Anthony Yu, a volunteer gardener at MEMBG only since November 1998, has very generously donated $8000, which will be used this spring for pruning and removing dead, diseased, and dying trees within the garden. The funds will enable us to hire an outside contractor to extract trees within the complex garden setting. Our major targets will be our deceased, very large California fan palms (Washingtonia filifera), which succumbed to pathogens several years ago despite all efforts to save them. Now these palms have become a safety hazard because of the tremendous weight positioned upon decaying trunks. An out-of-control cottonwood (Populus nigra) is also slated for removal.
A third-year student at Santa Monica College, Anthony has a recording studio that did well this past winter, enabling him to share his good fortune by helping our garden financially. How many twenty-year-olds would think to share such bounty with a collection of plants? For as long as he can remember, Anthony has had a profound fascination with plants and an appreciation for their beauty, and these are what initially drew him to the botanical garden. At first his participation as a volunteer gardener was somewhat limited due to an automobile crash that left him nursing a fractured wrist. Undaunted, Anthony did what he could to help, weeding his way through the garden, which he feels "is a beautiful place to be in harmony with nature."
Those of us who have had the pleasure of working with Anthony know him to be a very positive individual and, like all of our garden volunteers, a very giving person. We extend our most sincere and heartfelt thanks to Anthony, whose gift will help MEMBG attain a goal that it did not have the ready funds to achieve!
Rand Plewak, Garden Manager