1 year later, nature’s rebound in urban Altadena carries ‘a little bit of hope’ for town’s future

Altadena resident Laurie Scott’s home survived January’s Eaton fire, but destroyed in the mammoth blaze that took down her garage were several cherished house plants.

More than just plants, they represented centerpieces from her wedding, gifts from friends and departed loved ones.

But now they were gone, consumed into ashes by a force that took so much from so many in a matter of days – including the area’s lush greenery, its trees and foliage.

“It was winter, so nothing was growing,” Scott said. “Everything was just grey and black, and this beautiful green town that I loved just was dead.”

Scott, a self-described “avid amateur gardener for years,” went out and bought herself a Trader Joe’s disco ball planter with a pothos plant growing inside to liven up her new living space.

It gave her a thought.

“Having that little house plant brought a little bit of life into the space and a little bit of hope,” Scott said. “Just a piece of the future. I thought, ‘if I feel this way, I think other people are going to feel this way, too.’”

For the last several months, a plant stand parked at the corner of Glenrose Avenue and Calaveras Street offers that same hope to anyone passing by.

Plants and seeds of all kinds are available for free, and some that have stopped by have also left behind a plant for someone else to pick up.

Scott, who works as an associate creative director for a communications and ad agency, said the plant stand has evolved over the months, through phases of debris removal and now into the early stages of rebuilding. She has offered succulents, pothos, purple heart, shrubs, edible plant starters, trees, snake plants, lilies, paperwhites, bulb plants, irises.

Early on, catering to many displaced fire survivors who were between living situations, the stand was stocked with smaller house plants for easy transportation that could fit in a hotel room. Almost a year later, the stand has landscaping plants, native plant seeds and native plants themselves.

Scott urged Altadenans to include native plants in their replanting of gardens and landscaping. The goal: Such planting will help rebuild the ecosystem.

“We need the ground level, and that is something that humans can absolutely do to really help,” Scott said. “If you want to save the mountain lions, plant some buckwheat. It’s weird, the lions won’t eat that, but it will get to them. Their prey will need these native plants.”

The stand is always open and continues to accept plant and seed donations.

Scott’s plant stand represents one of several grassroot efforts that have sprung up in the last year to protect nature and wildlife in Altadena’s urban areas.

Certified arborist, tree advocate and former city of Pasadena forester Rebecca Latta co-founded Altadena Green, which has partnered with several other local groups to protect residents’ trees, as well as street trees.

Latta, the principal arborist for the consulting firm she started in 2003, said that about 60% of Altadena’s tree canopy has been lost this year from both the Eaton fire and the ensuing debris removal and now burgeoning rebuilding effort.

“That number may go up because we have a lot of developers and private individuals who are now taking trees down to build ADUs and larger structures,” Latta said.

Over the summer, Latta and other groups, including Amigos de los Rios, pushed Los Angeles County unsuccessfully to provide additional funding to water trees that survived the fire but faced a second threat to survival in the blazing heat.

Despite extended rainy periods this fall, Latta said many street trees and private trees did not survive because of lack of watering during the summer.

Amigos de los Rios compiled a list of trees in Altadena in need of watering and volunteers drove around the town with water tanks trying to keep as many trees alive as possible.

“It’s caused a group of very concerned, committed Altadena residents who really care about this to step up and work on these issues where they can, but understanding that so many of them are fire victims and so they’re juggling also trying to rebuild their own places and living arrangements.”

Latta said the next hurdle facing Altadena trees coming in the spring and summer are the beetles. They can help decompose trees that have been damaged. But for certain species they can be fatal.

As rebuilding begins in earnest, Latta warned against the impact of increased density in Altadena. She noted that the Eaton fire moved from home to home and not tree to tree.

“Fire is a natural process and we need to learn to work with it because we can assume it will happen again,” Latta said. “It has happened again.”

Nina Raj, a native seed specialist who started the Altadena Seed Library, has spent the year fighting back against disinformation about Altadena’s chaparral ecosystem and its relationship with fire.

In particular, there’s notion that the environment fuels fire when, in fact, it is adapted to withstand fire or need fire, she said. The plants in Altadena’s ecosystem have evolved, Raj said, to bounce back from fire. One example is the Laurel sumac. It’s storage cells allow the whole plant to resprout post-fire. Other types of plant species need fire or smoke to germinate, Raj said.

“We have a lot of these really amazing plants and I think the hope is that we’re able to live in harmony with fire when it’s at a low, healthy, regular cadence, not something like this,” Raj said. “This was completely unprecedented.”

In a similar spirit to Scott’s plant stand, Raj’s seed library has aimed at spreading the literal seeds into Altadena’s urban environment in addition to a more intangible seed — hope.

“I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of the seeds that we’ve planted start to germinate and I don’t just mean that literally I also mean figuratively,” Raj said. “There have been so many coalitions and new initiatives that have sprung up this year and it’s been really powerful to see that.”