Sneak peek: New gardens at Natural History Museum’s North Campus

A bloom on a coral tree at the new North Campus gardens of the Natural History Museum.

Citizen science is also encouraged. Planted with edibles, the Erika J. Glazer Home Garden is open for classes, camps and school groups to teach them how to grow organic vegetables and to deter pests with beneficial bugs rather than chemical pesticides. The Nature Lab, scheduled to open in June 2013, will become a place for visitors to sort and identify the bugs caught in the garden’s tented “malaise traps.”

Even nature lovers who are curious about what happens in the garden after hours will have the opportunity. Critter cams have been installed throughout the garden to capture video that will be posted on the museum website.

The North Campus is part of a museum renovation that not only celebrates the institution’s 100-year anniversary next year but also revitalizes its mission. The garden is scheduled to open in full next summer. The entry plaza, eating area and bridge that connects the outdoor gardens to the indoor museum are all open to the public now.

The new North Campus gardens advance the notion that landscapes have to be performative, said Mia Lehrer, right, the landscape architect behind this design as well as the Los Angeles River revitalization master plan and other regional projects that marry community engagement and environmentalism.

“Performative is a term that embraces sustainability in a very deep way and implies that any solution to create spaces somehow leaves the place better than it was,” Lehrer said.

The North Campus replaces 153,000 square feet of asphalt parking lot and concrete hardscape. About 102,000 cubic feet of concrete sidewalks, stairs and walls were crushed on site and recycled into the garden. In their place are more than 200 varieties of perennials, 31,000 plants set along a half-mile of winding, decomposed granite pathways that allow water to permeate and replenish groundwater. The benches dotting the paths are wooden beams reclaimed from a fire-damaged building. Much of the decorative fencing is made from reclaimed wrought iron.

All of the site’s storm water is collected and shuttled to deep aquifer recharge wells, preventing runoff and feeding the pond, which was designed as a metaphor for the Los Angeles River. During the dry season, the river appears as a dry stream bed. (That’s Wise, head of education and exhibits at the Natural History Museum, at right.)

“We’re not trying to make this garden a chaparral or true pure native Southern California,” Lehrer said. “We’re trying to make it an instructional and hopefully beautiful place for people to learn about plant materials, to learn about what they do for us. When you find a spider in your bathtub or on your plants, you realize what it’s doing for you. You don’t automatically want to squish it.”

— Susan Carpenter

Common yarrow, Achillea millefolium, blooms in the 1913 Garden at the Natural History Museum’s North Campus.