The August heat is humming along. Over at Arroyo High School in the scorching San Gabriel Valley city of El Monte, I help maintain a school garden. We call it the Arroyo Farm Lab. On a recent Saturday morning, the lab hosted more than 60 volunteers for a three-hour session of garden maintenance in aggressive heat. Folks came from all over Southern California to help mulch and weed around the sizable garden.
This, I should note, was not a normal occurrence.
Olivia Rodrigo at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in March.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
We had close to triple our normal number of volunteers for such events because pop star Olivia Rodrigo collaborated with longstanding local nonprofit L.A. Works to host a raffle for free tickets to her upcoming Daisy Chain Fields festival in Irvine. (The Aug. 29 festival at Great Park will feature performances by Rodrigo and many other acts.)
Almost everyone I asked at the garden that morning said they had learned of the volunteer opportunity through Rodrigo’s festival.
The organizations are calling the collaboration Daisy Chain Reaction, soliciting volunteers for dozens of community events across Los Angeles and into Orange County. It began July 22 and ends Aug. 20. If volunteers compiled a collective 1,000 hours of service, 125 free pairs of tickets to the festival would be released in a lottery.
Volunteers have surpassed that threshold with more than two weeks to spare.
Volunteers Liz Strong and daughter Lucia Stong, 6, of L.A. tend to native plants at Ernest E. Debs Regional Park as part of the Daisy Chain Reaction initiative.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Volunteers Chaney Heinbaugh, left, of Aliso Viejo and laine Reine, 6, of L.A. care for and water native plants at Ernest E. Debs Regional Park.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“Every day at L.A. Works, we see that people want to help,” said the organization’s executive director, Deborah Brutchey. “What can sometimes be harder is getting from ‘I’d love to volunteer’ to actually signing up and showing up. What excited us about the Daisy Chain Reaction was the opportunity to give Olivia Rodrigo’s incredible community of fans that extra invitation to take that first step. They already have this tremendous energy and connection around the music, and we’re creating a way to turn some of that energy into action in their own communities.”
Many of the Daisy Chain Reaction events, but not all, are garden-based. For example, this weekend and next week volunteers are invited to help clean a fire-affected yard in Altadena, restore habitat at the Audubon Center at Debs Park and beautify a community garden in Van Nuys, in addition to free food distribution events and back-to-school backpack giveaways. As I wrote this, every listed event was full, but there’s a wait list to join. I’ve also seen spaces open up in the days before an event, so keep monitoring the pages if you’re interested.
laine Reine, left, 6, and Thelo Chao, 6, both of L.A., carry water together at Ernest E. Debs Regional Park as part of the Daisy Chain Reaction initiative.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Or volunteer elsewhere! Every two weeks, we collect a few fun-sounding volunteer opportunities in the plants calendar, below. But there are far too many to list and far too much ground to cover. I recommend you look in your immediate vicinity. You might find a public garden you did not know was there. I just spotted Alhambra’s Winston Smoyer Memorial Community Garden, new to me but open for decades, the other day as I drove on Mission Road.
Other than your eyes, the best way to find volunteer opportunities at L.A. community gardens is to rely on the Los Angeles Community Garden Council, a volunteer organization working for a quarter-century to support gardens across the county.
On its website, you can find a map of community gardens as far north as Santa Clarita, as far south as San Pedro, as far west as blocks from the beach, and as far east as Pomona. Each garden listing includes contact information for a garden manager.
The council also lists ongoing open hours for volunteering at 18 community gardens. You can learn there that the Elysian Valley Community Garden is hosting volunteers from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday. Some gardens have reduced or altered hours during the summer, but September typically marks a return to the norm.
Other garden bits
Yardzen partners with SoCal WaterSmart to discount landscape design services
California company Yardzen hopes to complete 300 yard redesigns in the Malibu and Las Virgenes areas by the end of 2027, as part of a new partnership with SoCal WaterSmart. Homeowners in those areas get $450 off the cost of Yardzen’s designs in addition to the standard $5 per-square-foot rebate SoCal WaterSmart provides when turf is replaced by drought-tolerant plants and other conditions are met.
Yardzen design director Kevin Lenhart pitched the program as one more incentive to convince people to take the plunge to nix their lawn. Homeowners, he said, can save on their garden design, garden installation and garden maintenance, all while reducing their fire risk with fire-adapted native plants.
“We’re entering a moment where design is needed to establish a new default,” Lenhart said. “There are layers of benefits that come along with it.”
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43rd annual Succulent Plants Symposium approaching
Later this month, the Huntington will host what it calls the 43rd annual meeting of its Succulent Plants Symposium. Botanists from across California and Arizona, plus Huntington specialists and a naturalist based in Chile, will present sessions on a variety of succulents, including Dudleya, boojum (Fouquieria columnaris) and Arabian aloe (Aloe rubroviolacea).
Tickets to the Aug. 28 symposium in San Marino are $100 and include breakfast and lunch. The event is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. There will also be a silent auction and a succulent plant sale. For more information, head to the Huntington’s website.
Upcoming events
Upcoming events (Aug. 16-31)
Aug. 16
Music Meditation Medicine with Soul Force Project at Arlington Garden, 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Pasadena. A trio of musicians will play sarangi, sitar, and bansuri and tabla, performing Indian ragas during sunset in the Arlington Garden’s olive allée. Admission is free. arlingtongardenpasadena.org
Aug. 20
Rooted Workshop: Kokedama at Descanso Gardens, 10 to 11:30 a.m. in La Cañada Flintridge. Descanso Gardens gardener Jenny Flores will teach a class on the history of the famed Japanese style of growing plants in moss-covered soil balls. You will create your own kokedama plant to take home. Tickets are $50 for members and $65 for nonmembers. descansogardens.org
Garden Groove: Living Earth with Solarc Brewing at the California Botanic Garden, 6 to 9 p.m. in Claremont. The California Botanic Garden, outdoor arts series Living Earth and microbrewery Solarc will collaborate to present a concert within the garden’s Forest Pavilion, featuring beer made from native plants collected at the garden. Tickets are $21 for adults, $16 for seniors and students, and $7 for children, and include garden admission. California Botanic Garden members save $5. calbg.org
Aug. 22
Paint & Sip — Paint the Lower Meadow at the South Coast Botanic Garden, 1 to 2:30 p.m. in Palos Verdes Peninsula. An instructor will guide painters through the exercise of painting a treasured portion of the famed garden on canvas. Facts about the subject plants will be delivered while attendees paint and sip on a glass of wine or nonalcoholic beverage. Tickets are $55 for members and $60 for nonmembers. southcoastbotanicgarden.org
Aug. 26
Crop Swap at Lopez Urban Farm, 5 to 7 p.m. in Pomona. ActiveSGV hosts a free crop swap at a San Gabriel Valley farm. Attendees are encouraged, but not required, to bring produce or seeds to attend. Organizers say no one will leave without free produce. activesgv.org
Aug. 27 and 28
Forest Bathing: Full Moon at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Arcadia. Inspired by the Japanese tradition of shinrin-yoku, the event will gather people at the Arboretum to forest bathe with a certified guide. Attendees are encouraged to engage all of their senses and connect with the natural world. Tickets are $25 for arboretum members and $35 for nonmembers. arboretum.org
Aug. 29
Understanding SoCal Weather: From El Niño to Santa Ana Winds at the Theodore Payne Foundation, 9 a.m. to noon in Sun Valley. Longtime earth science professor William Selby will draw on observation and research to explain how ocean temperatures and our changing weather patterns are transforming our coastlines. Tickets are $38 for nonmembers and 25% off for members. theodorepayne.org
DIY Soil Remediation Workshop with Soilwise at the Theodore Payne Foundation, 1 to 4 p.m. in Sun Valley. Stick around the Theodore Payne headquarters for a plant doubleheader. Community soil scientists Lynn Fang and Daisy Rosas Vargas will teach students how to fill a mesh sock with compost, microbes and fungal mycelium to remediate home soil. Tickets are $100 for nonmembers and 25% off for members. theodorepayne.org
Aug. 30
Medicine Pouch Workshop at King Gillette Ranch, 10 a.m. to noon in Calabasas. Indigenous knowledge-keepers Kathy Willcuts Garcia and Steven Garcia will lead a two-hour workshop teaching attendees to hand-sew their own medicine pouch and fill it with sacred traditional plants, while discussing the pouches’ historical and cultural significance. Tickets are free, but RSVPs are required. The Santa Monica Mountains Fund Field Institute hosts the event. samofund.org
What we’re reading
For The Times, writer Oren Peleg wrote about mechanical engineer Marc Papas, who is on a mission to bike every public street mile in Los Angeles. I thought it was a fun story, with some pretty photos of Papas cycling along a lush section of the L.A. River.
Scientists have recorded 27 million metric tons of self-sustaining sargassum, a seaweed, along the coastlines of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, according to this recent Times article. It seems that agricultural runoff is one possible factor of this growing problem.
Multiple rescue teams worked together and found a hiker who had been bitten by a rattlesnake in the Angeles Forest earlier this month. Times staff writer Karen Garcia reported on the search.
