An Oasis Falls Victim to Flames : Fire: A 30-acre blaze overruns Dante’s View garden in Griffith Park. But the 85-year-old caretaker is optimistic that it will spring back to life.

Charlie Turner climbed to the summit of Mt. Hollywood on Tuesday to tend his garden, the famed Dante’s View, making the same pilgrimage he had completed almost daily for the last decade and a half.

But this time, something was different.

As the 85-year-old Turner checked the sprinklers and prepared to rake the earth, he smelled smoke. Then he saw the flames.

A wildfire was racing up the eastern flank of Griffith Park’s Mt. Hollywood, straight toward Dante’s View. Turner fled for his life, escaping down the western slope of the hill.

But the garden, a half-acre grove of eucalyptus, jade, magnolia and pepper trees surrounded by lilies and geraniums--a favorite oasis to hikers and other nature lovers--was destroyed.

“You look out and just see a burnt expanse,” said Turner, standing atop Mt. Hollywood, after more than 100 Los Angeles firefighters, aided by water-dropping helicopters, controlled the 30-acre blaze in about two hours.

Turner surveyed the blackened ground and charred tree limbs below him.

“It looks tragic. . . . It makes you feel sad,” he said as a park ranger gave him a hug and words of sympathy. “You look around (and) see desolation. It must be like coming back after a battle.”

Turner has dedicated most of the last 15 years to caring for the garden, a hillside retreat overlooking the Griffith Park Observatory and offering a million-dollar view of downtown.

Brazilian-born Italian muralist Dante Orgolini carved the garden out of native chaparral in 1965 by hauling trees and cacti up the side of Mt. Hollywood. Turner began working for Orgolini in the 1970s, and inherited his role as unofficial caretaker upon the artist’s death in 1978.

Every morning Turner would hike to the garden from his Hollywood home and spend several hours tending to the plants, trimming the trees, irrigating the soil, erasing graffiti. During the recent heat wave, he hauled three to five gallons of water a mile uphill every day when the water supply was temporarily cut off for work on leaky pipes.

And on weekends, Turner usually presides over potluck brunches attended by a number of friends and fellow trailblazers who hike to Dante’s View. The city even named the trail head after Turner.

So for the British-born octogenarian, the destruction at Dante’s View was personal.

“All the eucalyptus trees burned. They must have been the first to go,” Turner said, making a mental inventory. “I had a bunch of white lilies. They’re all gone.”

Fire officials told reporters that the blaze appeared to have started near the park’s bird sanctuary and was the third fire in the same square-mile area in the last two weeks. The cause of Tuesday’s fire is under investigation. There were no injuries, and no structures were damaged.

Apparently, Dante’s View took the brunt of the fire. But despite the loss, Turner remains hopeful.

From ashes springs life, he says. His work as a caretaker now becomes the work of a rebuilder. Most of the trees’ roots probably escaped severe harm, he believes, and it is likely the plants will grow again. He’ll dig up the lily bulbs and clear out the burned brush, salvaging what he can.

“I’ll have quite a bit of work to do, but we’ll get it done,” Turner said.

Replanting will probably begin in October, after the heat of summer has died down, said Tom La Bonge, field deputy for City Councilman John Ferraro, whose district includes the park. He said he expects that the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks will chip in with some shrubbery, and volunteers--”Everybody loves Charlie,” he noted--will pour out to help.

Turner planned to begin work on his beloved garden immediately, maybe even today.

“It looks bad, but it will come back,” Turner said. “By next spring, it will be back. Good as ever.”