Plan Would Uproot Area Garden Club

Nestled amid asphalt grids, acrid smog and one of the busiest airports of its kind in the nation is a three-acre oasis.

For 22 years, the Van Nuys Airport Garden Club has cultivated a verdant repudiation of urban living. Here, in the shadow of propeller planes and private jets, more than 60 families raise sugar cane and corn, sunflowers and okra.

But a proposal by the Los Angeles Department of Airports to uproot the garden has threatened to change all that.

The plan was to lease the land--situated across the street from the airport--to Galpin Motors, run by politically influential Bert Boeckmann. Galpin would pave the plot and park 1,600 cars on the site.

Boeckmann, owner of Galpin as well as a political power broker, leading GOP contributor and member of the Board of Police Commissioners, said he expects the city to accept his offer of $200,000 for eight acres of property, including the garden. Boeckmann is unmoved by the protests of gardeners and homeowners.

“We’re ready to move in right now, the sooner the better,” he said. “Sure, they will be inconvenienced, they might have to do a little work, but we’re talking about a sizable income for the city.”

When an airport worker told gardeners in August that they would have to leave, the protest began in earnest. The gardeners’ first ally: the Airport Citizens Advisory Council, which had approved the idea last year.

“We were hoodwinked,” committee President George Jerome said. “We were led to believe that there was no impact by the Galpin lease. I am outraged. This is an example of a city turning on its own people.”

Jack Driscoll, executive director of the Department of Airports, said the entire episode is the result of a mistake by one of his staff members. Driscoll said the airport official who asked the gardeners when they would be able to move “had no authority to do that.”

“He is not working on Van Nuys issues anymore,” Driscoll said of the official. “As far as I’m concerned that was off the wall. I can really appreciate the gardeners’ concern--this was totally mishandled by staff. We created an alarm that didn’t have to be as loud as it was.”

Driscoll said the proposal to pave the garden is being reviewed. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration said it would approve the proposal if the cars did not interfere with the airport’s navigational systems. But Driscoll emphasized no decisions have been made yet.

The garden club has a month-to-month lease on the property for the cost of water and portable toilet rental.

One possibility is to move the garden to another part of the property. But gardeners said it could take years before pesticides used on the grass were washed away and for the land to become fertile enough for produce. Homeowners worried the value of their homes would drop.

Madge Lilliquist, 82, of Panorama City, has been tending her garden twice a week for six hours a day since it was created in the 1970s.

“This is what keeps me young,” she said. “If they moved it, I don’t think I could keep it up. It took me years to get this plot the way it is now.”

Renee Eastman’s home faces the garden. Eastman, 39, and her husband bought the home two years ago with the understanding that the garden would always be there.

“That’s why we can deal with the noise,” she said, referring to the constant airplane takeoffs and landings. “The noise is not so nice, but it looks beautiful--that’s the payoff.”