Six distinctively designed outdoor spaces will be on view when the Pacific Palisades Garden Club sponsors its annual tour from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 10, rain or shine. The event also features a plant market, offering a variety of interesting and unusual plants for sale, from noon to 4 p.m. at the Palisades Branch Library, 861 Alma Real Dr. Tickets, $15 for members and $20 for the public, may be purchased in advance at The Outdoor Room, 17311 Sunset Blvd., or on the day of the tour at any of the gardens. 649 San Lorenzo: The Surprise Garden The surprise? Just when the couple’s two children were off to junior high and the house and garden were being adjusted to more grown-up areas, twins were on the way! The owners had to shift gears and make the garden child-oriented, incorporating enclosed grassy areas, a sandbox and shady places to play. Yet this garden works well for every age. By using straight lines and simple plant groupings, the garden gains understated power and a sense of peacefulness. In the front of the house, geometry dictates with pavers, borders, and the lawn set at right angles and accented by an apple fence and gravel path. Cercis canadensis ‘Alba,’ punctuate and give height to parallel borders. The second part, paved with gravel, is an extension of the inviting veranda. Here are square beds of herbs, vegetables and citrus. Lavender borders lead to the sunset garden, named for its magnificent views. The true surprise may well be how a garden designed for young children can be so gratifying for grown-ups. 15935 Alcima: Modelo Shales Nature, in the guise of the geological feature of slippery strata of Modelo shales, dictated the planting scheme here. Plants requiring minimum water were necessary to stabilize the collapsing slope and, consequently, succulents abound. Aloes line the entrance road, and a variety of beautifully arranged succulents accent the hillside paths. A sweep of lawn expands the view outward to a line of ocean. The long, deep border is skillfully constructed using architectural and patterning elements of all types of succulent plants: small and tree size, usual and rare, new starts and specimens of great maturity. Note the parallel verticals of Euphorbia ingens, the wonderfully named dragon tree (Dracaena draco) with its pinched-jointed limbs, and the massive trunk of a huge, shaggy-haired nolina, sheltering a bedding of crassula, sedum, echeveria, and graptopetalum. The balcony of the 1940s cedar house shades hoya. An ancient wisteria skeleton supports ferny vines of Bowiea volubilis which rise from croquet ball-like bulbs collected in pots. Behind the house, tillandsia enliven posts and seven enormous staghorn ferns accent the hillside. The legacy of the former Boyd Walker garden is being lovingly upheld and enhanced by the present owner. 850 Muskingum Avenue: In the Garden of the Buddha The sound of water splashing down its rocky course sings a welcoming note to the world of nature. Birds, bees and butterflies find food and water here. Human visitors find mossy, lichened rocks and delight in the pond and meadow of tall, unmown red fescue. Red-leafed cercis and dodonaea are echoed in the maple grove where Japanese maples show off their beautiful color and form. Past the gate, a black urn centers a courtyard. Around the corner, the garden provides pleasures for family and guests. Here is the outdoor kitchen, ready for pizza and paella, a greenhouse for the orchid collector, pool, fire pit and grassy lawn for ball and badminton. The handsome trellis above the outdoor dining room is the home of the white climbing rose Mme. Alfred Carriere. Terraces enclose perennials, including many roses and flowers for cutting. Among its pleasures, the garden provides fruits: apples, citrus, mulberries and stone fruits. The carefully selected rocks and the collection of garden accessories’urns, pots, troughs and benches’unite the front and back garden themes, while an enormous Buddha blesses all. 655 Brooktree: The Oak Woodland Eight years ago, when the owner-gardener first saw the soaring, curving oak branches on this property, she knew she wanted to live here. To protect the oak roots, instead of digging down to build ponds and stream, she built up to place the shallow-water features on the former surface above the roots. White abutilon, white heliotrope and many kinds of ferns now cover this forest floor. A red bench provides repose and a view through a pond’s purple water iris to the garden beyond. The patio, trellised with wisteria vines, has been planned to provide solitude and comfort. A side path, luxuriant with various ferns, leads to a rose garden that surrounds a pool. Leptospermum and purple flowering buddleja intersperse the many roses. One corner of the back garden is anchored by ferny branches of Acacia cognota, the other side by a rustic twig arch clothed with a purple passion vine and a white climbing Iceberg rose. The owner, a mixed media artist, has placed her own work throughout the garden. 522 Arbramar Avenue: A California Family Garden This Craftsman garden has a California feel with its emphasis on bright sunny colors and the use of local rocks. A native sycamore shades a front border of abutilon, heliotrope, daylilies and fiber optic plant, Scirpus cernuus. Bleeding heart, an experiment in this mild winter zone, is a favorite of the children. While most of the owner’s bromeliad collection is inside, two beauties can be found on the front porch. A side garden with a tiled wall fountain features green striped clumping bamboo ‘Alphonse Karr.’ Grape and hoya vines climb up an unusual fencing called Greenscreen. The back garden is planned for the family with large play areas. Because the children love to pick berries, strawberries are nestled in many borders, and blackberry and raspberry vines are trained on fences. From the upper terrace a rocky stream flows down to a gravel-bottomed pond, around which are various grass-like carex. In an enormous Chinese elm hangs a staghorn fern which the owner has moved from garden to garden for 20 years. 15945 Miami Way: A Gift from the 30s This 1932 brick house and its garden have gathered charm and interest throughout the years. The first house in this area, it originally had a clear view across bean fields to the ocean. A brick walk leads past a strawberry guava tree to the gate where yellow roses, ‘The Mermaid’ and ‘Lady Banks,’ climb. A fountain courtyard is shaded by a long-ago-planted pink flowering brachyciton, or bottle tree, so-called because of the swollen shape of its trunk. An ancient Bird of Paradise grows to the second story roof line. To the east an arch, half destroyed, reaches out with its lantern, lending the aura of an ancient ruin. Behind the arch is the thorny chartreuse trunk of chorisia, the silk floss tree. Lining the flagstone drive is a series of bicolor roses: ‘Betty Boop,’ ‘Peppermint Twist,’ and the climber ‘Berries and Cream.’ A red trumpet vine, its twisted trunks massed at the corner of the garage, has been known to send its red flowers down through branches over the patio table. The current owners enjoy tending to their inherited plants while preserving the charm of this historic house and its garden.

Bob Benton, who has been in business on Swarthmore for 23 years, was hard at work this week, ‘still crunching the numbers,’ he said. Owner of a sporting goods store at the corner of Swarthmore and Monument, and a former Chamber of Commerce president, Benton is still awaiting a resolution of his lease negotiations, which have been going on since November. Benton told the Palisadian-Post Tuesday that, initially, the landlord offered him a five-year lease, which would see his rent jump from $2.50 to $4.50 a square foot per month. After Palisades Partners rejected his counterproposal in early March, he told the Post: ‘If we can’t resolve this, somehow, and I can’t find another location in the Palisades, I guess I will go out of business. I’m still weighing all my options. We’re working the numbers as best we can.’ Yesterday, a trustee for Palisades Partners told the Post that they are still willing to work with Benton to reach an agreement. Benton was the first Swarthmore merchant to be offered a new lease by trustees Bob Stelzl, John Wilson and John Watkins, the three representatives from Palisades Partners, a multi-family trust that owns 18 of the 22 retail and commercial properties on the 1000 block of Swarthmore. On Monday, March 14, the three men met with Katie O’Laughlin of Village Books, kids’ clothier Ivy Greene, and members of the McCrory-Irwin family, owners of Michelle International and Palisades Beauty Supply, to present new five-year leases which include rent increases. Meetings with the remaining Swarthmore merchants, some of which were scheduled for this week, were unexpectedly canceled. Other businesses that will be affected by the proposed rent increases include Mort’s Deli, Palisades Playthings, The Prince’s Table, Roy Robbins, Baskin-Robbins, Wells Fargo and three restaurants’Dante’s, Terri’s and a la Tarte. Bert Yellen, who has owned a la Tarte with his wife Bonnie for eight years, feels the landlord ‘has the right to increase the rent to whatever they want,’ but ‘how much more do they think I can charge for my croissants? Going from $2.25 to $2.35 is already a lot, but it will not pay for the increases I hear they are proposing. While we are prepared to spend $50,000 of our own money to improve our restaurant’we want to put in a second bathroom and get a beer and wine license’we are not prepared to spend it without a lease.’ Terri Festa, who owns a second Terri’s restaurant in Agoura Hills, where she recently moved, said she is ‘frightened’ and ‘saddened’ by what is going on on Swarthmore. ‘I’ve been in business here for 10 years. The landlord called me about six weeks ago and asked if I intended to stay. I told him yes. While every couple of months I have people interested in buying my business, I have no intention of selling. I just hope all of this can be resolved amicably.’ Tonight at 7 p.m. in the branch library on Alma Real, the Palisades Community Council will discuss whether the board should schedule a special April meeting to consider ‘the impending crisis regarding Swarthmore merchants,’ according to Council Chairman Norman Kulla. (Editor’s note: Owners of the new Boca Woman store at 1022 Swarthmore, which opened last November in the former Video 2010 space, have a five-year lease with Palisades Partners. The unaffected businesses on Swarthmore include Whispers, Solis Salon, Fernworks and Paliskate.)

Theatre Palisades regularly draws from a wide pool of talented actors living throughout Southern California, but with the new production of ‘Moon Over Buffalo,’ casting came about closer to home. Two Palisadians’Martha Hunter and Julia Whitcombe’ star in this comedy directed by Sherman Wayne and produced by Pat Perkins. The play centers on George (Jack Coppock) and Charlotte Hay (Martha Hunter), fading stars of repertory theater in 1950’s Buffalo. The couple have just lost their last chance at stardom’leads in a Frank Capra movie. To make matters worse, their agent is smitten with Charlotte and the company ingenue is pregnant by George. Add to the mix an almost deaf grandmother/costume mistress (Julia Whitcombe’s part) and a forgetful weatherman/fianc’ and the plot thickens. When the agent calls to say Frank Capra will be attending the matinee, George is missing and the company can’t figure out which play they are supposed to be performing, ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ or ‘Private Lives.’ Misunderstandings, misplaced affections and missing persons work together to hilarious effect. This is Martha Hunter’s second appearance on the Theatre Palisades’ stage. Last fall, she was a force in another farce, playing the real inspector in ‘Inspecting Carol,’ also directed by Sherman Wayne. Hunter brings to the role of Charlotte a lifetime of acting experience, beginning with skits and later musicals at Brentwood Presbyterian Church as a child. ‘I remember doing ‘The Boyfriend’ and singing a duet with Dick Van Dyke.’ While living in Malibu for 15 years, Hunter was active in Malibu Summerstage. All the while, she worked regularly in commercials, TV and film, including a supporting role in the movie ‘Something’s Gotta Give.’ Hunter moved to the Palisades eight years ago. Acting is truly all in the family, with both of her daughters studying drama, one as a graduate student in London and the other as a junior at Northwestern University. Hunter laughingly describes her husband, Craig, as involved in a different kind of dramatic art: the law. Hunter is thrilled to have landed parts at Theatre Palisades, and relishes the community flavor the venue offers. ‘It shows there’s support and talent right here in the Palisades,’ says Hunter, referring not only to herself, but also to fellow actor Julia Whitcombe, who plays her mother in the production, and to three Corpus Christi eighth graders who are assisting with costumes and props. Whitcombe’s long affiliation with Theatre Palisades began in the mid-1970s. Over the years, she’s garnered eight ‘Best Actress’ awards with the organization. She cites Eleanor in ‘Lion in Winter’ and Sister Mary in ‘Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You’ as her most memorable roles. ‘Moon Over Buffalo’ represents her 18th appearance on the Theatre Palisades stage. ‘Oh, look, oh, look, there’s an old lady part,’ Whitcombe jokes about her excitement to learn of the grandmother part in ‘Moon Over Buffalo.’ Whitcombe and her husband, John’who divide their time between living in the Palisades and Rifle, Colorado’have longstanding involvement with Theatre Palisades. After retiring as a chemical engineer, John supervised the construction of the theater in the early 1980s and Julia has served the company in various capacities for over two decades. Whitcomb’s other passion is her ongoing work recording textbooks for the blind. ‘You use lots of the same skills as being an actor,’ she comments. ‘Moon Over Buffalo’also stars actors Jack Coppock, Meredith Dinneen, Matt Landig, Holly Sidell, Warren Steinman, and Larry Sutton. The play opens on Friday, April 1 and continues through May 8 at Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd. Performances run Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Ticket prices range from $9 to $15. Contact: 822-0463 or 567-9995.

Author Tanyo Ravicz will return to his hometown to read from and discuss his new book ‘Ring of Fire and Other Stories,’ an Alaskan adventure novella and short stories set in the northernmost state. The 1979 Palisades High School grad will speak about his book on Thursday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore. This is Ravicz’s first published book, although he has been writing fiction for 20 years and has been published in magazines and periodicals. Ravicz’s family bought their home on Castellammare in 1964. For 30 years, they owned the Barrymore house, so called because John Barrymore once lived there. ‘It was a great old place across from the beach,’ Tanyo recalls. After PaliHi, Ravicz studied literature at Harvard University and graduated in 1984. A few years later, he and his wife-to-be Martina settled in Alaska. While living in Alaska, Ravicz was writing and immersing himself in local activities, such as fishing and hiking. He worked as a substitute teacher during the year, and as an emergency firefighter during the summer, and also spent time working in the fishing industry. His writing was informed by the many different characters he met. ‘There’s a different variety of people you get at the extreme end of the empire’less varnished, less smoothed down by education.’ ‘Ring of Fire’ was inspired by an article Ravicz read about a Saudi crown prince who traveled to Alaska to hunt brown bears, just after the Gulf War. ‘It caught my imagination: the collision of the two worlds,’ Ravicz says. In the novella, Prince Tariz, the crown prince of the Islamic monarchy of Rahman, arrives with his entourage to hunt at the wilderness lodge of Hank Waters, a reclusive master hunting guide. The tension builds as the Rahman entourage, accustomed to having their way, violate hunting laws in the Alaskan wilderness, and Waters and crew see how far they will go to accommodate them. The six stories are of modern Alaskan characters from all walks of life, many exploring romantic relationships. Many of the stories had been previously published in Bellowing Ark, a literary journal. Bellowing Ark, a small press in Washington state, also published his book. When Tanyo’s wife, Martina, became tired of the cold, they moved to Palm Springs, where she set up her law practice. The couple and their two children, Miranda, 12, and Kody, 7, continue to spend their summers on 15 acres on Kodiak Island, land which Ravicz had homesteaded. Ravicz cites many literary influences’Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, Mann, Maugham, Bellow, Steinbeck and Jack London. As far as what inspires him, Ravicz says ‘something triggers me, it comes out of something in my soul. Something you witness, hear, smell or recall fills you with a sense of relevance. Everybody has those experiences: writers just crawl away and scribble it down.’ Ravicz says writers explore ‘aspects of human nature that haven’t been explored before.’ He has received praise from authors Thomas Keneally, who compared the book to Styron’s first novel [‘Lie Down In Darkness’], and Judith Grossman, who said he ‘weaves his own way between Faulkner and Hemingway.’ Ravicz met Keneally and Grossman when he was briefly enrolled in the writing program at UC Irvine. Ravicz is currently working on a nonfiction essay as well as a ‘West Coast novel,’ which tells the story of a Mexican Indian migrant worker and his journey from Mexico to Alaska.