LAGUNA BEACH : Park Is Named for Veteran Tree Expert

Development has spilled across Orange County and altered the landscape since Fred Lang started tending to it half a century ago. But Lang has made some lasting marks of his own too.

A landscape architect who helped design the grounds at UC Irvine, Lang estimates that he has been responsible for the planting of hundreds of trees between San Diego and San Francisco.

In Laguna Beach, where the German immigrant put down his own roots, he is known as the local authority on trees. “Whenever there’s a tree problem, somebody says, ‘Call Fred Lang,’ ” City Clerk Verna Rollinger remarked.

Still, the 75-year-old Lang said he was surprised at the turnout Tuesday night when the Laguna Beach City Council voted unanimously to name a park after him, where he had planted coral, pine and eucalyptus trees 41 years ago. Among those who rose to speak on his behalf were representatives from Laguna Greenbelt, Laguna Canyon Conservancy, the city’s Beautification Council and the Chamber of Commerce.

“It was quite amazing to me,” Lang said of the decision to transform what was once an elementary school site at Wesley Drive and Coast Highway into Frederick M. Lang Park. “I have done a lot of things, but I didn’t realize people knew about them.”

It would be hard not to notice some of Lang’s contributions. In addition to his work at UC Irvine, Lang said he has drawn the ground plans for at least a dozen other Orange County schools.

Friends say that Lang, who has helped to preserve open space locally as a founding member of the Laguna Greenbelt, has gained a national reputation for his handiwork. His gardens have been featured in Sunset Magazine and he has been on the editorial committee of that publication for 40 years.

In Laguna, where he has sketched gardens for seaside estates and hotels, Lang has been praised for helping to design and establish Main Beach Park in the 1960s. Recently, he redesigned the grounds at the Irvine Bowl.

Paving the way for a tree-protection ordinance in the 1970s, Lang went tree to tree, noting which were of “interesting form and great age.”

Lang said his interest in gardening was born when, as a child, he began following around an “interesting old gardener” at his home in Germany.

After immigrating to Chicago in 1934, where he studied at the Chicago Art Institute, Lang moved on to California in 1937. His interest in plants blossomed at the Huntington Library in San Marino, where he was conducting research. At his new home in Laguna Beach, Lang, then 22, continued to absorb information about the plants around him and began taking planting and landscaping jobs. Lang and his wife, Bonnie, now live in South Laguna, where he says their “ecological wilderness” back yard reflects his continuing love for a natural landscape.