Los Liones Corners Spruced Up

The entrance to Los Liones Drive, north of Sunset Boulevard, had become an eyesore, cluttered with dead vegetation and an uneven tarp fence that surrounded Fire Station 23. A block farther into the canyon, at the intersection of Tramonto, the northwest corner was overgrown with vegetation, and was a lair for the homeless. That changed last week when about a dozen volunteers spent nearly every day digging and clearing out old vegetation, then planting new shrubs and trees at the two sites. Palisades Garden Club member Barbara Marinacci sparked the project by writing two grant proposals to the Junior Women’s Club. She asked for money to install a new vinyl fence cover at Fire Station 23 and for the Garden Club to buy plants to place around the fence and entrance. Additionally, the galvanized steel irrigation system on the perimeter of the station was rusted and ineffective, so Mario Hernandez (working pro bono) installed a new one. Marinacci contacted former Castellammare Mesa Homeowners Association president Kelly Comras, a landscape architect, who created a design using local native shrubs and plants, including sycamore and oak trees and toyon, arbutus, ribes, myrica and prunus shrubs.   ’I linked the two areas together,’ Comras said, ‘and I added blue-eyed grass and native iris as accent plants at the fire station. I also planted two manzanita, which grow 7 to 8 feet high and spread about 12 feet. I’ll shape them like a bonsai, and it will filter out the fence [at the corner of Sunset and Los Liones]. In five to seven years, when people drive by, they’ll have a view of beautiful lacy green.’ Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano supplied plants at wholesale cost. At Tramonto, another transformation took place as volunteers planted 15 trees. ‘This was a trash dump and there was a homeless camp here,’ said Randy Young, who noted that before the clearance, the foliage on the northwest corner had extended to the road. ‘This was park land and the rangers were worried about safety issues.’ The trees will be hand-irrigated by members of the Temescal Canyon Association, just as the volunteers have done the past decade for other new trees in Los Liones Gateway Park. ‘This has been a project!’ said 60-year Palisades resident Lew Whitaker. ‘I thought it would be a few minutes of digging and then we’d plant, but the ground is hard clay, it’s like cement.’ He praised Station 23 firefighters who helped out by chopping and digging. ‘They’ve got strong backs,’ Whitaker said, before rejoining other TCA members Maria Bainbridge, Kim Clary, Shirley Haggstrom, Doug McCormick, Carol Leacock and Norma Spak to finish planting. Comras praised Station 23 firefighter Mike Deacon, who served as a liaison between the volunteers and the fire station, as well as expressing thanks to the Junior Women, the Getty Villa, Ocean Woods Terrace and Sunset Mesa Homeowners Association (SMHA) plus 50 individuals for their donations to complete the project.