Students Plant Trees in Fight Against Blight
For months, the brief stretch of Schoenborn Street in Northridge between Lindley and Zelzah avenues was ittle more than a blighted block of earthquake-ravaged apartment buildings and a bare sidewalk.
Not any more. With nearly all the damaged buildings repaired, 140 students from Northridge Middle School spent Thursday morning planting 26 Chinese flame trees.
“This is something that’s going to last,” said Gustavo Bahena, a supervisor with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, the nonprofit group that supplied the trees and helped with the labor. “It’s going to make a big impact on the school. It’s something to be proud of.”
For students and teachers, it’s a welcome bit of beauty on a once-drab street at the school’s southern edge.
“It looked all messy [before],” explained 12-year-old Ricardo Luna, who lives across from the school on Schoenborn Street. “Now it looks beautiful.”
The effort was made possible by the Los Angeles Housing Department’s Neighborhood Recovery Program.
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