18 Spring/Summer 2009

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 19

W hen Henry Huntington boughtthe San Marino Ranch in 1903,he acquired a commercial orchard

of fruit trees and acres of California oaks.Theproperty then stretched well beyond the cur-rent configuration of the botanical gardens andeventually included more than 600 acres.Withina few years, he established one of the earliestcommercial avocado orchards in California,wanting his working ranch to be self-sustainingand profitable.

Aerial photographs taken over the ensuingdecades show the gradual attrition of profitablecrops as Huntington expanded residentialdevelopment in San Marino with acres fromhis ranch and prepared his remaining estateto become a public garden.With the urgingof grounds superintendent William Hertrich,Huntington created the Desert Garden,JapaneseGarden, and Rose Garden.Today, only eightacres of orange trees survive, just north of theBotanical Center.Visitors to the gardens rarelysee the orchard unless they seek out Henry andArabella’s mausoleum, which overlooks thesmall grove. Few other signs linger from theonce-massive enterprise, save for a small groupof mature orange trees in a neighboring frontyard in San Marino that likely had formed partof Huntington’s massive grid 100 years ago.

A new project at The Huntington drawsinspiration from the institution’s agriculturalheritage while also making stronger connectionswith gardeners throughout Southern California.

reviving aworking ranchat the huntington

by matt stevens

20 Spring/Summer 2009

Called “The Ranch,” it will include spaces to demonstratevarious urban gardening techniques. The educational site,located to the northwest of the Botanical Center, will notbe accessible to daily visitors, but a broad range of programswill provide ample opportunity for enthusiasts to roll up theirsleeves and get their hands dirty.

“We’ll be demonstrating a myriad of growing approaches,”says coordinator Scott Kleinrock,“from techniques for urbanfarmers who are growing for farmers’markets and restaurantsto those more relevant to home gardeners who grow in back-yards or even on balconies.”The 15-acre site includes thesurviving orange grove, a “food forest,” and a half-acre zonethat will feature demonstration spaces for container gardeningand pruning workshops.A group of mature oak trees occupiesthe lower western ridge,providing a natural canopy for a smalloutdoor amphitheater.

Kleinrock has spent the winter and spring adapting hisdesign for the space.The master’s student in landscape archi-tecture at Cal Poly Pomona has worked on a number ofcommunity garden projects, including transforming neg-lected or vacant lots into thriving urban gardens. It’s fittingthat part of the Ranch used to be a parking lot for crews

Scott Kleinrock (above), coordi-nator of the Ranch project,standing in The Huntington’sorange grove. Henry Huntingtonbought the property, known asSan Marino Ranch, in 1903 fromJ. De Barth Shorb, whose housewas illustrated (left) in John AlbertWilson’s History of Los AngelesCounty, California, 1880.Huntington began constructinghis new residence in 1909 withinview of rows of fruit trees (right).

Previous page: “Los AngelesCounty To-day,” from a Chamberof Commerce promotionalbrochure, 1929.

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working on the Chinese garden. Before coming to TheHuntington in December,Kleinrock co-designed a half-acrecommunity garden at theTri-City Mental Health Center inPomona.As in that project,Kleinrock wants participants to bepart of the process of creating a working urban garden andteaching space. Classes and workshops will begin later inthe year.

The Huntington is no stranger to the symbiotic relation-ship between gardens and educational opportunities.With

more than a dozen thematic gardens—including the newChinese garden,Liu FangYuan—the institution has been thesite of conferences and classes on such topics as succulents,roses, and bonsai. In 2005, the opening of The Rose HillsFoundation Conservatory for Botanical Science completeda new Botanical Center that also included the Bing Children’sGarden and classrooms, offices, teaching labs, and a nursery.And yetThe Huntington’s agricultural heritage had retreatedinto the background.

A new project at The Huntington draws inspiration from the

institution’s agricultural heritage while also making stronger

connections with gardeners throughout Southern California.

22 Spring/Summer 2009

“Part of Mr. Huntington’s legacy had been left behind,”says Jim Folsom, the Marge and ShermTelleen Director ofthe Botanical Gardens. In the last decade or so Folsom hastaken some gradual steps to acknowledge that history: plant-ing several dozen citrus trees at the top of a hill in the Sub-tropical Garden; inviting the CaliforniaAvocado Growers toplant a heritage orchard adjacent to the orange grove; andbringing in nearly 80 trees from the South Central Farm, anurban garden in Los Angeles that was closed down abruptlyin 2006 amid a fair amount of controversy. Farmlab, an ini-tiative of the Annenberg Foundation, rescued the trees fromthe site—loquat, banana, peach, and apricot among them—and brought them toThe Huntington in boxes.At the same

time, the Foundation made a$1.1 million grant to supportTheHuntingon’s effort to rediscoverits agricultural heritage.

“It was Farmlab’s gift ofthose trees and the AnnenbergFoundation’s stunning generos-ity that helped us to pick up thatpiece of our past that we hadlong neglected,” says Folsom. Inaccepting the trees, Folsom sawan opportunity to revitalize hisvision of a working ranch, butwith a particularly contemporaryemphasis, tapping into a widermovement that includes projectslike Michelle Obama’s new vic-tory garden yet still harkeningback to Henry Huntington’s ownkitchen garden circa 1907, com-plete with edible mushrooms.While Folsom will retain thewide rows of orange groves onthe eastern side of the Ranch,he has planted the trees fromthe South Central Farm on theupper western slope in the farless rigid layout of an evolvingedible landscape.

While many gardeners stillgive in to the temptation to plantdistinct rows of lettuce, carrots,and radishes, Kleinrock likes toencourage them to think outsidetheir raised beds. Edible land-scapes include plenty of non-edible plants that do important

work in a garden. Underneath some of the new fruit trees,Kleinrock is planting comfrey, which sports large, fleshyleaves that are rich in nutrients. By trimming and mulchingthe leaves, a gardener can improve the fertility of the soil.Note to aspiring gardeners: Be sure to use the Bocking 14cultivar, a sterile variety of comfrey that won’t overtake anarea like a weed.Another ground cover,common yarrow,withits white flowers, can keep the area beneath a tree attractive.The plant attracts aphid-eating ladybugs and wasps and caneither take irrigation or withstand drought. Kleinrock hasalso brought in goumi—a fruit-bearing shrub that helps fixthe nitrogen in the soil, serving multiple functions in theedible landscape.

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In the education and demonstration spaces of the Ranch,the trees will be ripe for pruning—literally.A site for back-yard orcharding will include young varieties of trees—stonefruits,citrus, figs,pomegranates,persimmons,and fruit-bearingmulberries. With aggressive pruning, says Kleinrock, gar-deners can control the size of their trees, allowing them toharvest and prune as needed without a ladder. Smaller treescan yield more fresh fruit in the longer run than the largercounterparts, as easy access keeps gardeners from losing fruitthat rots at the top of larger trees.The smaller size also meansthree or four trees can be planted in place of a larger one.With some planning, a gardener can plant multiple varietiesof the same type of fruit in one hole, bearing fruit at varyingpoints in a season. Folks with even less free space can take

workshops on container gardening; self-watering contain-ers—with reservoirs that saturate plants as needed rather thanflooding them—might give new gardeners the confidencethey need to grow some of their own fruits and vegetables.

When Kleinrock has conducted backyard orchardingworkshops at other community gardens, he has relished see-ing the confidence grow as people learn to trust their prun-ing instincts. In the end, he says, it’s not always about thefood.“The produce is almost secondary to the communitythat can be built around transforming a neglected space.”

The trees from the South Central Farm—no longer inboxes—now form part of a developing food forest along thewestern side of the Ranch. One specific focus of Ranchresearch is integrating trees into food production. Food

forestry is a technique for growingan edible garden in a self-sustainingecosystem similar to what mightbe found in a natural forest. Sucha model is already well establishedin tropical and temperate zones butwill require some experimentationin Southern California’s Mediter-ranean climate.While impracticalfor most commercial enterprises,on a smaller scale a thriving foodforest could be a forager’s paradise.

“We’ll have to try differentedible and nonedible plants,” saysKleinrock,“but that’s what makesthis a working ranch rather thana display garden.”The program’sparticipants will help tend the land-scape that takes shape beneath theshade of trees that had once formedpart of the urban garden at theSouth Central Farm. �

Matt Stevens is editor ofHuntington Frontiers.

The 15-acre site includes the surviving orange grove, a “foodforest,” and a half-acre zone that will feature demonstrationspaces for container gardening and pruning workshops.

Scott Kleinrock plants comfrey beneath an apple tree. Many other varieties of fruit trees, including peach(opposite), were rescued from the South Central Farm by Farmlab. They now form a food forest adjacent to theRanch’s demonstration gardens. Photos by Lisa Blackburn.