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URBAN WATCH - Around this time last year, I wrote a City Watch article on my disbelief and frustration that the orchid trees lining Westchester Parkway under the care of LAWA/LAX had been severely and brutally pruned, even while in bloom.
After the article, LAX contact me, and in conversations with a very nice rep from LAX I explained my views. They took my feedback, but that seemed to be the end of the conversation.
My feelings were that the major city department of LAWA/LAX would just file away my complaints and continue with severe pruning of the trees.
Happily, while driving down Westchester Parkway between Airport and Sepulveda Boulevards, I saw that many of these orchid trees are in beautiful bloom. Some trees look as if they may not have survived last year’s pruning, but those trees which were let alone to grow are now filling the spaces with their flowers.
Flowering trees, or any flowering flora, have one purpose: to flower. To give the world their beauty, and many times their sweet scents.
These particular flowering orchid trees lessen the harshness of the city and can turn a bad day into a good one.
I am not an arborist, and LAX needs one if they don’t have one on call, but unless there are hazardous situations with these trees, perhaps they should not be touched for another year so they know they can bloom without fear of being attacked and give even fuller flowers.
Coming to the Los Angeles region are the FIFA World Cup, 2026, So-Fi Stadium; Super Bowl LXI, 2027, So-Fi Stadium; and the Olympics and Para-Olympics, 2028, throughout Los Angeles County.
Who knows what the country, city and world will be like when those events happen, but if cities, businesses and homeowners of the Los Angeles Region could become disciplined and not prune flowering trees, shrubs, plants when they are flowering-and right before, this place will a more beautiful and welcoming place for visitors to those events, and to residents year round.
Thank you, LAWA/LAX for permitting your orchid trees to fulfill their destiny, and bloom and flower for our benefit.
(Matthew Hetz is a Los Angeles native, a composer whose works have been performed nationally, and some can be found here. He is the past President of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra and Marina del Rey Symphony. His dedication to transit issues is to help improve the transit riding experience for all, and to convince drivers to ride buses and trains to fight air pollution and global warming. He is an instructor at Emeritus/Santa Monica College and a regular contributor to CityWatchLA.)
