the Garden's meadow. In 2010 Mayfield Senior School sophomores helped build a classical seven circuit labyrinth, which has become a special place for people to find peace and quiet in our urban community. Westridge uses the garden as part of its regular curriculum and its summer program for students from the Pasadena Unified School District.
Arlington Garden has retained memories from the days of Pasadena's Millionaires Row. It is on the site of the fabled Durand House, a 17,000 square foot, 50-room mansion built in 1904 and which was the largest home in Southern California at the time. The McKenneys have planted 48 Washington Navel oranges and a hedge of Cherokee Roses along the perimeter, reminiscent of what graced the ten acre Durand Estate through most of the 20th Century. In digging to create the garden's original irrigation system, the McKenneys unearthed a multitude of tiles, fixtures, and large Arizona sandstone bricks that provided much of the facing of the Durand House. The sandstone has been incorporated into the Garden's amphitheater.
Thousands drive by Arlington Garden each day on busy Pasadena Avenue and see a pleasant landscape. And those who stop, take a brief "timeout," and walk into the Garden see much more. But those who stay a little longer and sit a while, discover "the surprises around every corner," smell the flowers, and see the butterflies and bees and listen to the birds, can truly appreciate what Arlington Garden provides for them and our city.
As we move toward 2011, the McKenneys have high hopes for completing development of the Garden according to the plan created by designer Mayita Dinos. A California plaza near the orange grove and pepper trees will include a quadrant with a water element and an arbor big enough to sit under and walk through, perhaps supporting a green roof and some sitting walls made of hay or straw/adobe construction around the Craftsman Commons.
Arlington Garden in Pasadena
Mission Statement
Our mission is to develop, operate, and care for Arlington Garden to illustrate the beauty and efficiency of such a waterwise garden living in harmony with our Mediterranean climate; to present Arlington Garden as a public botanic garden which promotes the art, enjoyment, and knowledge of horticulture; and to provide a place for serenity and quiet enjoyment in our urban setting.
Awards and Recognition
Back in 1962, one of the largest homes on the west coast was razed; the lot graded out and left to accumulate weeds for four decades. In the interim, the homesite was acquired by CalTrans for a section of freeway never built. Left in limbo for forty plus years, Pasadena City Council member Steve Madison asked for "development ideas" from the public, early in the last decade.
New Arlington Drive residents in 2002, Betty and Charles Mc Kenney, fondly known as Kicker, volunteered that year to be part of the committee to decide the future of the land. "We knew what we DIDN'T want right away," said Betty. "No new buildings. The garden idea evolved."
And so did the Mc Kenneys' involvement. "It takes $40-50,000 every year, just to maintain, prune and irrigate the site. We solicit donations and support from organizations and individuals… We even sell marmalade made at E. Waldo Ward from our orange orchard here. Every little bit helps. Our next batch will be ready sometime in March. Check our website for details."
Today, Arlington Garden, located at Pasadena Avenue and Arlington Drive, is a tranquil 3 acre jewel with over 800 Mediterranean and drought tolerant plants. The gently sloping plot, a demonstration site for low water usage landscape, sits amidst the urban environment of Huntington Hospital, the bustling retail of Old Pasadena and the hundreds of "Millionaires' Row" condos along Orange Grove and its tributary streets. The city now holds a lease on the garden land from the state until 2018."
Mayita Dinos, deemed Best Xeriscaper (drought tolerant landscaping) in Los Angeles Magazine's Best of LA, designed the master plan of Arlington Garden into 25 outdoor "rooms", such as the Butterfly Garden, Citrus Grove, the Arroyo, the Succulent Garden, the Amphitheater, the Mediterranean allee of olives and cypress, the Vernal Pool, the bocce ball court, the Oak Grove with complementary underplantings of dry summer tolerant narcissus, gooseberries, golden currant, wildflowers, huechera (coral bells), hummingbird sage and ceanothus.
"AG is being built 'room by room' as funding becomes available," Dinos commented, "The Arlington Garden has been championed by the City of Pasadena from the beginning. In particular, I think we can count Mayor Bill Bogaard and Councilman Steve Madison among the many fans of the AG; if it weren't for their stalwart support, it wouldn't be here. They really 'get' what this garden means to the community of people, birds, insects, and native plants of Pasadena!"
The garden is maintained and supported by the non-profit group Arlington Garden in Pasadena with generous help from local residents, Pasadena Beautiful Foundation, the Parks and Natural Resources Division of the Pasadena Public Works Department and Pasadena Water and Power.
Referred to in April 2010 general plan meetings as "rather unlovely" in its former unkempt and weedy state, the Arlington Garden is now a place of tranquility and refuge from the city, where, as a student visitor saw it," I like the garden because I can hear my thoughts here.