Cultivating a City Image : Glendale Beautifies Landscape
Park maintenance worker Daniel Martinez scrutinized the bright array of flowers meticulously arranged in tiered concrete beds in the Glendale City Hall plaza--delicate blue violas, colorful clown-faced pansies and iridescent pink, salmon and orange poppies dancing on wiry stems.
He was not pleased with what he saw.
“This was not a good crop,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “We had a bad fallout with snails and the weather was too cold.”
Martinez, one of several workers who care for the City Hall gardens, preferred instead to talk about the plants soon to come, dianthuses--miniature carnations in jewel-tone shades of pink, white, rose and red--and robust marigolds.
“It will be beautiful by March,” he assured.
Martinez’s vision of a better garden typifies an attitude among Glendale officials that even beauty can stand improvement.
“In Glendale, a lot of hit-and-miss landscaping has occurred,” said Evan Graves, city landscape architect. “We’re trying to remedy that.”
What they plan is an ambitious program to beautify the city and, as a result, boost the public image.
The program began four years ago when the city, in an unusually progressive partnership with private industry, launched a bold nationwide campaign to promote Glendale as a rising corporate center.
The campaign appears to be working. Glendale has since become the third largest financial center in the state, officials said.
An important part of the city’s image is public landscaping--parks, street trees and median plantings, parkways and the floral displays in public plazas.
Lawrence R. Moss, a Glendale landscape architect who frequently performs consulting work for Glendale and other Southern California cities, said, “The city of Glendale is very park-oriented, very aware of its image, one of the few cities that is developing and caring for public space, unlike many others.”
Moss attributes Glendale’s quest for an image to a “coming of age. . . . They would like to be an important city, to be recognized.”
Lacks Theme
Yet, officials admit that the city has no identifiable landscape theme. They had considered planting the dramatic blue-flowering jacaranda--the city’s official tree--along the median divider of North Brand Boulevard, but that proposal was dropped because of the annoying litter produced by the tree, Graves said.
The city is in the process of reviewing its landscaping standards in order to develop a theme. But just what it will be, no one has decided.
Landscape architects disagree on methods for achieving an image. Graves said he would like to see more order in city plantings--a single variety of tree, for instance, planted the full length of a residential street as is done in master-planned communities such as Irvine. “It has a unifying effect on the community,” he said.
Moss believes differently. He said new neighborhoods often “are too precise and contrived. . . . We don’t have a systematic world. Once we get this indelible look, we lose charm and finesse.”
‘Dull Tree’
Moss would prefer, for instance, that the city get rid of the neatly shaped cupania trees that front Brand Boulevard shops. “They’re a dull tree, a nonentity. We could use something that creates more of a visual entertainment, more excitement.” He prefers flowering crab apple, cherry or the yellow-flowered cassia.
Despite the often stunning display of tree blossoms, city officials said many of them have been ruled out in the past because of maintainence problems. The evergreen pear trees at City Hall, for instance, now covered with delicate white blossoms, present a clean-up chore--and a hazard--when the slippery petals fall.
Some officials say they are reconsidering and may become more tolerant of a mess in exchange for beauty.
Despite its drawbacks, the jacaranda dominates a number of neighborhoods bordering the downtown area. The tree in June produces a canopy of lavender-blue cluster flowers that drift to the ground like a gentle snowfall and re-carpet the streets.
As the city continues to search for an image, it is spending millions of dollars a year to develop, improve and maintain its urban garden. A three-year project, for example, was launched last year to spruce up main streets in the southern area of the city by planting 1,600 trees and building street medians and parkways, said Jess Duran, assistant director of community development and housing.
Hard Work
A beautiful landscape is not easily achieved. It requires thousands of hours of planning and work by city employees, consultants and contractors, and millions of tax dollars a year.
There is no breakdown on how much of the city’s $220-million budget will be spent this year on landscaping, which involves everything from buying fertilizer and bedding plants to trimming trees and pruning roses, said Brian Butler, city finance director.
Glendale is spending more than $1 million this year on just maintaining the city’s 33,500 trees in parks, along parkways and in other public places, said John Vos, city street superintendent. The job is so immense that the city keeps records of tree prunings and spraying by computer.
Annual flowers are purchased by flats--each containing 72 plants. Typically, 70 to 80 flats may be used to add color to a single location, such as Brand Park, said Robert Mezak, city maintenance supervisor. The annual flower beds are usually changed three to four times a year. As many as 20 different nurseries contract with the city to supply the color.
Low Maintenance
While annuals have long been a staple in city gardens, officials say they are now turning more to perennials and flowering trees to supply color while reducing maintenance costs and conserving water.
“We’re working to get more color for our buck,” said Scott Reese, the city’s newly appointed assistant director of parks. While the city maintains several dozen beds of annuals, such as the colorful displays at City Hall, Brand Park and the Adult Recreation Center at 201 E. Colorado St., the thrust in recent years is to derive color through the use of perennials, blooming shrubs and flowering trees, officials said.
“We’re moving to reduce maintenance costs and annuals tend to be a high maintenance item,” Reese said. “Consequently, we’re moving away from annuals. It’s not a trend just in the parks, but on city streets as well.”
Native plants and wildflowers, on the other hand, long ignored in European-style landscaping, are coming into vogue in city gardens, Reese said.
Pilot Project
At the urging of Councilman Jerold Milner, the city recently planted about $1,500 worth of wildflower seeds, as well as fast-growing rye grass, in a burned-out area of Scholl Canyon and a few other areas as a pilot project. If the experiment succeeds, the hills surrounding Glendale may soon be covered with the bright hues of orange California poppies and rich blue and white lupine, Reese said.
In keeping with its emphasis on water conservation, Glendale has recently installed sophisticated computer-based irrigation systems at several city parks. The automated system uses information from a central weather station to dictate when and how long sprinklers run.
Ease of maintenance is a key factor in landscape design in city parks, officials said. Montrose Park at 3529 Clifton Place, designed by Moss, has trees spaced to accommodate tractor mowers. “When it comes to the placement of trees, it’s not just a matter of running out there and dropping a can,” said Graves, the city landscape architect. “We take into account very subtle things, such as the placement of a sprinkler head.”
Hybrid Varieties
Unlike home gardens, which tend to reflect tried-and-true traditional plantings, city gardens often display the latest hybrid varieties developed by wholesale growers, said Don Hill, one of Glendale’s flower suppliers.
The imperial pink pansy, for instance, a new shade introduced this year, is a big seller in city gardens, he said. Impatiens, the No. 1 seller year round, have been improved with the development of more compact plants that better withstand the Southern California heat and produce blooms in 14 shades.
Hill said cities also are quick to follow the latest whims of interior decorators. “Several years ago, everybody wanted orange and yellow blooms. Now we’re into Santa Fe--mauves and pink and orchid and white.”
Glendale officials pride themselves on having earned the title of Tree City, U.S.A.--an honor first bestowed on the city in 1984 by the National Arbor Day Foundation.
Strict Policies
Only 934 cities in the country have earned the title since the program began in 1976, said Mary Yager, the foundation’s program coordinator. To qualify, a city must have strict policies and ordinances to promote and protect trees and spend at least $1 per capita on its tree-care program. Glendale, with a population of 162,000 and the tree-maintenance budget of $1 million, far exceeds the Tree City standards.
California ranks second in the nation--behind Ohio--in the number of cities participating in the program. But even that is a dismal showing.
Jim Geiger, California state urban forester, said only 85 of the state’s 456 cities have met the Tree City criteria so far.
In contrast, landscaping and the urban forest are important to Glendale.
An employee from the city clerk’s office stopped one recent morning to marvel at the City Hall garden as she usually does on her daily treks through Parcher Plaza. “This really gives you pride in your city,” she said, soaking in the irenic scene.
