image courtesy of Scott Oshima
On a recent Fall day, I walked in Arlington Garden’s afternoon sunlight. The light flowed from behind oaks and buckwheats. Lizards followed it along paths. A hawk glided silently through a sunbeam. A chatty family walked by the wish trees, yellow in the waning light, curiously reading through the hopes of fellow garden-goers.
The previous day during a Pasadena Unified School District field trip, I had helped grinning students flip over logs to identify soil creatures underneath. Their excitement rubbed off on me, so I had to continue flipping a few logs on my afternoon walk. I hit the jackpot with some pinkish split gill fungi! Arlington’s soil, teeming with life, is the foundation of the aboveground beauty we all enjoy. Arlington is a peaceful refuge for people, as well as a habitat overflowing with animal and insect life–home to rabbits, butterflies, and bees! We believe that creating meaningful connections between humans and wildlife in a shared landscape creates a healthy city. And experiencing nature–like the grinning students do each visit—is how people come to value it.
As we approach our 20 year anniversary, we are asking for your help to sustain this unique community treasure. Our end-of-year goal for 2024 is to raise $40,000. If you appreciate how much the garden has given to you and Pasadena, please support our mission to educate, inspire, and delight. This year, we …
- Expanded our science-based educational programming and partnerships including welcoming over 400 Pasadena Unified 5th graders, thanks to the generous support of the Harold and Colene Brown Family Foundation
- Hosted Monday evening community education programs with Exploring the Mycoverse, founded and led by mycologist Aaron Tupac
- Engaged greater numbers of visitors and partner organizations in the life of the garden. Some highlights include learning opportunities in regenerative gardening for hundreds of community volunteers; collaborations with Altadena Public Library, Pasadena Humane Society, Getty Pacific Standard Time with Active Cultures, and Outward Bound Adventures; a birthday celebration for local author Octavia Butler produced with award-winning designer Schessa Garbutt; and the continuation of our Roots and Regeneration series including a workshop from a Caltech soil scientist
- In the garden, we planted a new hedgerow of fruiting native trees donated by LA Compost and are seeing the fruits of a multi-year rehabilitation of the orchard with weeds suppressed and the health of the trees much improved–the 2024 batch of our signature sweet marmalade is going to be especially good!
We also said farewell to our longtime Executive Director Michelle Matthews, who departed after 7 years at Arlington Garden. Michelle built a thriving community and strong support for the garden during her tenure. We miss her already and are committed to continuing the important work she began.
image courtesy of Scott Oshima
Because of your support, we have been able to achieve an astonishing amount these past 20 years!
In 2025, Arlington Garden will focus on major capital improvements. As healthy gardens do, the garden has grown rapidly over its 20 years and essential features need updating. With your end-of-year gift to Arlington, we can begin a year-long process to replace and repair our aging irrigation system, improve the health of our tree canopy, and rejuvenate the garden rooms along the garden’s southern periphery.
In spring, we will debut our oak table gathering space to commemorate the ancient oak that once stood along Arlington Drive. Thank you to everyone who made this possible by contributing to the success of our “We Are An Oak” campaign earlier this year! Stay tuned in 2025 for additional programs and celebrations in honor of our anniversary, and new opportunities to get involved with the garden.
There is an older view of gardens that holds they should improve on the natural world. They are orderly, simplified, and unrelentingly green. Leaves are raked, dead branches pruned, and cyclical decline staved off with pesticides, fertilizers, or replanting.
I am proud to say that Arlington doesn’t try to improve on nature in this way. We keep fallen leaves on the ground as mulch. We honor a few barren trees and construct brush piles for animal habitat. Nonetheless, Arlington is a managed space. Maintaining a beautiful garden that serves both people and wildlife requires a delicate balance between unrestrained growth and inevitable decay. We wouldn’t be able to maintain this balance without constant expert intervention, which often is greater than that of a highly manicured space.
Although parts of the garden are orderly and green, there are other standards of beauty: light leaking out from behind dormant sagebrush, the fanciful patterns of dry Matilija poppy seed pods, the intricate web of life in a simple pile of oak leaves!
Please consider Arlington Garden for your end-of-year giving to support our $40,000 goal. Help us ensure that we are a place of inspiration, joy, community, and learning for all—for 2025 and the next 20 years, too!
With gratitude,
A.J. Jewell, PhD
Interim Executive Director, Arlington Garden in Pasadena
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