And They Put Up a Paradise

There’s a magical turnstile on the campus of Cal State Fullerton.

Tucked away in a far-off corner of nowhere, it’s a portal to another world. On one side waft the sounds and smells of the city. Pass through the narrow gate, however, and you are transported to another place, another state of mind, almost another time.

It begins with the sound of water cascading over rock into a pond filled with ducks. Walking down a narrow path, a man sits on a wooden bench, reading alongside a large field of grass bordered by a larger pond with turtles.

“I come to read and relax,” says John Stickler, 26, a Cal State Fullerton student. “It’s really peaceful here, and quiet. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. It’s a nice little getaway -- it doesn’t even feel like you’re in the city anymore.”

That’s the idea behind the Fullerton Arboretum, one of Orange County’s treasures. Step through that turnstile and you’re in a wonderland of gardens and brooks, seemingly countless miles away from the urban scene just yards behind.

“It’s peaceful and serene, like being in the country,” says Sylvia Gallegos, 43, who spends nearly every afternoon here with her 4-year-old daughter, Brianna. “We don’t have a backyard, so this is our backyard.”

It almost was a parking lot. But in the late 1960s, when environmentalism began to stir, a group of students and professors, perhaps thinking of a certain Joni Mitchell song about paving over paradise, vigorously protested the university’s plan to blacktop the vacant 26 acres of state-owned land. Instead, the protesters planted a series of unauthorized organic gardens at the site -- and the nucleus of an arboretum took root.

In 1972, a group of history buffs persuaded the city to relocate Heritage House -- an 1894 home built by George C. Clark, one of Fullerton’s first physicians, coroner and a founding member of its Board of City Trustees -- to the site on the northeast corner of campus near Associated Road and Yorba Linda Boulevard.

And in 1979, under a joint-powers agreement between the university and the city’s redevelopment agency, the Fullerton Arboretum opened its magic turnstile to the public.

Today the park is home to an estimated 3,000 species of plants from around the world, as well as an uncounted number of egrets, herons, coyotes, rabbits, turtles snakes and other animals.

The plants are divided into areas, such as the carnivorous plant bog, redwood grove, deciduous woodland, moist palm grove, tropical pool, desert collection, rain forest and Southern California native vegetation collection. There is even a bodhi tree -- under which Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment centuries ago -- that was blessed by the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet during a visit to the campus in 2000.

Arboretum officials say about 110,000 people a year pass through the turnstile. “People come for all different reasons,” says spokeswoman Janet Van Diest, adding that admission is free but donations are appreciated. “Some come just for the ascetic pleasures, others to get ideas for their gardens. Students use it as a living lab, and artists or photographers come to create.”

Many, it seems, come for reasons similar to the ones Buddha must have had for sitting under his Bodhi tree.

“I come every once in a while,” said Christy Stoner, 21, relaxing by a pond while reading a book of fantasy.

“It’s beautiful, and I like to see all the plants, the water and nature -- the stuff that God has made as opposed to man-made structures,” she said.

Bryan Warmoth, 26, said that he’d brought his 19-year-old girlfriend, Irene Tjoe -- visiting from out of town -- to the arboretum. “It’s a nice place to come just to enjoy the ambience,” he said, holding her hand on a wooden bench. “It’s quiet, nice, romantic -- and the price is right.”

Muriel Parker, 67, a botanical buff visiting from Connecticut, said she had come to photograph plants. “I think it’s a beautiful arboretum,” she said. “Back home we are pretty much stuck with what we can grow, but this is very different; it has such variety. It gives you a taste of all the environments. I’m really thrilled with my afternoon here.”

Then there was Ladd Roberts, 50, a university staff member who is also a singer-songwriter. “I come here to think creatively,” he said. “I write songs here, or sometimes I just doze off.”

But there’s a deeper reason he makes the daily trek from the halls of academia: “I come here,” Roberts explains, “to get back in touch with the real world.”