New Sierra Madre City Hall Gardens Reflect Rich History
The City of Sierra Madre, Sierra Madre Garden Club, the Sierra Madre Community Foundation, and FormLA Landscaping brought the new look of LA landscapes to Sierra Madre City Hall in November 2015. The gardens are now well-established, lush and leafy, and now attract residents, birds and butterflies!
The garden reflects a lush, leafy aesthetic authentic to the Sierra Madre area, and it has been featured on the 2017 Theodore Payne Foundation's Native Plant Garden Tour as well as a tour during the 2016 International Greenbuild Conference.
While elevated by the San Gabriel Mountains, Sierra Madre has a Mediterranean climate, and the garden is designed to thrive in it! Like the rest of LA, it will be dry throughout the year with occasional wet winters. As a foothill community in an alluvial fan, seasonal fires and subsequent slides are of great concern. When systematically used by the community, the Sierra Madre City Hall's authentic plant palette can improve the resilience of adjacent wildspaces.
In addition to fire defensive and slope saving plants, the garden includes a variety of native edible and medicinal plants. These honor the area's history as an agricultural hub for the largest indigenous population in North America. Birds, butterflies, and native fauna will flock to the gardens, as native foliage provides their most favored sources of food and shelter.
The public gardens both conserve water and fuel the groundwater table via two beautiful bioswales. When the swales are not doing their "real" job, they entertain the city's children.