Planting Evidence
Some people have a green thumb. Others do not. I am, much to my chagrin, a member of the latter category. Plants consistently wither and die under my care. Despite spending a lot of time in the great outdoors, I still confuse oaks with sycamores. I will never be able to spell “chaparral” properly without looking it up.
This is precisely why I have always been fascinated by people who can make plants grow. Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to meet two such people whose green thumbs are in fine working order. With little fanfare, they work far from the media’s eye, cultivating parts of the San Fernando Valley in ways I can barely fathom.
Here, briefly, are their stories.
*
Bora Demirel’s story is a twist on the classic immigrant’s tale, spanning a not-so-classic route: Turkey to Woodland Hills.
Demirel, 29, was living in his hometown of Ankara two years ago when his brother-in-law entered Demirel’s name in a lottery for green cards--without bothering to tell Demirel. Naturally, Demirel won.
Despite having a good job as a regional planner, Demirel decided to make the move, believing that in the long run he could make a better living in America. He and his wife, Hengameh, chose Woodland Hills because they had two friends there, and, besides, the climate reminded them of home.
After arriving in L.A. in May of 1996, Demirel opened the Yellow Pages, hoping to find work. What he found were just 10 listings for city planners and 300 listings for landscapers--significant because Demirel had experience in landscape planning at his old job.
“I say to myself,” says Demirel, “this means opportunity.”
By last autumn, stage one of Demirel’s plan had taken shape. Every weekday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Demirel attended the West Valley Occupational Center’s landscaping and nursery program--which is in Woodland Hills. Then, from 4 p.m. until 1 a.m. he worked as a shipping agent in a warehouse for $5 an hour. Until he finally purchased a used car early this year, Demirel walked everywhere, losing 35 pounds in the process.
It didn’t take long for his instructor at the occupational center, Joshua Siskin, to discover that Demirel was a workhorse. His notes were long and crisply written. Despite his struggle to speak English, it took Demirel little time to learn both the English and Latin names of hundreds of plants. And his drawings of garden designs were anything but amateur.
“What this guy wants to do is take the world and shake it,” says Siskin, while browsing through some of Demirel’s designs. “We didn’t even teach him some of this stuff.”
Soon, a homeowner acquainted with the gardening program offered Demirel a chance to redesign her garden. Demirel plunged into the job. He made plant lists and drew half a dozen maps, showing everything from where the sunlight hit the yard at different times of day to the different types of soils needed to support gardens in different parts of the yard. Not surprisingly, the gig led to several other small freelance jobs.
What has eluded Demirel, though, is full-time employment. Since graduating from West Valley in June, he has managed to hook up only as a part-time day laborer with a large landscaping firm. Temp work, when available, fills out the rest of his time.
“All I want is to work,” says Demirel, “but I’m still waiting. I don’t understand. I just want to work.”
It is suggested to Demirel that working as a day laborer seems a very modest goal for someone with his skills. In response, Demirel pulls a business card out of his wallet and says, “My wife designed this in her computer class.”
The printing on the card reads: “Bora Bora Landscapes.”
“That is what most people think of when they think of Bora,” says Demirel. “It would be a good name for a business one day.”
He takes the business card and looks at it for a long moment before slipping it back into his wallet.
“One day,” repeats Demirel, sounding very much like a man hoping to take root.
*
Suzanne Goode stands at a trail head in Malibu Creek State Park, delighted that there’s a man nearby taking a chain saw to a stand of dead pine trees.
This seems a bit strange--after all, Goode is the resource ecologist for the Topanga and Malibu sectors of the Angeles District of the California State Parks Department. Her job is to preserve the environment in her 40,000-acre district. But to do this, she must sometimes play the part of lumberjack and remove nonnative species such as these pines, which perished in a wildfire last year.
Once the pines are removed, Goode will plant the area with native live oak trees. By planting natives, Goode hopes to accomplish two goals: enhance the biological diversity of the park with species best suited to the environment (pines are not fire resistant), and restore much of the environment destroyed or radically altered in the last 200 years.
“This job,” says Goode, “allows me to be a purist.”
This job also keeps Goode quite busy. Among her other duties are such things as re-vegetating archeological sites, making sure trees are not in danger of falling on buildings or park visitors and, of course, searching for scarce money to fund other projects. The payoff for Goode is that the job allows her to live in the Santa Monica Mountains and, as she points out, work in a Southern California botanical zone that has more biological diversity than the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. combined.
The Las Virgenes Valley section of Malibu Creek State Park is a perfect example of Goode’s work. In its native state, the valley was a savanna of oaks and wild grass. But during the last 200 years, the oaks were cut by ranchers and the grass was subsequently trampled and eaten by cattle. After the ranch ran its course, the area served as a disposal site for partly treated sewage.
“In 1989, I did a complete study of this area and there was not one single native plant there,” says Goode.
The immediate problem in the savanna was that it was overgrown with milk thistle, a thick and unattractive weed brought by settlers from Europe to California. Milk thistle carpets the ground, providing additional shelter for rattlesnakes and covering hiking trails.
It also chokes out the native grass.
In 1990, Goode and a crew of colleagues planted 40,000 native grass seedlings in the area, as well as 75 or so live oaks, valley oaks and coastal oaks. In June 1996 and July of this year, after determining that the young trees’ bark could withstand a fire, Goode ordered the area burned to help reduce the milkweed.
An unexpected result of the 1996 burn came last October when the huge Malibu wildfire began spreading toward Agoura Hills; the fire stopped at the savanna, blocked by the already scorched land.
On this particular day, the savanna is looking good. The new oak trees range from 5 to 8 feet tall, and patches of native wild grass are growing. Goode steps into the middle of the field and surveys the scene. “I’m thrilled to stand here and think we added this grasslands,” says Goode. “This is just gorgeous. Just think what this field will look like one day.”
Without a hint of irony or sadness, Goode shrugs her shoulders and adds, “Of course, I won’t see the fruits of this in my lifetime.”
