Fullerton to Plant Trees, Greenery in Park : Government: Council agrees Vista Park was eyesore but said restaurateur had no right to tear out shrubs. Planting will cost $20,000. Irrigation will be improved.

The City Council has decided to place more trees and green plants in Vista Park in response to the complaints of a councilman and the owner of a restaurant in the park.

The city will spend $20,000 to plant groups of trees on the slopes around The Summit House restaurant, according to Redevelopment Agency documents. The agency also plans to add ground cover and improve the park’s irrigation system.

The council, voting Tuesday, agreed with Lloyd McDonald, owner of the restaurant, that the park’s parched grounds were an eyesore, but criticized him for tearing out shrubs without authorization.

In a Sept. 9 letter, City Manager William C. Winter accused McDonald of ripping out the plants. McDonald “completely overstepped his bounds and his authority in the way he handled the situation,” Mayor Don Bankhead said at the council meeting.

Gary Parkinson, operations manager at his restaurant, denied having the plants torn out. McDonald has not returned telephone calls to his office.

McDonald had submitted a plan to the city that called for removing the vegetation, much of which died in the summer heat, plowing under the 12-acre park and replanting it with grass and trees. The city came up with its own plan that would add fewer trees and less grass than McDonald’s plan, and would maintain the existing, native California ground cover.

Though McDonald has not admitted tearing out 20,000 square feet of greenery, the council voted to ask McDonald to pay for plant replacement. Council members threatened to fine him for any subsequent illegal actions.

“He ought to pay for replacement of (the) plants,” former Mayor Robert Ward told the council. “Destruction of city property is destruction of city property.”

But the city property, in this case, just didn’t look very good, the council agreed. Councilman A.B. (Buck) Catlin called the park, which is an experimental planting of drought-resistant native shrubs, “a flat group of plants,” and said the slopes of the park were brown and ugly.

Vista Park was designed to use less water, highlighting California native plants that grow close to the ground. But McDonald, who built an English Tudor restaurant building there last year, did not consider the greenery attractive.