Local News in Brief : Benefactor’s Estate Sold

The 2.1-acre La Canada Flintridge estate of Dr. Samuel Ayres has been sold by the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum Foundation. Ayres, an avid horticulturist who was known as a promoter of flowering trees in Los Angeles, had donated the estate to the arboretum before he died in November. He was 94.

“We advertised it as a mini-arboretum,” said real estate agent Jane Parsons of Pasadena. The hillside grounds are filled with thousands of flowering tropical plants that Ayres had propagated from seeds gathered around the world. The estate, listed for $895,000, was sold after less than a week on the market.

Parsons declined to give the selling price or identify the buyers, except to say that they were a couple from Arcadia who had no plans to try to subdivide the large lot.

“Dr. Ayres knew it would be sold,” said Beverly Rouse, spokeswoman for the Arboretum Foundation. “We did a careful audit of all the plants at his estate to make sure there was no plant he had there that we didn’t have. But there isn’t. Every time he brought something back, he shared it with us.”

The money will be used to set up a chair at the arboretum in Ayres’ name for a specialist in ornamental horticulture.