When Henry Huntington bought

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1 1 8 Spring/Summer 2009

2 reviving a working ranch at the huntington by matt stevens When Henry Huntington bought the San Marino Ranch in 1903, he acquired a commercial orchard of fruit trees and acres of California oaks.the property then stretched well beyond the current configuration of the botanical gardens and eventually included more than 600 acres.within a few years, he established one of the earliest commercial avocado orchards in California, wanting his working ranch to be self-sustaining and profitable. Aerial photographs taken over the ensuing decades show the gradual attrition of profitable crops as Huntington expanded residential development in San Marino with acres from his ranch and prepared his remaining estate to become a public garden. With the urging of grounds superintendent William Hertrich, Huntington created the Desert Garden,Japanese Garden, and Rose Garden. Today, only eight acres of orange trees survive, just north of the Botanical Center.Visitors to the gardens rarely see the orchard unless they seek out Henry and Arabella s mausoleum, which overlooks the small grove. Few other signs linger from the once-massive enterprise, save for a small group of mature orange trees in a neighboring front yard in San Marino that likely had formed part of Huntington s massive grid 100 years ago. A new project at The Huntington draws inspiration from the institution s agricultural heritage while also making stronger connections with gardeners throughout Southern California. HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 1 9

3 Called The Ranch, it will include spaces to demonstrate various urban gardening techniques. The educational site, located to the northwest of the Botanical Center, will not be accessible to daily visitors, but a broad range of programs will provide ample opportunity for enthusiasts to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. We ll be demonstrating a myriad of growing approaches, says coordinator Scott Kleinrock, from techniques for urban farmers who are growing for farmers markets and restaurants to those more relevant to home gardeners who grow in backyards or even on balconies. The 15-acre site includes the surviving orange grove, a food forest, and a half-acre zone that will feature demonstration spaces for container gardening and pruning workshops.a group of mature oak trees occupies the lower western ridge, providing a natural canopy for a small outdoor amphitheater. Kleinrock has spent the winter and spring adapting his design for the space.the master s student in landscape architecture at Cal Poly Pomona has worked on a number of community garden projects, including transforming neglected or vacant lots into thriving urban gardens. It s fitting that part of the Ranch used to be a parking lot for crews Scott Kleinrock (above), coordinator of the Ranch project, standing in The Huntington s orange grove. Henry Huntington bought the property, known as San Marino Ranch, in 1903 from J. De Barth Shorb, whose house was illustrated (left) in John Albert Wilson s History of Los Angeles County, California, Huntington began constructing his new residence in 1909 within view of rows of fruit trees (right). Previous page: Los Angeles County To-day, from a Chamber of Commerce promotional brochure, Spring/Summer 2009

4 A new project at The Huntington draws inspiration from the institution s agricultural heritage while also making stronger connections with gardeners throughout Southern California. working on the Chinese garden. Before coming to The Huntington in December, Kleinrock co-designed a half-acre community garden at thetri-city Mental Health Center in Pomona.As in that project, Kleinrock wants participants to be part of the process of creating a working urban garden and teaching space. Classes and workshops will begin later in the year. The Huntington is no stranger to the symbiotic relationship between gardens and educational opportunities. With more than a dozen thematic gardens including the new Chinese garden, Liu FangYuan the institution has been the site of conferences and classes on such topics as succulents, roses, and bonsai. In 2005, the opening of The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science completed a new Botanical Center that also included the Bing Children s Garden and classrooms, offices, teaching labs, and a nursery. And yetthe Huntington s agricultural heritage had retreated into the background. HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 2 1

5 Part of Mr. Huntington s legacy had been left behind, says Jim Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens. In the last decade or so Folsom has taken some gradual steps to acknowledge that history: planting several dozen citrus trees at the top of a hill in the Subtropical Garden; inviting the California Avocado Growers to plant a heritage orchard adjacent to the orange grove; and bringing in nearly 80 trees from the South Central Farm, an urban garden in Los Angeles that was closed down abruptly in 2006 amid a fair amount of controversy. Farmlab, an initiative of the Annenberg Foundation, rescued the trees from the site loquat, banana, peach, and apricot among them and brought them to The Huntington in boxes.at the same time, the Foundation made a $1.1 million grant to supportthe Huntingon s effort to rediscover its agricultural heritage. It was Farmlab s gift of those trees and the Annenberg Foundation s stunning generosity that helped us to pick up that piece of our past that we had long neglected, says Folsom. In accepting the trees, Folsom saw an opportunity to revitalize his vision of a working ranch, but with a particularly contemporary emphasis, tapping into a wider movement that includes projects like Michelle Obama s new victory garden yet still harkening back to Henry Huntington s own kitchen garden circa 1907, complete with edible mushrooms. While Folsom will retain the wide rows of orange groves on the eastern side of the Ranch, he has planted the trees from the South Central Farm on the upper western slope in the far less rigid layout of an evolving edible landscape. While many gardeners still give in to the temptation to plant distinct rows of lettuce, carrots, and radishes, Kleinrock likes to encourage them to think outside their raised beds. Edible landscapes include plenty of nonedible plants that do important work in a garden. Underneath some of the new fruit trees, Kleinrock is planting comfrey, which sports large, fleshy leaves that are rich in nutrients. By trimming and mulching the leaves, a gardener can improve the fertility of the soil. Note to aspiring gardeners: Be sure to use the Bocking 14 cultivar, a sterile variety of comfrey that won t overtake an area like a weed.another ground cover, common yarrow, with its white flowers, can keep the area beneath a tree attractive. The plant attracts aphid-eating ladybugs and wasps and can either take irrigation or withstand drought. Kleinrock has also brought in goumi a fruit-bearing shrub that helps fix the nitrogen in the soil, serving multiple functions in the edible landscape. 2 2 Spring/Summer 2009

6 The 15-acre site includes the surviving orange grove, a food forest, and a half-acre zone that will feature demonstration spaces for container gardening and pruning workshops. In the education and demonstration spaces of the Ranch, the trees will be ripe for pruning literally. A site for backyard orcharding will include young varieties of trees stone fruits, citrus, figs, pomegranates, persimmons, and fruit-bearing mulberries. With aggressive pruning, says Kleinrock, gardeners can control the size of their trees, allowing them to harvest and prune as needed without a ladder. Smaller trees can yield more fresh fruit in the longer run than the larger counterparts, as easy access keeps gardeners from losing fruit that rots at the top of larger trees.the smaller size also means three or four trees can be planted in place of a larger one. With some planning, a gardener can plant multiple varieties of the same type of fruit in one hole, bearing fruit at varying points in a season. Folks with even less free space can take Scott Kleinrock plants comfrey beneath an apple tree. Many other varieties of fruit trees, including peach (opposite), were rescued from the South Central Farm by Farmlab. They now form a food forest adjacent to the Ranch s demonstration gardens. Photos by Lisa Blackburn. workshops on container gardening; self-watering containers with reservoirs that saturate plants as needed rather than flooding them might give new gardeners the confidence they need to grow some of their own fruits and vegetables. When Kleinrock has conducted backyard orcharding workshops at other community gardens, he has relished seeing the confidence grow as people learn to trust their pruning instincts. In the end, he says, it s not always about the food. The produce is almost secondary to the community that can be built around transforming a neglected space. The trees from the South Central Farm no longer in boxes now form part of a developing food forest along the western side of the Ranch. One specific focus of Ranch research is integrating trees into food production. Food forestry is a technique for growing an edible garden in a self-sustaining ecosystem similar to what might be found in a natural forest. Such a model is already well established in tropical and temperate zones but will require some experimentation in Southern California s Mediterranean climate.while impractical for most commercial enterprises, on a smaller scale a thriving food forest could be a forager s paradise. We ll have to try different edible and nonedible plants, says Kleinrock, but that s what makes this a working ranch rather than a display garden. The program s participants will help tend the landscape that takes shape beneath the shade of trees that had once formed part of the urban garden at the South Central Farm. Matt Stevens is editor of Huntington Frontiers. HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 2 3