Sparkplug winner Barbara Marinacci has been recognized for her volunteer efforts to restore the native plant garden along Temescal Canyon Road, help with the beautification of Fire Station 23 and generally get her hands dirty in service of the community. ’I’ve always had my hands in the dirt, even when I lived in New York City,’ Marinacci says. When she moved to Pacific Palisades from Central California in 2007, she saw the sign for the native plant garden along the east side of Temescal, just below the mural at Bowdoin Street. She thought the site, neglected over the years for lack of manpower and other resources, would be a good community project. The garden, dedicated in 1988, was originally created by Palisades Beautiful in collaboration with the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks as a stunning display of classic California species like golden poppies, purple lavender, red heuchera, yellow oenothera and blue hibiscus. But over time, the site faded, plants died, weeds grew wild and volunteers were scarce. Marinacci sees the potential to return the garden to its old glory. Sycamores, buckeyes and live coast oaks still stand there and huge matilija poppies bloom perennially. But it has been hard work to get the job moving’and completed. She’s still awaiting approval from Recreation and Parks for the new landscape plan. In the meantime, the volunteers she helps coordinate are continuing to clear and prep the area by hand (no power tools are allowed to be used under the department’s rules) one Saturday each month. ’If we could get there every Saturday, it would be in much better shape,’ Marinacci says of the dozen of so helpers who sign up each month. Sometimes the obstacles can be discouraging, as when vandals pull out or hack off existing plants and cart them away, but she says, ‘I still have a lot of positive energy.’ Some of that energy comes from the Red Shirts, hardworking student volunteers from PaliHi, encouraged by Gretchen Miller of the school’s community service program to do the tough and dirty work of pulling weeds, picking up trash, hauling off dead branches and spreading mulch. On at least one Saturday, Marcel Bertrand of the Parks Department hauled away three full loads of debris in his pickup truck. Marinacci also has some professional help. Michael Terry of Rustic Canyon, a landscape architect, is working pro bono to map out the plantings. ‘He’s just amazing,’ Marinacci says. ‘I couldn’t do anything there without him.’ But ‘the native plant garden is just one of my activities,’ says Marinacci, who is the Pacific Palisades Garden Club’s secretary and responsible for its quarterly newsletter. She serves in the same role for Palisades Beautiful and the Sunset Beach Association. The fire station on Sunset (at Los Liones Drive) is now surrounded by native plants and flowering bushes and boasts a new cover on its chain link fence. That work, together with a sister project to clean up the corner of Los Liones and Tramonto Drive, was spearheaded by Palisadian Kelly Comras, a Garden Club member and landscape architect, but Marinacci helped secure some additional grant money from the Pacific Palisades Junior Women’s Club, worked at the site and stops by regularly to make sure that weeds don’t gain a foothold. ’It was a remarkable community effort,’ says Marinacci, who is adamant that Comras deserves the recognition for that work. Marinacci moved here from the Santa Cruz Mountains to be closer to her grandson, who attends Kenter Canyon Elementary. She left behind a huge vegetable garden and an orchard she’d planted with two dozen fruit and nut trees, and no longer has a garden of her own. But she still spends plenty of time weeding, yanking out invasive plants like burr clover in Los Liones Gateway Park with activist Randy Young and the Temescal Canyon Association (Continued on Page 4) Glamazons. ‘Each clover can make 50 of themselves if they’re ‘happy,” she says. ‘It just pushes everything out.’ Hiking in Temescal Canyon, Marinacci can be a poor companion because she’s too distracted by the invasive yellow star thistles growing with abandon. Marinacci also volunteers her time at the SRF Lake Shrine, just across from where she lives in the lower Palisades Highlands, plucking dead blooms, called ‘deadheading,’ so that the flowers can thrive. Last summer, she ended up picking vegetables about twice a week at Paul Revere Middle School’s expansive student garden. In the spring, the children planted about 500 bush bean plants, along with cherry tomatoes and butternut squash. But school was out of session when many of the crops were ready for harvest. ’I picked 300 pounds of beans alone,’ says Marinacci, who took the vegetables to the Westside Food Bank and to the lobby of her condomium building, where neighbors quickly snapped them up. ‘I cannot stand to see vegetables go to waste.’ Or trees. She has tried to raise funds for professional care for the community’s street trees, many of which are in need of rescue from disease, insect damage or just unmanaged growth. Marinacci also joined the Pali-Hi Red Shirts, TreePeople and the Mountains Restoration Trust in planting about 50 trees and shrubs in Lower Topanga Canyon, an area she’s devoted to, just above Pacific Coast Highway. ’This is what can happen to a lifelong gardener who doesn’t have a garden,’ she says, with a smile in her voice. By trade, Marinacci is a writer and editor, who began her career editing trade books for Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York and then worked as editor-in-chief for the history book division of Windsor Books in Los Angeles. In the years since, she has worked on several hundred fiction and nonfiction books, as author, co-author, ‘book doctor,’ researcher and ghostwriter. Her diverse subject matter has ranged from acting stars (“Leading Ladies: A Gallery of Famous Actresses”) to commodities trading (“Commodity Speculation for Beginners”). In 2010, she became the editor of ‘Eden,’ a quarterly journal published by the California Garden & Landscape History Society, combining two great passions. Those interested in helping Marinacci turn the promise of the Temescal native plant garden into reality can volunteer on the last Saturday of each month from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. She welcomes volunteers of all ages, with or without gardening experience. Sign-up is required. Call Barbara at (310) 459-0190 or e-mail ppgardenclub@verizon.net
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