Riverside Retreat : Retired Man Started Planting Flowers and, Before Long, He Had an Oasis

Hard along the stark concrete walls of the Los Angeles River is a paradoxical paradise, an oasis where the fiery blossoms of canna lilies and the drooping branches of pepper trees entice the curious into a retreat in the shadow of the world’s busiest freeway.

Stretching nearly a quarter-mile between Kester and Cedros avenues in Sherman Oaks, the whimsical garden is as much a pleasant place to stroll as it is a tour of the gentle imagination of its creator, 83-year-old Ernie LaMere.

For the past five years, LaMere has single-handedly dug, hoed and watered to transform a weed-choked publicly owned service road into “Ernie’s Walk,” a lush neighborhood park where children play and walkers stroll.

“It’s become almost an obsession for me,” said LaMere, a retired restaurant maitre d’, as he meandered along, fussing over geraniums and wisteria, raspberries and sweet peas. “I wanted to prove to the world that one man could make a difference to the environment.”

And he has.

Like a Johnny Appleseed in reverse, LaMere has cultivated a tiny spot of greenery amid the wilds of civilization, inviting the weary to unwind along the closest thing in Los Angeles to a river, a channel that cuts like a concrete wound for 58 miles across communities between Canoga Park and Long Beach. Even more than that, though, Ernie’s Walk offers visitors a spot where humor and kindness reign over the standard urban attitudes of surliness and anger.

Tree-shaded benches that LaMere crafted by hand offer magazines fanned out for the perusal of tired visitors as the Ventura Freeway snarls and yawns 100 feet away. Dozens of fake tombstones inscribed with corny epitaphs crowd a small embankment. A trio of “white-tailed mule deer,” an impossible crossbreed made of logs and branches, hide behind a clutch of trees. A giant yarn mural salvaged from a Simi Valley coffee shop hangs on a chain-link fence at the channel’s edge. And all along the way, hand-painted signs remind visitors to relax and enjoy.

“Everybody makes fun of the Los Angeles River,” LaMere said, “but it can be pretty.”

Back in 1988, LaMere’s stretch of the river was “a helluva mess.” People dumped garbage there and weeds poked up amid broken couches, rusty auto parts and old refrigerators.

It made LaMere sick.

So he and some neighbors got on the phone and complained until city and county crews cleaned up the mess and hauled it away in dump trucks. All that remained was a barren strip of dirt. Better, but still nothing special to look at, and certainly not a place to lollygag on a lazy afternoon or watch the sun crawl across the sky on a cool summer morning.

Working in his garden one day, LaMere had more flowers than he could plant and was about to throw some away when he thought, “It’s sinful to do this.” So he planted them along the freshly cleared river bank.

And as the flowers took root and sprouted, so did an idea: Why not jazz up the entire stretch between Kester and Cedros?

At first, LaMere planted castoffs from his own garden, such as geraniums and marigolds. Neighbors, enchanted with the notion, began donating more. Then he began installing “attractions,” little extras such as the cemetery and the wooden deer to encourage visitors to linger on his home-grown promenade.

“I created a monster because now I’ve got to take care of it,” LaMere said with a laugh. “I’ll be busy for the rest of my life. Everybody has really gotten into the spirit of the thing.”

Nearly everyone in this tight-knit neighborhood of tract homes knows LaMere. They wave as he and his black-and-white mutt, Tippy, head to the river for a day’s work. They help out on weekends, planting their own flowers in spots LaMere has yet to cover.

“It’s pretty cool,” said Tony Nassour, who lives across the street from Ernie’s Walk. “In a way, what he’s done is create a neighborhood beautification program. All of the houses along here are spending more time on their lawns and making sure their places look nice.”

And LaMere is setting an example that Los Angeles County officials hope others will follow. He was the first participant in the Adopt-A-Channel program, in which groups or individuals are expected to help alleviate the burden on county budgets by volunteering to keep the public corridors along flood control channels free of weeds and graffiti. But only one other group has volunteered since the program started last fall.

It is a labor for which LaMere receives no compensation except the smiles of children and the friendly waves of his neighbors. “I’m very well paid for what I do down here,” he said.

Like his freeway-side garden, LaMere is a man of paradoxes and surprises.

His house, “a Mexican hacienda full of Oriental furniture,” reveals marvels at every turn, ranging from a bathtub-side fountain to a mural of the African savanna.

A tie rack shaped like a hand wiggles its fingers at unsuspecting guests. Strings and pulleys cause fist-sized plastic spiders to scurry across the floor and a fisherman in a fountain to reel in a catch. Outside, another fountain in the shape of George of the Jungle turns off and on at the clap of hands, and a topiary zoo greets visitors in the front yard.

And for a man who claims his thumb is so green he can stick a broom handle in the ground “and two weeks later I’ll be cutting leaves off it,” LaMere hates house plants because they are too messy. He also ripped out all the trees at his house and replaced the grass with synthetic lawn because he hates to mow.

“I bought this place to retire, not to cut grass,” hesaid.

Nevertheless, he spends hours a day tending his channel-side garden, which, despite its beauty, is still along a giant rainwater drain. In February, 1992, an extraordinary rainstorm roared up over the walls of the 15-foot channel and submerged Ernie’s Walk under two feet of water.

“If you don’t think that was hard on my plants,” LaMere said. “They were all mowed down and covered with mud. I almost cried when I saw it.”

Within weeks, though, LaMere had cleaned his plants and nursed them back to health.

Then, another, even more unnerving disaster struck. A group of schoolchildren vandalized the parkway, tossing the bowls of fruit he set out into the river, knocking over tables and digging up posts and tiles.

The offenders were caught, but LaMere was disgusted and he swore he would not so much as walk his dog along that stretch of river. He carted off the umbrellas he had set up to provide shade and blacked out the sign pronouncing the entrance to his private park.

He stayed away and let the weeds take back his park.

A few weeks later, a neighbor lady spotted LaMere walking down the block, ran up to him and threw her arms around him. “I thought, oh my God, she’s after my body,” LaMere recalled.

Hardly.

In fact, she thought LaMere had died because his signs were painted black. She was just happy to know he was still around. LaMere was touched, and within a few days he was back tending his garden.

“That was the only time I ever got really frustrated,” he said. The timidity lingers. He is shy about leaving the fruit bowls out and he has yet to bring back all the umbrellas.

Ernie’s Walk gives LaMere something to do, something to keep his mind and body active, a way to feel useful, he said. “It’s good for me,” he said, pulling his red-and-white wagon. “I’m 83 years old and I sure as hell get around pretty well yet.”

But he knows he may not be long for this earth. Another garden awaits him and he frets about what will happen to this one after he is gone. Neighbors say they will maintain Ernie’s Walk as well as they can, but LaMere is not sure he wants to leave it entirely to them.

He wants his ashes sprinkled into the river along the promenade he took back from the weeds and garbage. “It’s as good a place as any,” he said. “That way I’ll always be with the walk and no one will ever be alone.”