Bygone Era Blossoms in Sun Valley

One summer day in 1985, Kevin Connelly gazed up at a Sun Valley hillside covered with dry grass, weeds and brush and tried to visualize how the slope had looked before the native wildflowers disappeared.

He could see golden California poppies, purple and blue lupines, yellow hilltop daisies, scarlet buglers, fluffy popcorn flowers, wild marigolds, whispering bells and many other flowers that had once graced the area’s landscape.

Today, the hillside overlooking the San Fernando Valley appears much as Connelly envisioned it that day. The 35-year-old gardener from Arcadia has created a field of wildflowers similar to those that flourished in the area before development and such invasive non-native plants as wild mustard and brome grasses choked out the native flora.

“My inspiration was the hills in Gorman,” Connelly said. “I wanted to create a place in the Valley where people could come and see wildflowers in bloom.”

The hillside is one of several slopes on the 21-acre grounds at 10459 Tuxford St. that are owned by the Theodore Payne Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the propagation and preservation of native California flora.

Wildflower lovers can now avoid the long drive to the Antelope Valley and other parts of northern Los Angeles County to see the blossoms, Connelly said.

“There are 25 species in bloom here now,” he said. “By the time the clarkia bloom in May, there will be about 50 species. Clarkia also are known as ‘farewells to spring’ because they bloom at the end of the wildflower season.”

To create the wildflower hill, Connelly spent hundreds of hours clearing brush, pulling weeds and preparing the ground for planting, starting at the top of the hill and working down.

He said his wildflowers cover about an acre, and he hopes to plant another acre.

Last year, youth volunteers built a rugged path to the top of the hill, allowing visitors to stroll among the flowers. On a clear day, a walk to the top of the slope provides a view across the Valley floor to the Santa Monica Mountains.

Weeding continues to keep Connelly busy. He said he keeps constant watch for such intruders as mustard plants.

“Once they get started, they just take over,” he said.

The annual success of Connelly’s wildflower crop also depends on the amount of rainfall because he uses no supplemental irrigation.

Last year’s crop was less abundant than he had hoped, Connelly said, because it was dry.

He also has planted a garden in the foundation’s picnic area, part of it on a large, decomposed granite rock. There, rare wildflowers from such areas as Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands can be seen.

Connelly said he became fascinated with native flora as a boy when he began collecting wildflower seeds near his family’s weekend cabin in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

In his occupation, Connelly said, he has been using more and more wildflowers in home landscapes.

“More landscapers seem to be using native plants,” he said. “I think part of the reason is because there is more development now in wild, rural areas and home buyers are conscious of what once was.”

Connelly said he had bought wildflower seed for his business from the wildlife foundation for several years before he began his work on the hillside as a volunteer.

Theodore Payne, the foundation’s namesake, would have been pleased with Connelly’s wildflower hill. Payne became interested in California flora a century ago when he saw an exhibit of the plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens in his native England.

He traveled to California in 1893 at the age of 20 and, after working as a gardener at the country estate of Polish actress Helena Modjeska in Orange County, started his own nursery.

Upon his arrival in California, Payne was deeply disappointed that the wildflowers he had so admired were rapidly disappearing from the landscape. So he made it his mission to collect seeds and grow wildflowers and native plants. To arouse interest in native flora, he sowed wildflower seeds in vacant lots in Hollywood and Pasadena and, in 1915, the Los Angeles City Council commissioned Payne to plant wildflower beds in Exposition Park. After that, he landscaped many local estates.

In all, Payne, who died in 1963, brought 430 native species into cultivation in Southern California.

The foundation was incorporated in 1960 to carry on Payne’s work.