Now that warm weather has returned to the region, many Southern Californians are rediscovering the botanical joys of spring, from hillsides blooming with wildflowers to strolls through the Huntington's historic and recently re-opened Japanese Gardens, which initially opened to the public in 1928.
That same year, another Los Angeles-area botanical garden -- the California Botanic Garden -- opened across town in the hills of Brentwood. Had the Great Depression not intervened, the gardens might today be one of the largest of their kind, with specimens from across the globe planted over 800 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains' Mandeville Canyon. Instead, financial realities failed to match the ambitions of the gardens' planners, and among the gardens' only remnants today are the aging trees that grace the yards of Mandeville Canyon homeowners.