Photo Essay: The Troll Takeover of South Coast Botanic Garden

I missed out on a lot going on around town when I was writing the centennial history book for The Los Angeles Breakfast Club (which is coming out later this year). I was too busy, too overwhelmed to maintain my baseline level of vigilance and diligence when it comes to avoiding regret. 

So when the six wooden sculptures of Thomas Dambo’s TROLLS: Save the Humans arrived at South Coast Botanic Garden in Palos Verdes in late 2023—and only stuck around for just over three months—I didn't have the bandwidth to figure out what they were or why I should go until it was too late. 

Until my coauthor pointed out that Thomas Dambo is Danish and would be bringing a permanent troll installation to California's Danish town, Solvang. 

I still haven't made it up north to see that one—which debuted in early 2025—but I got a second chance at the South Coast Botanic Garden this spring, with the arrival of 12 brand new trolls as part of Thomas Dambo’s Trolls: A Field Study, which runs through October 4.

I wasn't going to miss it this time. 

 

Photo Essay: Christmastime at the Arboretum's Queen Anne Cottage

Of all the world-class botanic gardens in the Los Angeles area, I've probably been to the LA Arboretum the least. 

I don't really know why—be it the distance or simply the absence of a miniature train and a corpse flower. 

But one thing the Arboretum shares with its counterparts, like Descanso Gardens and The Huntington, is that it's located on the grounds of a historic estate. 

This was once the land of pioneer E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin, who came to Northern California in search of gold in 1853. He settled in Southern California in 1875, purchasing the Rancho Santa Anita and later subdividing it to create Arcadia, where the arboretum is now located.

 

Despite his wealth, Baldwin lived quite humbly in a small adobe home. But in 1885, he built a magnificent Queen Anne cottage for the entertaining of guests—and to show off how well he'd done for himself. 

Photo Essay: Holiday Bells and Whistles at the Bellagio Conservatory

This was my fourth time spending Thanksgiving in Las Vegas on a solo trip—and after taking myself out to dinner, I decided to head to the Bellagio for the Christmas display in its Conservatory & Botanical Garden.

I'd never seen the Conservatory displays at night—and I thought it might be a little less crowded, since Vegas itself is pretty quiet on Thanksgiving. 

Photo Essay: No Better Place to 'B' in Vegas Than the Bellagio Conservatory in Spring

People always ask me, "What is there good to do in Las Vegas?"

 

And the first thing I always tell them is the Bellagio Conservatory. "It's different every time!" I say. 

Photo Essay: May Showers Bring Cactus Flowers

"The cacti are probably in bloom around now," my friend said. And until then, it had never really occurred to me to go to the Ethel M. Chocolates Factory Cactus Garden in Henderson, Nevada during the day.

After all, it's so magical at night during the holiday season. What else could there be?

 

But after taking a morning bus tour of Henderson and an afternoon walking tour of the Hoover Dam, I was looking for a little zen on my way back to Vegas. 

Photo Essay: The Huntington's Japanese Garden and Its 320-Year-Old Transplant

After all of the times I'd been to The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, there was one major area I'd never seen: the Japanese Garden, added by Henry Huntington to his then-private estate in 1912.

That is, until I finally got to visit in November 2023. (Sorry it's taken me so long to share my experience!)

 

 

Photo Essay: The Dutch Windmills That Helped Establish San Francisco's Golden Gate Park

In Southern California, the only windmills you'll usually see are the wind power-generating ones, like on the windmill farms of Palm Springs or Tehachapi. 

At least, that's been true since the last of the Van de Kamps coffee shops closed in the 1990s. (The last remaining windmill is now a Denny's in Arcadia.)

But in Northern California—specifically, San Francisco's Golden Gate Park—two windmills are alive and well, including the Northern Dutch Windmill built in 1902. 

Photo Essay: The Huntington, Where Billiards and Bowling Gave Way to the Rose Garden Tea Room

The Huntington is one of those places where I just keep discovering new things, every time I visit. 

 

Towards the end of last year, I'd wanted to go back because I knew I'd missed some historic faux bois (fake wood made of steel-reinforced concrete)...

 

 

...so my quest to see that in person led us to the rose garden on Black Friday. 

Photo Essay: Saturday Night at the Los Angeles County Fair

For some reason, I let 10 years go by after my first visit to the Los Angeles County Fair in 2012. (That year, I actually went twice—for the fair itself and then for the Demolition Derby.)

And when I went back to Fairplex in Pomona a decade later—in 2022, after the event had shifted from September to May—it rained. And I didn't have a great time. 

This year, I returned to the fair because I had a ticket to Pat Benatar's Grandstand concert—and that gave me the chance to explore the grounds for the first time at night.

Photo Essay: May Gray at UCR Botanic Garden, Riverside

May Gray has been the bane of my existence since I first discovered it on a business trip to LA in 2006, while I was still living in New York City and still thought that California was all sunshine and palm trees.

 

 

It was hard adjusting to the gloomy months of late spring and early summer when I first moved to LA in 2011—but now, after more than 12 years, I'm not just getting used to it. 

I'm embracing it. 

Yet Another Island Gets Added to New York's Five Boroughs

NYC is full of weird experiences—from swimming in a shipping container to picnicking on a former landfill to squishing your toes in the sand of a pretend beach on the East River. 

So, having been away for a while, I was tickled to spend part of my return visit checking out one of the weirder new additions to Manhattan,

It's Little Island, a manmade park that opened at the former Piers 54 and 55 off of Hudson River Park in May 2021.

 

Pier 54 was once the Cunard-White Star pier, where the RMS Carpathia dropped off Titanic survivors in 1912 and where the British RMS Lusitania departed in 1915 before being torpedoed on its way to London. In 1918, in the final year of WWI, the German U-boat U-55 also sunk the Carpathia. 

Photo Essay: The Bellagio's Italian Garden of Love Brings A Touch of Romance to Spring

The Bellagio Hotel & Casino was added to the Las Vegas Strip in 1998...

 

...built by hotelier Steve Wynn to evoke the Mediterranean area of Lake Como, Italy. 

While the Bellagio may be best known for its fountain show, I'm drawn to its 14,000-square-foot Conservatory, where immersive, botanical experiences are installed for each season.

Photo Essay: Beverly Hills Historic Cactus Garden, Restored

It's one of those places that I've driven past a hundred, maybe hundreds of times—and yet until recently, I'd never stopped and gotten out of the car to take a look around. 

 

It's the Beverly Hills Historic Cactus Garden, part of the Beverly Gardens Park, north of the area of Beverly Hills known as the "Golden Triangle"—and I finally took a stroll through on my way to the Church of the Good Shepherd on my day off on President's Day. 

Photo Essay: Where L.A. Traded a Racetrack For Rose Bushes (And Almost Dug Them Up For Stadium Parking 60 Years Later)

Despite all the tragedy and inconvenience of it, the pandemic gave me the chance to refocus my efforts on exploring places I'd been putting off for far too long. And one of those was the Exposition Park Rose Garden. 

 

Photo Essay: Hayward's Japanese Gardens, Built 30+ Years After the WWII-Era Detention of Japanese-Americans

The East Bay city of Hayward, California once had a large population of Japanese-Americans. But during World War II, they were sent to internment camps—like the detention center at the former Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, on the San Francisco peninsula.

 

You might not ever know it by visiting the city today—were it not for the Japanese Gardens, just beyond the Hayward Area Senior Center. 

Photo Essay: Dodger Stadium, Home of The First Sports Arena Botanic Garden In the U.S.

LA's newest botanic garden isn't in the mountain foothills or on the grounds of some grand, historic estate. 

 

It's at Dodger Stadium—the first sports arena in the country to qualify for botanic garden accreditation (which took five years). 

Photo Essay: Santa Barbara's 'Queen of the Missions,' Never Abandoned

After visiting all of the other Southern California Spanish missions—including some of the sub-missions (or asistencias)—over the course of my 11 years living out here, I finally got to Mission Santa Barbara (in the Central Coast city of the same name). 

Founded in 1786 by the "forgotten friar" Friar Fermín de Lasuén—successor to Junípero Serra—as the 10th of 21 Franciscan missions, it's the only continuously operating mission in the California system. Even after secularization in 1833, the Franciscan friars were allowed to stay—helping this mission avoid the neglect and vandalism that plagued the others that were abandoned. 

It became known as the "Queen of the Missions"—a title it has retained, having never fallen into ruins.  

Photo Essay: Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Gardens' "Flights of Fancy" for Spring

While other casino resorts on the Las Vegas Strip may be focused on recreating the opulence of ancient Greece, Rome, or Venice, approximating stereotypical Paris or New York City....

 

...or meeting the ever-changing expectations of "luxury"... 

 

...the Bellagio creates immersive, botanical experiences for each season in its 14,000-square-foot Conservatory.

Photo Essay: The Once-Too-Popular Taft Garden in Ojai Now Keeps A Low Public Profile (But Is As Stunning As Ever)

I'd taken a couple of trips to Ojai, California—and even wrote an entire article about what to do there—but I hadn't heard of Taft Gardens and Nature Preserve in the Santa Ana Canyon foothills above Ojai until just last year. 

It's considered "secret" because it's not listed on Google Maps and its address isn't published. If you want to go, you've got to make a reservation—which I was fortunately able to do so I could visit its 15-acre sprawl last month. 

Photo Essay: A Hot Time at the Date Orchard, Where Sex and God Collide

When I first started spending time in the Palm Springs area in 2009, I took a tour of Oasis Date Gardens—and I thought that was enough. 

I didn't realize how absolutely baffling and curious the nearby Shields Date Garden was.