2021 Golden Arrows Winners

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2021 Golden Arrows Awards - DIY Gardens

As more and more residents beautify their properties with landscapes that use California native and other drought tolerant plants, volunteers for South Pasadena Beautiful, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, found so many worthy gardens for its 2021 Golden Arrow awards.  This year, SPB primarily looked for DIY gardens: ones in which the homeowner had not used professional landscaping services to design and/or work the garden.  Below are the nine recipients for this year’s Golden Arrow Award. 

Six months ago, Wade Utsunomiya at 2006 Stratford impulsively decided to replace his lawn by extending his existing small succulent rock garden all the way to the sidewalk.  

The concept is a natural looking dry riverbed that also serves as a walking path surrounded by sections of succulents.  The garden includes a cactus garden, water retention features and a zen type garden hidden from the front upon first look and only fully viewable from the center of the garden and the front porch. Qualifying for a turf rebate reward, the garden is a hodgepodge of different succulent varieties and colors, most being cuttings and small plants from his existing garden and donations from friends and neighbors.  The homeowner plans to eventually install a small, low decorative bamboo fence as backdrop behind the zen garden that will also serve to further hide it from the front view. The homeowner has done all the work himself with design inspiration from landscaper Allen Lee and SPB garden tours and spends 1-2 hours of his busy retirement days working on it.

When COVID hit and suddenly Marilyn Aragon was juggling working from home and kids with online school and not being able to go out, she needed a creative outlet to keep her sanity. She started working on replacing plants throughout her garden at 1845 Hope and soon, she was taking down an old fence and replacing it. Her vision of restoring her house back to its cottage glory kept growing, and now it is a wonderful example of transforming a small space into a welcoming garden.  She has installed a weathervane, solar lights, 2 fountains, plant trellises, a raised planter for vegetables, plants and more. When asked about her DIY project, Marilyn says, “Things are not as hard or intimidating as they may look. I have learned to do so many things by watching DIY YouTube videos. Your project will also be far more cost effective, leaving you with money to spend elsewhere. But the best part is sitting back and enjoying the reward of what you created and having the sense of pride and accomplishment.” 

Jan and Richard Marshall at 1728 Oxley said goodbye to their lawn in 2019. Since then, they have found the rule of thumb with native plants to be true: The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap! Their front garden includes white sage, yellow yarrow, manzanita, salvia bee’s bliss, and hopseed shrubs along the side fence. The plants also bloom at different times, so it’s an ever-changing delight. The city recently replaced a huge diseased camphor tree on their parkway with a Chinese Pistach. The Marshalls wanted a garden to attract pollinators, and indeed, one of their favorite things to do in 2020 was sit on their porch and watch hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. 

The parkway cottage garden created by Kathy Gilbride, located on Oak St. just west of her home at 1601 Fletcher Avenue, was inspired by her English Tudor home, with a California twist using drought-tolerant perennial plants and self-seeding annuals.  A home gardener, she has planted over thirty plants including salvias, lantana, rosemary, yarrow, plectranthus tomentosa, santolina, penstemon, butterfly bush, sea lavender, verbascum, poppies, Santa Barbara daisies, linaria, baby blue eyes, tanacetum, nemesia, scabiosa, bachelor buttons, larkspur, rudbeckia, gazanias, cerinthe, verbena bonariensis, kniphofia, caryopteris, daylilies, rose campion, ornamental oregano, alyssum, nepeta, iris, aristea, alstroemeria, asters, roses, vinca, and Russian sage. The variety of plants, many grown from seed or cuttings, ensure that something is almost always in bloom, attracting lots of butterflies and bees. 

Drought tolerant plantings welcome tenants and visitors to the Oxley Building at 1510 Oxley (property owners Ty Vanderford and Rodolfo Ruiz). The low maintenance desert garden complements the color scheme of the 1961 building and includes a  variety of colorful cacti, succulents and Kangaroo Paw. A row of Salvia 'Allen Chickering' (Sage), blue chalksticks and Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’s’ (Black Rose) line the beds between the walkway and parking area on Edison Lane.

Brenda and Stuart Blatt’s garden at 1026 Brent Avenue is a mix of California natives and drought tolerant plants with a few edibles such as artichokes and blueberries mixed in. Stuart loves to garden, and Brenda selected the plants for the front yard.  Other plantings include grevalia, which is quite the playground for hummingbirds, manzanitas, buckwheat, mallow, puppies, sage, kangaroo paw and a matilija poppy.

In early 2016, the front yard at 1007 Avon was a withering tangle of exhausted St. Augustine grass that brought joy to no one except the indestructible chinch bugs which infested it. Fed up with this botanic nightmare absorbing countless gallons of irrigation and tears, the owner decided to go native. The new front garden was installed by La Loma Development, led by Marco Barrantes. Featured plantings include deer grass, hummingbird sage, manzanita, bush sunflower, and the hilariously-named sticky monkey flower. The driveway and front walkway were demolished, and the resulting chunks of concrete were recycled to create a new, curved front path and a permeable driveway filled with arroyo rocks and sedges. This winter, a specimen arbutus (strawberry tree) was added near the driveway. The native plants coexist with established non-natives such as a kumquat tree, camellias, gardenias and a large navel orange tree. Where once only chinch bugs and sidewalk runoff reigned, now lizards, butterflies and finches straight-up frolic. Perennial poppies bloom in late winter, their color enhanced by annual wildflowers grown from seed spread indiscriminately by the owner each fall.

Eleanor Sturzenacker’s garden at 802 Grand consistently receives rave reviews from passersby with many stopping to take pictures, particularly of the parkway where the California poppies made a special display!  For years she has worked on her garden, and in the fall of 2019, she decided to create an amazing display of flowers.  Asters, salvia of different blooms, early blooming iris and winter iris, day lilies, sea lavender, zinnias, verbena, low growing geraniums, alsumaria of different colors, candy tuft and lobelia were planted.  The garden includes many established plantings such as azaleas, roses, amaryllis, early daffodils and many iris plants which have bloomed since the 1970’s.

Sunita Borgohain’s labor of love began three years ago when her family moved into their home at 312 Camino Verde. Gardening became therapeutic for her as she transformed the front yard full of ivy into a vibrant refuge for bees, hummingbirds and even monarchs. Now, blue chalk stands out against fire sticks, aloes and agaves provide structure, and euphorbias and yarrow soften the edges. Sunita spends many hours a week planning, adding and subtracting, always with an eye towards being water-wise and environmentally friendly. She finds new homes with friends for plants that have re-seeded or spread beyond their bounds. The only bummer is she lives on a corner cul-de-sac so it’s not easy to happen upon her joyful oasis, but once you round the bend, the colors pull you in!