ART REVIEW : How Their Garden Grows : Phase 1 of County Museum’s ‘Director’s Roundtable Garden’ has returned some old friends to their rightful setting.

Spring makes everybody feel things anew. If you are in the mood for something refreshed, take a stroll around the County Museum of Art on Sunday. They are always starting something over there. This time it’s a born-again contemporary sculpture garden that wraps around the base of the Bing Auditorium and the cafe.

The garden is called “The Director’s Roundtable Garden.” It is no more absolutely new than spring is. It all started in 1965, when the museum moved to 5905 Wilshire Blvd. from old digs shared with dinosaur bones in Exposition Park. One of the authentic charms of William Pereira’s otherwise rather prissy buildings were big reflecting pools surrounding the complex. They contained, among other things, a large mobile sculpture by Alexander Calder called “Hello Girls” in honor of the commissioning Art Museum Council. Its biomorphic flippers more or less waved to passersby as it turned in breezes and reflected in water.

As bad luck would have it, the pools leaked.

Worse, oily stuff began to appear in them. Wags of the day said the museum was sinking back into the tar pits.

The pools were drained.

In 1975, they were replaced by the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden and the Calder was washed up on dry land, looking a little like a castaway. In 1982, it was packed off to Pasadena’s Art Center School of Design with the rest of the garden sculpture while the Anderson Building got built. This museum is always starting but rarely finishing. Everything is in phases over there. They evidently believe a museum should never rest on its pedestal.

Anyway, the Calder is now back, fully restored to its proper estate in a new reflecting pool in the new sculpture garden. Museum Director Earl A. (Rusty) Powell is at pains to point out that this is “Phase 1” of the garden. The length of any phase is determined by how long it takes them to raise money for the next one.

“Hello Girls” looks quite merry waving to strollers. It has been outfitted with new hardware so it turns more gracefully. Jets of water help drive it around. If you happen to be downwind when a stiff breeze comes up, you can get sprayed. But, ever mindful of the comfort of visitors, the museum installed a device that measures wind speed on top of the building. Wind velocity registers in the conservation lab. If the blow gets too stiff, they shut off the squirters.

They really try to think of everything over there.

Landscape architects for the project are from the firm of Hanna/Olin Ltd. Predictably, their just-planted work looks unfinished. Ground covers are still patchy. Vines planted to cover the fence got chilled out in a recent cold snap and had to be started over. Wilshire traffic is a bit intrusive near Henry Moore’s reclining figure, but time and fertilizer will take care of some of that.

Luckily the boulevard takes an slight incline to the east, creating a knoll that makes the garden more secluded. Planting has been planned to remind Tinseltown denizens there are such things as seasons. This patch turns white in spring, then the jacaranda trees ignite flamboyant lavender.

From the garden, surrounding museum buildings turn from what some find an architectural mishmash into a kind of fairy-tale backdrop. The garden has been planned as something to look down on from the cafe balustrade as well as something to putter through.

Much of the old gang of sculpture has been reinstalled to look its best. Richard Hunt’s “Extended Forms” was placed next to a wall to dramatize its dynamic arabesque silhouette. Donald Judd’s big suite of five huge open concrete cubes can look like one of Saddam Hussein’s bunkers, but they are now softened to classicism set on green turf.

It’s a good, rather than a distinguished, collection of objects, the Peter Voulkos, Ellsworth Kelly and Anthony Caro notwithstanding. But sculpture in gardens calls up a different standard from sculpture in galleries. Things that would put you off in a pristine room look different in nature. The monument to Lewis Carroll in New York’s Central Park would look ludicrous in a museum, but in a man-made copse it’s charming.

Much the same at LACMA for Alexander Liberman’s red-tube “Phoenix.” It’s a big design object rather than a sculpture, but in a garden you are inclined to shrug and say, “OK, so it’s a design object.” Besides, there is always the clangorous Adray’s billboard across the street to remind us of discounted reality.

Then, too, there is always better to come.

The latest addition is Alice Aycock’s “Hoodoo.” Big as a good-size room, it looks a little like a tinsmith’s gym designed by Rube Goldberg. There is a great revolving funnel and a propeller that fans itself. Visitors can walk through it with a mild effort of climbing on the concrete foundation, but it’s placed to discourage that. Frankly, it’s probably just as well. There is a hint of threat in the fun of the thing.

So now the museum has started all its gardens. The Cantor Sculpture Garden and its Rodins are on the west, the contemporary and Japanese gardens to the east. Eventually you’ll be able to circulate through the latter two, but not yet. The museum has this problem with intrusive reality, namely the fire department. It insists that a ramp lead up to the museum and a fire road lead down into the Japanese garden. Instead of having a nasty asphalt road in the middle of its Zen meditation planting, the museum made the road of something called Grasscrete. It is real lawn but planted in stiff tubes that will support a hook-and-ladder.

Unfortunately, it will not support a woman in high heels. They tend to sink. Eventually time will take care of that and everyone can meander safely.

That’s Phase 4.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Closed Mondays . (213) 857-6000 .