California native plant garden on 'Larry's Median' is evolving after his death
Sandy Banks
The plan for an all-native habitat in Elysian Heights is now a bit more inclusive.
The garden in the Elysian Heights median is easy to miss. These days, it is little more than a hillside of hard-packed dirt dotted with struggling plants -- spindly hollyhocks, sprawling cactus clumps, a few mismatched trees and scattered tufts of sage and poppies.
But you can't pass along this narrow stretch of Lemoyne Street without noting the poster-size sign in the window of a home across the street, declaring the garden "Larry's Median."
For years, Larry Pickens led a neighborhood campaign to turn the rocky, dusty patch that separates traffic on his street into a mini-habitat for California's native plants.
Pickens died suddenly last fall, a year after the plants went into the ground -- leaving his dream in the hands of his neighbors.
The poster, with his smiling photo, offers this guidance: "Be patient. Keep the median clean. Let the plants grow."
I read it and thought the advice could apply not just to gardens, but to life.
I met Pickens years ago, when his partner Jeff Horton was a Los Angeles school board member. You couldn't know Jeff and not know Larry. They'd been together for almost 25 years and raised two teenage sons.
I heard about the garden from a friend at work, who had encountered it on a neighborhood walk.
Even with directions, it was hard to find. I got lost more than once navigating the narrow, winding streets that climb into the hills of Elysian Heights above Dodger Stadium from the gritty flatlands of Echo Park. How do people live here, I wondered? No frontyards, no place to park, crowded streets with no sidewalks.
I got my answer when I crested Lemoyne and the songs of birds drowned out every other noise. The cool breeze, the tall trees, a view that locals told me extends from the Rose Bowl to Catalina when the air is clear . . . How could I not know about this?
But I was disappointed when I realized a bare, weedy patch was the celebrated plot. In a neighborhood of artists -- where plastic pink flamingos decorate a frontyard tree and a garish orange duplex stands across the street -- I expected something with a bit more personality.
I would have appreciated it more if I'd seen it in March, bursting with the golden orange blooms of California poppies. Or a few years earlier, when it was a just a dusty repository for trash.
