famous gardens – IAMNOTASTALKER

May 21, 2018May 20, 2018

Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden from “Pure Genius”

The Grim Cheaper and I are finally getting around to landscaping the backyard of our new house, so to say I’m into gardens lately would be an understatement. If I knew how to use Pinterest (I swear I cannot figure that site out), I’d be pinning foliage design ideas left and right. Instead I’ve been visiting gardens IRL and snapping copious photos. One idyll that I only just learned about thanks to a brief mention in the March 2018 issue of Los Angeles magazine is Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, a bucolic space tucked away on a sleepy residential street in Pasadena. When I discovered upon further digging that the spot is also a filming location, I decided I had to visit it stat for both backyard inspo and blogging purposes.

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Originally commissioned by Charles Storrier Stearns and his wife, Ellamae Sheppard, on the grounds of their sprawling Pasadena manse (which you can see a photo of here) in 1935, the 2-acre glen took a whopping 7 years to complete.

The couple called upon landscape architect Kinzuchi Fujii to design the picturesque space.

Sadly, shortly before completing the project, Fujii was sent to an internment camp where he remained until the end of World War II. Though he considered the garden his crowning achievement, he never returned to see his vision finalized.

What he created is nothing short of magical, with walking paths;

two large ponds;

a 15-foot devil’s bridge made of granite,

a teahouse that was initially constructed in Japan and then taken apart before being shipped to Pasadena, whereupon it was reassembled at the garden;

numerous footbridges;

and a plethora of plant varieties including Japanese maples, Chinese elms, and redwood trees.

Upon Ellamae’s death in 1949, the Storrier Stearns estate was sold at auction to an antiques dealer named Gamelia Haddad Poulsen. Though she subdivided the vast property into seven separate parcels and razed the massive mansion, she held onto the Japanese garden as well as an adjoining plot on which she built a modest home.

Gamelia cherished the tranquil space, caring for and maintaining its beauty until the state declared imminent domain on a 1/3-acre portion of it in 1975 as part of the Interstate 710 expansion. With the fate of the garden in flux, she left it to deteriorate. The ponds eventually dried up, the plants shriveled, and the teahouse burned down.

When Gamelia passed away in 1985, her son, Jim Haddad, and his wife, Connie, inherited the garden and the home. The 710 expansion had still yet to see fruition by that time, so the couple finally decided to restore the property. The painstaking project took 15 years to complete, but the ponds were eventually filled, the teahouse was rebuilt to exacting specifications, the foliage was replanted, and Fujii’s vision was restored.

The Haddads kept the garden, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, mainly private, opening it up to the outside world solely as a special events venue and for filming.

It was not until 2016 that the couple made the site available to tour.

Today, Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden is open to the public every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the second and last Sunday of each month.

Thanks to the Pasadena Star-News, I learned that the pilot of Pure Genius (originally named Bunker Hill) was lensed on the premises in 2016. (Though the article misreported the location of filming as Arlington Garden, which is situated across the street, one quick scan through the episode told me that shooting had actually taken place at Storrier Stearns.)

The garden appeared throughout the episode, masking as the grounds of the supposed Palo Alto-area Bunker Hill Center for the Advancement of Medicine.

As you can see in the screen capture below, the exterior of a Bunker Hill building was digitally added to the background of one of the scenes featuring the garden.

While I know that Storrier Stearns must have been utilized in other filmings over the years, I was unable to dig up any other productions it appeared in.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, from the pilot episode of Pure Genius, is located at 270 Arlington Drive in Pasadena. The property is open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the second and last Sunday of each month from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $10. You can visit the garden’s official website here.

April 20, 2018April 19, 2018

Moorten Botanical Garden

If you follow any lifestyle, fashion or beauty blogger, chances are you’ve seen some variation of the photo above. For those who don’t keep up with influencers, the image is of the cactarium – aka cacti terrarium – at Moorten Botanical Garden in Palm Springs. The structure has been documented on social media so frequently as of late that The Telegraph recently dubbed it “the most Instagrammed greenhouse in the world.” I first learned about the garden in December 2015 while reading this article about the desert in Sunset magazine. In the days that followed, I spotted pictures of the place pop up in the IG feeds of no less than three bloggers I follow. Moorten it seemed was everywhere! Considering I had called the Coachella Valley home for three years by that point, I thought it was a bit sacrilegious that I had never seen the idyll in person myself. So I promptly dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there a few weeks later – and was thrilled to learn upon doing so that the site is a filming location!

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Moorten Botanical Garden was established by railroad-worker-turned-actor Chester Moorten, who was best known for appearing in the Keystone Cops silent films. Upon being diagnosed with Tuberculosis in the ‘30s, Chester left Los Angeles and headed east to Palm Springs with the hope that the desert air would provide him some relief. A longtime green thumb, Moorten started cultivating and selling cacti and other desert foliage at a downtown Palm Springs shop/nursery that he opened in 1938 and quickly earned himself the nickname “Cactus Slim.” Everyone from area locals to the actor’s celebrity friends were customers.

In 1940, Moorten married botanist Patricia Haliday. Together the couple expanded Chester’s business to include landscape design and were soon hired by such luminaries as Walt Disney, Red Skelton, Jimmy Van Heusen, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Lily Pons to create backyards at their desert homes. Walt even tapped the duo to curate the foliage for Frontierland at his soon-to-be-built Disneyland Resort.

The couple also expanded their nursery into a cactus museum of sorts, using it as a showcase for their growing landscape business.

Cultivated from plants gathered during the couple’s many world travels, the site soon evolved into an area attraction.

In its early days, such luminaries as Dwight Eisenhower, Mamie Eisenhower, and Ginger Rogers were all known to pop in.

In 1955, Chester and Patricia moved the garden to its current home, a 1.5-acre plot of land at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive complete with a sprawling Mediterranean-style estate that became their residence.

Dubbed “Cactus Castle,” the 1929 dwelling was originally commissioned by nature photographer Stephen Willard and his wife, Beatrice, who lived on the premises until 1947.

When Slim passed away in 1980, Patricia continued to live at the estate, but handed over the daily operation of the garden to the couple’s son, Clark, who shared his parents’ deep love of horticulture.

Clark then moved into Cactus Castle with his family upon Patricia’s passing in 2010. He continues to run the garden to this day, carrying on his parents’ legacy with gusto.

Currently, Moorten Botanical Garden, which is also known as Desertland, is comprised of 3,000 different varieties of plants organized into 9 geographical regions including California, Texas, Arizona, Baja California, Colorado, the Mojave Desert, the Sonoran Desert, South Africa, and South America.

Woven landscapes greet visitors at every turn . . .

. . . as do unique relics like the loveseat created from a cedar burl pictured below . . .

. . . and vegetative curiosities such as the extraordinary S-shaped tree situated just outside of Cactus Castle’s front door, which was moved to the garden from Palm Canyon after being struck by lightning.

The bolt caused the tree to burn and collapse to the side, but it survived and continued to grow in a curved position.

The Moortens propped it up on rocks after re-locating it and subsequently created a waterfall underneath (which was not turned on the day we were there).

Moorten Botanical Garden also boasts an array of crystals, rocks, fossils, antique mining tools, a gift shop/nursery, and a menagerie of desert animals.

Its biggest draw, though, is the cactarium. An invention of Chester’s, the shutter-worthy structure was erected one day when Patricia happened to be out of town.

As Clark explained to The Telegraph, “Originally the cactarium had a wooden frame, and it was covered with double thickness window screen for shade. My father wanted a more greenhouse-type of structure, so he bent all the pipes while mother was away for a week in around 1976 or 1977.” Patricia was reportedly not at all happy with the result. Little did she know the rounded shed would become one of the desert’s biggest draws some forty years later. Though not much to look at from the outside . . .

. . . the cactarium’s interior is pretty spectacular.

Filled with rare specimens of plants . . .

. . . the structure is literally dripping with greenery.

Looking around Moorten Botanical Garden, it is not hard to see why so many are enchanted with the place and how Instagram has served to make it even more popular.

The site is just that picturesque.

True to form, I ran into a popular blogger, iPhone camera in hand and photographer husband trailing closely behind, while I was there.

Moorten Botanical Garden is not just an Instagram star, though. The site has also popped up a couple of times onscreen.

Back in 1995, the garden was featured in the 18th episode of the 6th season of Rescue 911 in the segment titled “Chance Encounter,” which covers the true tale of two young hikers both named Jennifer who were rescued after falling off a cliff in Palm Springs in 1994. At the end of the bit, the real life Jennifers stroll through Moorten with their rescuers. You can watch the segment here.

In the Season 13 episode of Visiting . . . with Huell Howser titled “Moorten Botanical Garden,” which aired in 2005, the convivial host visits the site and conducts an extensive interview with Clark. You can watch the full episode here.

Moorten also makes an appearance in the 2017 horror film Valentine DayZ in a scene that is featured in the trailer, which is where the stills below came from. I couldn’t actually find the flick available to stream anywhere, which the GC said is incredibly telling. Winking smile

If you happen to find yourself in the desert, I highly recommend a visit to Moorten Botanical Garden.

The site can easily be traversed in about an hour and admittance is only $5.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Moorten Botanical Garden is located at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive in The Mesa neighborhood of Palm Springs. You can visit the garden’s official website here.

May 8, 2017May 6, 2017

Kyoto Gardens from “Her”

As a kid, I was pretty much never without a book in hand. (Truth be told, not much has changed since.) One of my favorite childhood tomes was Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 masterpiece The Secret Garden. Reading it made me want nothing more than to unearth a lush hidden idyll of my own. That desire has never left me. So when I learned about a “secret” garden tucked away on the third floor of a downtown L.A. hotel back in 2011, I rushed right out to stalk it immediately. Known as Kyoto Gardens, the site did not disappoint and the Grim Cheaper and I spent quite a bit of time exploring. While I took a myriad of photographs that day, at the time the place had yet to be featured onscreen (at least that I know of), so I never blogged about it. Then last week, while researching my post on the Peace Awareness Labyrinth & Gardens, I was thrilled to randomly come across a mention of Kyoto Gardens’ appearance in the 2013 sci-fi drama Her, which meant that I could finally write about them!

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The 1/2-acre urban oasis was originally created in 1977 as part of Little Tokyo’s New Otani Hotel & Garden.

At the time, the tiny glen was called “Garden in the Sky.”

In 2007, the 21-story, 434-room hotel changed ownership and became the Kyoto Grand Hotel and Gardens. It was sold once again in 2011 and turned into the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Los Angeles Downtown. The garden area is now known as Kyoto Gardens.

Situated atop the hotel’s two-story parking garage, Kyoto Gardens boasts an upper and lower terrace, waterfalls, streams, pathways, incredible views of the city, and a banquet room named Thousand Cranes that overlooks it all.

The garden was modeled after a breathtaking 10-acre site in Tokyo that was created as a private oasis for feudal lord Katō Kiyomasa during the 16th Century. Today, it is part of the Hotel New Otani Tokyo. You can see photographs of it here.

Kyoto Gardens is often used for special events and weddings.

You can check out some great images of the gardens, as well as the rest of the hotel, here.

Kyoto Gardens was transformed into a bucolic restaurant for the filming of Her. In the movie, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and Katherine (Rooney Mara) meet up at the picturesque site to sign their divorce papers over lunch.

During the meal, the two get into an argument over the fact that Theodore is currently dating Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), who is actually an operating system.

The hotel itself has also been featured in numerous productions, but since I did not take photos of anything other than Kyoto Gardens while I was there, I will have to save that info for a future post.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Kyoto Gardens are located on the third floor of the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Los Angeles Downtown, which is located at 120 South Los Angeles Street in Little Tokyo. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

October 2, 2008February 13, 2009

We’ll Always Have Paris

Once again I am indebted to Mike over at MovieShotsLA for finding yet another location that had eluded me – a location I had been searching for for close to 16 years! During Season 3 of the original 90210, Brenda and Donna spend their summer in Paris. In the episode entitled “Shooting Star/An American In Paris” Brenda meets a tall, dark and handsome college student named Rick in a beautiful French garden. Later on in the episode the two walk underneath a curved rose-covered trellis and it is that trellis that I have been searching for ever since that episode aired way back in August of 1992. A few years after that episode aired, my parents took me on a trip to Europe as a present for my high school graduation. Our first stop was France and I remember walking around the streets of Paris carrying a small picture of Brenda and Rick under that trellis, stopping every native French person I could find to ask if they knew where it was located. Yes, I really am that blonde! 🙂 My naive 18 year old self truly believed that Shannen Doherty and Tori Spelling had actually flown to France to film their Paris scenes. That reality was shattered this past summer when I took the Universal Studios tour and discovered that most of “Paris” was actually filmed at the Universal backlot. Not filmed at Universal, though, were the garden scenes. So I still had no idea where Brenda and Rick’s trellis was located. Knowing how obsessed I was with finding Brenda’s garden, Mike stayed up very late one night this week and located it for me and I was able to actually stalk it yesterday!! Let me tell you, I could not have been more excited!!

Mike and I were fairly certain that Brenda’s garden was located in one of the three main botanical gardens in LA, and since I had stalked the Arcadia Arboretum on Sunday without finding it, Mike set his sights on the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino. He stayed up late one night searching Google images until he finally located Brenda’s trellis in the Rose Garden area of the Huntington, a good 5,000 miles from Paris, France. THANKS MIKE!!!! So yesterday, I dragged my dad out to the Huntington, in 103 degree heat no less, to do some 90210 stalking.

The Huntington shows up three times in the “Shooting Star/An American in Paris” episode. We first see it in the scene when Brenda and Rick first meet. In that scene, Brenda is sitting on a circular bench underneath a large oak tree. Sadly, that circular bench was removed long ago and the tree Brenda sat under is now surrounded by foliage, so the area looks very different. But there was a similar bench located just a few yards away, so I had to take a picture sitting on that. 🙂

The area where Brenda actually sat sixteen years ago is located on the very Southeast corner of the North Vista lawn, pictured above. The path Rick walks through when he first comes upon Brenda is now gone and filled in with foliage. Such a bummer!!!!

This same tree and bench area also show up in the episode following “Shooting Star/An American in Paris”, which is entitled “Castles In The Sand”. It is shown in the scene when Brenda dreams about Rick on her plane flight home to LA.

The next location I dragged my dad to stalk was the white flowered trellis Brenda and Rick walk under on their last night in Paris together. This is the location where “Reek” tells Brenda that if she were truly in love with Dylan she wouldn’t be standing there with him and then the two share their final Paris kiss. This particular trellis is located in the Rose Garden area of the Huntington, just off of the Tea Room.

This same location also shows up in the Hil D. movie A Cinderella Story. In the movie Hilary attends a masquerade ball at the Huntington. The exteriors of the ball location were filmed outside of the Huntington Gallery building (the interiors were actually filmed at a theatre in Downtown LA). During the ball, Chad Michael Murray takes Hil on a walk under the same trellises Rick and Brenda walked under 12 years before. After walking under the trellises, Chad leads Hilary to a gazebo where the two share a moonlit dance. That gazebo was brought in by producers and put in the Brown Garden especially for the filming and was removed when the three day shoot was complete.

Next up was the site I was most excited about seeing in person, the location I had wandered the streets of Paris trying to find – the curved rose-covered trellis Brenda and Rick walk beneath during their tour of Paris. Even sixteen years later, I could not have been more excited to see this location in person. 🙂 I truly felt like a high school girl all over again! The trellis appeared in the scene where Brenda takes Rick on a walking tour of Paris and I am happy to report that it looks EXACTLY the same as it did when it appeared on 90210, except that due to the time of year, the flowers usually covering it were not in full bloom yesterday. This trellis is also located in the Huntington’s Rose Garden; it covers the path which leads to the Japanese Garden area.

Interestingly enough, this very same location showed up on 90210 some years later as the location where Steve and Janet tie the knot. Producers added some black street lights to the site which are not normally there. Otherwise it looks much the same as it did when it first appeared on 90210.

The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens was originally the private home of Central Pacific Railroad owner Henry E. Huntington and his wife Arabella. Originally called the San Marino Ranch, Henry and his wife purchased the property in 1902 and began creating a truly incredible botanical garden in their backyard. Throughout his lifetime, Henry also collected fine art and books and today it is his art, library and gardens that make up the Huntington. The 207 acre property is an absolutely beautiful place to spend an afternoon. I am usually not big on museums, but the Huntington is simply breathtaking. The gardens alone cover over 120 acres and consist of painstakingly maintained landscapes from different areas of the world. It really takes more than one visit to discover all of this amazing place. The grounds are serene and peaceful and when visiting, you will feel a million miles away from Los Angeles. The Rose Garden is exquisite, the Bonzai Court and Zen Garden are truly unique, the Japanese Garden is incredible with its winding koi ponds and bamboo forests, and the newly built Chinese Garden with its enormous lake is absolutely gorgeous. This is one location that is a must-see, not just for stalkers, but for anyone visiting the Los Angeles area.

Besides 90210 and A Cinderella Story, The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens has appeared in countless movie and television productions, including First Daughter, Be Cool, Legally Blonde 2, The Bachelor reality show, The Wedding Planner, Beverly Hills Ninja, The West Wing, American Wedding, Monster in Law, Charlie’s Angels, as well as hundreds of others. It was also the location of Robert and Anna’s wedding on the soap opera General Hospital. Anytime you see a garden popping up on one of your favorite television shows or movies, chances are it was filmed at the Huntington.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens is located at 1151 Oxford Road in San Marino. You can visit their website here. You can also visit their filming website here.