WATER UNDER THE STARS

The hill behind the Hollywood Bowl restaurant was, as always, a riot of unruly ivy that morning in 1994. As Bob Ginn, the Bowl’s grounds maintenance supervisor, remembers it, the job- seeker seemed a bit unruly himself--tough-looking, with long hair. But Danny Mata always surprised those around him, and on his first day of work as a new groundsworker, he arrived spanking clean in pressed chinos and a short trim.

When Mata saw that hill, he volunteered to do something about it. He worked on it between other projects, hauling in concrete cylinders he’d found at a construction yard, stacking them in neat rows to hold the azaleas and rosemary and Shasta daisies. Just a little something nice for the folks to look at as they filed out after a summer night of mariachis or Mozart.

Then, one Monday morning last year, Mata didn’t show up for work, “and that wasn’t like him,” says Ginn. The Bowl staff received the news: Mata, 42, had died unexpectedly of heart failure that weekend.

So, in time for the Bowl’s 78th season, which begins this weekend, Ginn and some of his workers finished what Mata had started--with flowers, shrubs, even a waterfall made from rocks collected from the nearby hills. “It was important,” Ginn says. “We all liked him so much.”