Modern Oasis : A Traditional Japanese Garden Nestles Up to a Modern Sewage Plant

As he drove through the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area during the past few years, Bill Smith had watched the futuristic sewage treatment plant slowly taking shape off Woodley Avenue. To the retired aeronautical engineer from Granada Hills, the forms and the hint of their function were fascinating, and he looked forward to touring the facility when it was completed and operating.

That day came recently, but when Smith and the group he was with entered the sprawling, 90-acre site of the gurgling, ultramodern Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, it was a meticulously designed, tranquil, traditional Japanese garden that they found most fascinating.

“Isn’t this a delightful surprise, next to a sewage plant, and in the Valley, of all places?” asked an ebullient Nancy Reynolds, the guide.

“Wonderful, peaceful,” exclaimed Smith, searching for the right phrase to describe the 6.5-acre garden replete with a teahouse, a variety of plantings, symbolic stone placements, allegorical foot bridges and arranged perspectives.

“It is one of the most beautiful places in the Valley,” said Carol Perry. “I really look forward to coming back again and again.” Perry explained that she and her friend, Lea Osborne, were there as members of the Volunteer League of the San Fernando Valley, which will supply the garden with docents to help handle the crowds that are expected to descend upon the complex.

In its first few months since being opened to the public, the expressive, high-tech-styled plant, with its adjacent soft, sculptured park, has become an inviting--if obscure--people place in the San Fernando Valley. Certainly it is one of the most incongruent architectural projects in Southern California, and one of the region’s oddest attractions. Sewage plants usually are not high on the list of places in which you plan to spend a few leisurely hours.

“The word is slowly getting out that there is something different, something special here,” says James Langley, who manages the $80-million complex for the sanitation bureau of the Los Angeles Department of Public Works. “We’re getting calls from schools, senior citizen groups and garden clubs, even from people who want to get married here.”

At least one couple already has. For Jill Schwendinger, a lawyer, and Duane Meltzer, an art director with Universal Studios, it seemed the perfect place for a wedding. “We loved the combination of the traditional garden and the high-tech plant,” Schwendinger says. “Also, I majored in the conservation of natural resources at UC Berkeley and really wanted an outdoor reception, and what could be prettier than to have a Jewish ceremony, at sunset, in a teahouse open to a Japanese garden that demonstrates the benefits of recycling.”

According to one who attended, the wedding was lovely, except that the post-and-beam structure shook a bit when the wine glass was crushed in a gesture of tradition and the guests shouted “Mazel Tov!”

Built to process 40 million gallons of waste water a day, about a tenth of the city’s total effusion, the plant is decidedly sturdy. And with molded aluminium sheathing, sloped solar reflective glass windows and complex pumping, aeration, filtration and disposal systems--designed with flair by Anthony Lumdsden of the architectural firm of Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall--it is also a curiosity.

But the prime attraction is the garden, designed by Koichi Kawana ostensibly to demonstrate the uses of reclaimed water for gardening while exhibiting the subtleties and symbolism of Japanese landscaping. Not incidentally, Kawana once taught a landscaping course at UCLA, where one of his students was Donald Tillman, a former city engineer after whom the plant is named. Before he retired in 1982, Tillman had directed the development of the plant, including hiring Kawana to design the garden, with the help of the landscape architectural firm of Armstrong & Sharfman.

According to Kawana, the basic design he used is known in Japanese as chisen-kaiyushiki , “wet garden with promenade,” after stroll gardens fashioned in the 18th and 19th centuries for Japanese feudal lords. The idea is to provide those who stroll through the garden a wide variety of vistas and objects laden with metaphors and myths. During the tour, Reynolds explained how a large grass mound studded with Japanese black pines rising out of a sea of delicately raked pebbles represents a tortoise, which in turn represents longevity. As for the pines, they symbolize mythological islands of good fortune.

Trying to follow her commentary, Roy Niemann of Van Nuys shook his head. “I came here just out of curiosity, and now I’m hooked,” said the retired aircraft mechanic. “I’m going to have to keep coming back.”

Those interested in taking a free guided tour of the gardens are asked to call (818) 989-8166 for reservations. At present the garden is open only Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. “The garden is a fragile environment and we have to be careful,” explained Gene Greene, a city landscape architect. “We want to keep it a peaceful island.”