Have you ever wondered who founded the botanical garden on the Westwood campus? That accomplishment probably should be attributed to Olenus L. Sponsler (1879--1953). From 1922 to 1924, Sponsler was a botany instructor at the University of California, Southern Branch, located on Vermont Avenue. He later became a permanent member of the science faculty. On February 1, 1927, the fledgling university was officially renamed University of California at Los Angeles. If you know your UCLA history, you know that four buildings were then constructed at the new campus in Westwood, at about the same time that Westwood Village was being built. The first class on the new campus was held March 18, 1929, but not until six months was the campus officially occupied. [Read Andrew Hamilton and John B. Jackson (1969), UCLA on the Move]
Sponsler received a bachelor's degree in forestry at the University of Michigan (1910) and a master's degree from the University of Nebraska (1912). His graduate studies and dissertation, "The structure of the starch grain," earned him a doctorate from Stanford University (1922). One can deduce that Sponsler had broad interests, ranging from forestry and the structure of woods to problems of molecular structure and plant physiology. In 1931 he was one of only thirty-five professors--and the only botanist among four biology professors--judged qualified to offer graduate courses at UCLA, and he had the high campus honor of presenting the 1934 Faculty Research Lecture, titled "Living Matter: A Molecular Approach." Possibly his greatest contributions to science came in his latter years, drawing from his studies of the physical structure of starch grains and plant fibers as revealed by X-ray analysis.
Upon learning that the University of California was to develop its new campus on the Westwood site, Professor Sponsler anticipated the needs of the botany faculty for a garden source of teaching and research materials. He visited the new campus while the first four buildings were under construction to plant trees and shrubs in the arroyo adjacent to the Physics-Biology Building, later renamed Kinsey Hall. Initially, trees and shrubs were planted at random, and Sponsler had access to some local sources of water available from the general campus facilities. This was the unofficial start of the botanical garden, before the first full semester of classes in Westwood convened.
Sponsler headed the group of botanists who first transferred to Westwood from the Vermont Avenue campus in 1929. As head of the botanical group in the Life Science Department, Sponsler he became the unofficial first director of the unofficial botanical garden. In 1929 and 1930, the botanical garden extended from the bridge, just east of Gimbel Flagpole, southward from Dickson Court to Le Conte Avenue, parallel to Hilgard Avenue.
The arroyo, which eventually became "the garden," originally was a small, sandy, generally dry streambed lined along both sides by low woody perennials of coastal sage scrub-type vegetation and a few willow trees (Salix). Nobody is certain whether the willow next to the bromeliad section is our only living relict of that original vegetation.
In 1929, Sponsler hired George Groenewegan, a colorful Dutch plantsman, to supervise the maintenance of garden plantings and the paths that extended throughout the long arroyo. Groenewegan, the first garden manager, needs to be the subject of his own biography. To meet the needs of the new department, plants were accepted from any source. Many plant materials were donated by the United States Department of Agriculture Plant Introduction Garden at Torrey Pines, Coolidge Rare Plant Gardens in Pasadena, the Huntington Botanical Gardens (just started a couple years earlier), and others. Several nurseries and the gardens of nearby "good neighbors" provided additional materials for the new garden. From the Arthur Letts estate in Hollywood came a gift of five cycad species, one of the outstanding early additions to the garden's botanical treasures. You may recognize the name Arthur Letts, then chairman of the Broadway Department Store. Together with the Janss Investment Company, Lett's estate gifted more than three and a half million dollars in land value to the University of California in founding the Westwood campus.
Sponsler served as director of the unofficial garden from 1929 to 1937, at which time Professor Arthur Munrad Johnson was appointed as his successor. A plant taxonomist, Johnson was recognized for his special talents in biological illustration.
C. A. Schroeder, Professor Emeritus in Botany