claremont courier rites of spring/spring bride special 3-27-14

8/12/2019 Claremont COURIER Rites of Spring/Spring Bride special 3-27-14

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Cour er il r emont

claremont-courier.com

ites of R

SPRINGIts the season for marriage, and so muchplanning needs to be done

See our SPRING BRIDE section inside

Claremonts strawberry

patch may be moving,but the grower has noplans to slow down


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RITES OF SPRING/2014 3

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A greener view by Sarah TorribioStudents garden on campus, learn valuable lessons.

Strawberry patch by Beth HartnettGrower sees fruit of labor in family strawberry patch.

Spring bride Special sectionBride-to-be gets a reality check; Pinterest sweeps the wedding planning scene.


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COURIER photos/Steven FelschundneffAdrian Vargas and his daughter Erica Vargas man the family strawberry booth on Monday in LaVerne. The Vargas family grew strawberries on the pocket farm located atBase Line Road and Towne Avenue in Claremont for 35 years until the land was sold last year.

A drian Vargas maywork long hours sometimes as manyas 15 hours a day, 7 days a

weekbut the La Vernefarmer, owner of Claremonts longstandingstrawberry patch, revels inthe fruits of his labor despitethe daily drudge.

He blames it on his bloodline, partof a long line of farmers who pros-

pered in the vegetable fields of Michoacn, Mexico. More than athousand miles away from his earlytraining, Mr. Vargas is proud to carryon the family tradition in Claremontand La Verne.

Following in his fathers footstepsas a farmer wasnt an easy choice,especially with the unpredictablewhims of the growing season and theoften unfavorably stacked costs of growing to how much money each

bundle of fruit brings in. But it wasthe only choice for him even when itmeant seeing the money disappear for

bills as soon as it came in, as it often

Grower sees fruit of his labor at Claremont strawberry patch

Adrian Vargas picks a few strawberries from his field in La Verne on Monday afternoon. Mr. Vargas and his family sold strawber-ries from their farm on the corner of Base Line Road and Towne Avenue in Claremont for 35 years before being forced out by aplanned town home development.

STRAWBERRY PATCHcontinues on the next page


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times did. Despite the pitfalls, theVargas family continues to find sweetsatisfaction in strawberry farming.

I love growing strawberries andseeing how happy it makes other peo-

ple, Mr. Vargas said. For me, its allabout helping other people.

His affinity for the sugary sweet berry began in boyhood. Moving toLa Verne from Mexico at the age of 12, Mr. Vargas began working at CalFruit in San Dimas. In betweenshifts, he enjoyed riding his bike upto Marshall Canyon where he wouldindulge in a few fresh berries pickedripe off the vine.

H is strawberry obses-sion grew when Mr.Vargas foundemployment working in the

strawberry fields of JimTagami. Under Mr. Tagamiswatch, the budding farmer would learn all there was toknow about the art of straw-

berry farming, particularlythe importance of patience.

Strawberry farming is a tedioustask. The soil must be turned andwatered then left alone for severaldays before the berries are plantedand covered in black plastic. The

waiting continues as mulch is addedand a slow-drip watering system isengaged. Leaving the berries on thevine as long as possible is Mr.Vargas trick to growing the best

berries possible, but that means wait-ing even longer.

After eight years helping Mr.Tagami maintain his 14 acres of farmland in Claremont and SanDimas, Mr. Vargas received the

opportunity to fly on his own, takingover the Claremont patch in hisemployers stead. After finding hisfeet in the first two years runningVargas Farms, Mr. Vargas wouldmove the patch to its prominent placeon the corner of Base Line Road andTowne Avenue, where the land owner allowed Mr. Vargas to grow inexchange for paying the propertytaxes.

She told me, Adrian, I want you to be able to provide for your family.

Such goodwill has seemed toalways follow him. In fact, the kind-ness of others has allowed VargasFarms to continue its strawberry dis-tribution despite recent hardships.The lot where Mr. Vargas operatedhis Claremont strawberry patch was

recently sold to a developer after thedeath of the former landowner. Hewas offered the land, but was unableto afford the asking price. The lastagricultural patch in Claremont hasnow become a thing of the past as thecity paves way for a 95-unit condo-minium complex.

I was really said, I thought, Thisis the end of the farm, he said.

V argas Farms famousClaremont strawber-ries, however, are notgoing away altogether. Mr.Vargas continues to grow inClaremont at the hillsidehome of Mayor Pro TempCorey Calaycay. He operatesanother field at the MethodistChurch in La Verne. Whilehe is sad to no longer begrowing on the corner of

Towne and Base Line, thereis a silver lining in theexpenses he is saving. The

rising water costs inClaremont were crippling,according to Mr. Vargas. Atypical monthly water bill athis patch in Claremont couldcost him as much as $1800,he noted. He says his bill inLa Verne is half that price.

The entire Vargas Family has had ahand in the farms continued success,spending much of their childhood inthe fields, where they learned to drivewith the tractor and ate berries off thevine just like their dad did. Vargas

Farms continues to be a familyaffairdaughter Erica runs the farmstand off D Street in La Verne while agroup of Mr. Vargas grandkids pick the strawberries out back.

T he Claremont farmstand continues tooperate at Base Lineand Towne, but only on amonth-to-month basis. Theyarent sure when their lastday will be.

The Vargas family hasnt let the

looming deadline hamper their busi-ness. The fresh scent of strawberries perfume the air along with the freshspring blooms. Recent difficultieshavent affected the farms output.The stand is laden with cartons thatoverflow with succulent strawberriesin their full glory, some drizzled inchocolate, others pressed into jam

jars. Mr. Vargas estimates the standmay sell as many as 80 boxes of strawberries in a day.

Extra work has gone into keepingthe strawberry supply plentiful. Withthe loss of the four-acre farm at BaseLine and Towne, Mr. Vargas has beenforced to operate several smaller

patches as he searches for a larger space. But he doesnt mind the extraworkload. In his heart of hearts, Mr.Vargas takes a page from the Beatlessongbook, Strawberry FieldsForever.

Its a part of my blood, he said. Icant keep away.

Beth [email protected]

I love growing strawberries

and seeing how happy itmakes other people. Forme, its all about helpingother people.

Adrain VargasClaremont strawberry patch

farmer/owner

Mr. Vargas shows off a couple of albion strawberries grown recently at his new farm.

Standing next to his new farm off Base Line Road in Claremont, Adrain Vargas waits for one of his workers before deliveringstrawberries to his new fruit stand in La Verne.

STRAWBERRY PATCHcontinued from the previous page


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B runch was boisterous.Old friends from SanAntonio were in townand we gathered around thedining room table in fullview of our sun-drenched

backyard, munching an arrayof spring-fresh, locallygrown fruits and vegetables.The conversation was fast,funny and convivial, but in arare, quiet moment one of our Texas guests asked whatwe had done to the strawber-rieswhat made them sosweet: sugar? Nothingadded, my wife smiled.This is how they grow inSouthern California.

Like the rest of the residents of theacademic arcadia of Claremont, wehave been spoiled by the flowering

presence of a local strawberry patch;Vargas Farms has long managed thesite, slotted on a rectangular set of sixacres running parallel to the 210 free-way and framed to the west and north

by Towne Avenue and Base Line Road.Ive loved walking by it in the earlymorning hours of winter, watching thecrews build up the beds and lay downthe irrigation system, labor overseen

by bustling bands of killdeer birdsthat zigzagged across the fertile land.Their alarm calla taut, nasal kill-dee, kill-dee, kill-deepierced eventhe rumble-whine of traffic beyond.

None of that energy, human or avian, was on display the other day.Weeds now choke the untended rows,the white pipes and sprinkler headshave vanished, and no killdeer raisedtheir sharp voices. Come spring, wellhave to hunt for a new vendor of thattender, succulent berry.

The farm has fallen victim to a post-recession land rush thats in the

process of converting a number of empty lots in Claremont. Six develop-ments, totaling nearly 700 new hous-ing units, are underway. One of these,slated to include more than 90 town-homes, is in advanced planning stagesfor the former strawberry field.

Such infill development, its rapidexpansion notwithstanding, has its

benefits. Among these upsides, as any New Urbanist will declare, isincreased density. With more peopleliving within a smaller footprint theodds go up for a decrease in daily autotravel and a greater demand for masstransit. This should enhance ridershipof local bus routes and the Metrolink,which utilizes Claremonts historicDepot; in the long-term, there should

be as well a larger constituencydemanding the expansion east of Metro Rails Gold Line, which is pro-

jected to swing through the City of Trees on its way to the Ontario airport.

Another set of related advantages isthat those inhabiting these new devel-opments will use fewer resources most crucially, energy and water.Because they are choosing to live

closer in, rejecting housing optionsavailable on the urban periphery thathas radiated out from the InlandEmpires complex of freeways, theconversion of this particular truck farm may signal a market-drivenslowing down of the decades-longassault on the eastern desert.

To entice those consumers alert tothese possibilities and pressures, CityVentures, a regional developer, has

added some attractive sustainabilityelements to its plans for the strawber-ry patch. As it has for its existingsouthland projects, the company will

plant drought-tolerant landscapes,install solar arrays on the roofs, and

build an ocean friendly storm-water retention structure. These amenitiesand efficiencies, City Venturesasserts, adds up to a win-win: Lessdriving, clean air, close to everythingyou love and more time for the goodthings in life.

The car will not be erased fromthis smart-growth terrain: plans leave

plenty of room for it, via lanes thatwill snake through the project andthe square footage that parking willabsorb.

The air will not be quite crystal-clear, either, given that the develop-ment hugs the heavily trafficked 210Freeway. The Claremont City Councilearlier had rejected a proposal to con-struct much-needed affordable hous-ing there on environmental-justicegrounds: why should the less well-off only find shelter adjacent to a polluted

highway slip-stream? (A solerepresentative reit-erated this objec-tion to the new

project, which nowlacks a meaningfulnumber of afford-able-housing units;

did his colleagues in the majority feelthat the middling class is somehowmore immune to tailpipe toxins?)

Strangely enough, no one on thecurrent council strongly objected toanother complication of the communi-tys impending loss of open space,wherever located. Once these proper-ties are built out, their resident vehi-cles will surge on to the local streetgrid, jamming roadways and pound-ing roadbeds, a crowding that willhave clear implications for traffic,tempers and taxes.

These contemporary dilemmas are part and parcel of an older narrativeabout the physical restructuring of Los Angeles since World War II. After all, it was the internal-combustionengine, and its poisonous emissions,that plowed under the regions one-time agricultural productivity. Andsmog was an equal opportunity killer:citrus groves, vineyards, and fruits

and vegetablesto say nothing of thehuman pulmonary systemwilted before its fatal fumes, giving growersa negative incentive to decamp for clearer climes.

They were pushed out as well bycity codes and county ordinances that

prioritized residential development,much like the mid-century, auto-cen-tric neighborhood where I now live;all such housing was accessed easily

by the expanding number of freewaysthat reinforced the primacy of four-wheeled, gas-guzzling vehicles.

In Claremont and the other foothillcommunities that transition was quick and disorienting. While we were stu-dents at Pitzer College during themid-1970s, my friends and I wouldride bikes along Base Line Road pastacre after acre of orange and lemontrees, and through whose sweet fra-grance we happily pedaled. Less thana decade later, those blossomingorchards were gone, bulldozed for cul-de-sac subdivisions.

Vestiges remain, smaller lots that anearlier generation of builders

bypassed, deeming them too marginal,too unprofitable. Today, this acreagecommands top dollar.

But theres no amount of moneythat will compensate for the bitter-

sweet loss of our strawberry patch.

[Editors note: Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College and author of On the Edge: Water, Immigration, and

Politics in the Southwest; a longer versionof this essay appeared in his award-win-ning blog, Golden Green, on KCET.org. It is printed here with permission. KD]

A eulogy to our strawberry patch by Char MillerRITES OF SPRING/20146

COURIER photos/Steven FelschundneffThe sign advertising fresh strawberries remains at the old Vargas Farms on the cornerof Base Line Road and Towne Avenue in Claremont. The Vargas family will continue tosell fruit at the stand until construction of a planned town home development begins.

The Claremont City Council approved a90-unit townhome complex, whichresulted in the closure of Claremontslast piece of agriculture.


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Spring bride W elcome to the 2014 edition of our special bridal sectionin the COURIERs Rites of Spring edition. Here you willlearn about new trends and tips on planning yourdream wedding. Pictured is the Padua Hills Theatre, a popularevent and wedding location in Claremont.

. . . . . . . . .8Dream wedding by Jessica Gustin. . . . . .10Pinterest planning by Sarah Torribio


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RITES OF SPRING/20148

W hen I was a little girl, I wouldimagine my wedding day as anextravagant affair in Pariscomplete with horse-drawn carriages,copious amounts of goodies and, of course, a show-stopping gown with anunreasonably long train. Perhaps I couldeven have my favorite songstress Joanna

Newsom take the stage for the first dance. No one ever stopped to tell me that I was living in

a fantasy world.I met Zachary Pfahler in 3D art class at Sonoma State

University in 2008. He was an art history major whileI was working on my studio art minor. Though neither of us were very good at creating 3D art, something

beautiful did come from that classour relationship.After graduating, we moved to Claremont so Zack

could attend the University of California, Riverside toget his masters degree. He went to school while Iworked. It wasnt a glamorous life, but we made itthrough.

Zack asked me to marry him on Christmas Day2013 after four-and-a-half years of dating. It was likea dream. Rose petals. Champagne. Our favorite song.I felt warm and fuzzy all over. This was it. I had donethe time and now we were finally getting married!

This feeling lasted about a week until someone broke the spell with five little words: Do you have a

Keeping it real while planning our dream weddingSpring bride

Photos special to the COURIERZachary Pfahler and his bride-to-be Jessica Gustin pose for engagement photos in the Claremont Packing House. Thetwo self-proclaimed creative types have grand ideas for their wedding and find it a challenge to plan a realistic butsatisfying wedding on a budget.

DREAM WEDDINGcontinues on the next page


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date? With that phrase, reality began to break through my post-engagement euphoria.

Zack and I are what you might call creative types.We have grand ideas but we both have a terrible vice, procrastination.

In the weeks to come, we would continue to beasked when our wedding bells would be chiming,along with other probing questions, such as: Whatsyour theme? What are your colors? Will it be a

big or small wedding? We spent the first month hid-ing under a rock and the second month consideringelopement (a thought that has crossed our mindsmany times since), but after a few more months and a

bit of soul searching, we decided on a small backyardwedding to be held in May.

As we began to plan this low-key gathering we raninto some serious issues, number one being that no onewe knew had a large enough yard. We tried to make itwork time and time again, but it seemed we were notmeant to have the backyard wedding of our dreams.

My father, Ronald Gustin, suggested that we check out a location called the Bard Mansion located on PortHueneme, a Navy base in Ventura County. I resisted

because, with the word mansion in the title, I wasconvinced that we could never afford it. But with somegoading, I found myself standing outside one of themost beautiful places I had ever seen. Noted architectMyron Hunt, who also designed Pomona College andthe Huntington Library, designed the Bard Mansion, ahistoric Antebellum-style estate. The moment I saw it,I was hooked. When a couple is as poor as a proverbial

pair of church mice, fate that incurable romantic often intervenes. Thanks to my fathers status as aretired Navy man, we have access to this stunningvenue and its incredibly reasonable prices.

Soon after, I found the most amazing wedding

dress, a full-length, romantic ivory gown atDeborahs Bridal in Upland. Deborahs has also pro-vided us with bridesmaids dresses and tuxes. Havingsecured my location and a dress, it finally felt likeeverything was falling into place. That is until realitystruck again. The costs quickly started adding up, put-ting us in a panic and making us wonder why we did-nt elope in the first place.

We started calling in favors from all of our talentedfriends flowers from one, photos from another andhair and make-up from my brilliant hairdresser. Beinga crafty person has also helped considerably. Withsites like Pinterest, I have been able to take on smallDIY projects like the seating cards and guest book. Sowith help from our parents and a lot of generous sup-

port, we have been able to make it work.However, we have had to downsize our dream

almost every step of the way. Instead of the 300guests we had hoped to have, we had to settle for astill-fantastic 125 attendees. We are also putting our

honeymoon on the back-burner for the time being, as

every spare cent will be going toward our ceremony.Instead, we will just spend a few blissful days off work together.

One of the biggest and most painful lessons I havelearned is to let go of that childhood dream. You canhave an unforgettable wedding, but you MUST berealistic. As can be seen in my move from a lavish des-tination wedding to hippy-ish backyard nuptials to a

practical but elegant event, you have to stay flexible.With this in mind, we have been chugging along

nicely. We decided to create our own invitations, butleft the cake to the professionals. With a little tweak here and a little pinch there, we have been able to cre-ate the wedding of our more realistic dreams.

Through the whole process, we have both had to learnhow to prioritize, budget and compromise. It seems the

trials and tribulations of wedding planning have left usmore prepared for married life than when we began.At times, things have gotten a little tense but, with

perseverance and a lot of love, even two procrastina-tors like us can make it work!

Jessica [email protected]

Zachary Pfahler and Jessica Gustin, at right, haveplanned their wedding at Bard Mansion located on PortHueneme Navy base in Ventura County, where Ms.Gustins family lives.

DREAM WEDDINGcontinued from the previous page


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P lanning your ideal wedding is about pursuing your dreams. You start with a castle in the air, a fantasyof the perfect nuptials you likely began constructinglong before you met your soul mate. As in every flight of imagination, some of the details may be a bit hazy.

Very Pinteresting: Idea-sharing site makes for picture-perfect weddingsSpring bride

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Once you are engaged and a date is set, however,

things start getting real. Concrete. You have tomake countless decisions, from dress to dcor, frommenu to venue and from flowers to favors. Time islimited and, most likely, so is your budget.

How do choose? How do you create an event thatreflects who you are as a couple?

According to writer Richard Bach, fulfilling your fantasies is about visualization: To bring anythinginto your life, imagine that its already there.

Board of educationWith this in mind, brides-to-be have long found

inspiration in idea books and vision boards burstingwith pictures ripped from the pages of magazinesand catalogues.

Here is a photograph of a Vera Wang bridal gownwith a corset bodice and a skirt thats an explosionof tulle. Even if you dont have thousands to spendon your dress, the silhouette can serve as a jumping-off point.

Its really quite educational.Look at an image of wildflowers wrapped in

hemp twine, and another featuring cabbage rosesand hydrangeas enveloped in lace. If you stare atthe respective bouquets long enough, youll eventu-ally determine whether your style is boho-chic or unabashedly romantic.

With the advent of the social media site Pinterest,many women have gone digital with their vision

boards.In case you have been living under a rock,

Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board where peopleshare ideas via photographs. The four-year-old site

is packed with do-it-yourself tutorials, from cook-ing to crafting to gardening. If you want to learnhow to knit a sweater and create a box in which to

put it, look no further.Its easy. Sign up for a free membership at

Pinterest, then, create a bulletin board devoted toyour wedding. Its simple to upload your own pho-tos or web links. You can also browse for pins of interest and follow the wedding boards of friendsand like-minded strangers.

Create as many boards on any given theme, soyou may want to make some devoted to your bridalshower, dream honeymoon and, of course, irre-sistible pictures of kittens.

A quick warning: Pinterest, which combines the pleasures of window-shopping and self-expression,can be addictive. You can find yourself whiskeddown a virtual rabbit hole, moving from pin to pinwhile ignoring those pesky real-world duties.

Nicole Nguyen is one of the many women whohave found Pinterest invaluable while planningtheir weddings.

When she wasnt working, she spent the monthsleading up to her September 2012 nuptials gettinginto physical shape via spin classes and hiking theClaremont Wilderness Trail. In order to mentallywrap her mind around her upcoming wedding, shespent time on Pinterest, posting ideas on a boardnamed My Dream Wedding.

The board, which still lingers in cyberspace,includes hairstyles, tips on applying eye shadowand whitening your teeth, novel photography con-cepts and crafts. Some of the latter, such as home-made lanterns covered with tissue-paper flowers,made it to Ms. Nguyens ceremony and reception.

Pinterest put everything into perspective, Ms. Nguyen shared. You get to choose from so manydifferent things you like. You can put them alltogether and compare them right there.

Also helping to add perspective is the abundanceof wedding humor pinned on the site.

COURIER classifieds manager Jessica Gustin,who is getting married this July, has a board calledWedding Dreams where she has affixed some 256

ideas, from centerpieces to silverware to libations.Some of these are decidedly outside the box, suchas wedding bouquets dripping with vintage rhine-stone brooches rather than flowers. Her board also

includes several sentiments that would help themost stressed-out bridezilla take a minute tolaugh and breathe.

Were having an open bar and also a wedding,one meme proclaims.

For Ms. Nugyen, using Pinterest to plan her wed-ding was foremost a practical affair. It helped her cement her color palette: different shades of purple

with a pop of fuchsia, which she says represents her wild streak. It also gave her crafty ideas that pro-vided wedding-day magic at an affordable price.

For our wedding favors, we made cake pops thatwere shaped like a little bride and groom. Thatcame off Pinterest, she said. My aisle runnerswere these mason jars filled with babys breath andstock flowers, and I got that idea from Pinterest,too. It was so bomb. It was so pretty.

Ms. Nguyen always wanted to feel like a princesson her wedding day. With the help of a ballgown-style dress with a frill-bedecked train from DavidsBridal and loose curls veiled in a cloud of netting,she looked like one.

It was my fairytale wedding.

Making it personalAnd now its time to come clean. This reporter

hasnt set a date. I am, however, casually planninga wedding to the father of my two children, a 5-

year-old boy and a 3-month-old girl. Sorry tradi-tionalists. I have a tendency to work backwards.With this in mind, I have my own Pinterest board,

called Its a Nice Day for a White Wedding in anod to 80s rocker Billy Idol. I have begun visual-izing a backyard wedding, kid-friendly and perhapsa touch hippy-ish. My budget is small, so I foreseea number of DIY projects in my future.

Let me be the first to admit that I have an eccen-tric streak. My significant other has nixed the ideaof an Elven-tinged evening affair, in which the wed-ding party carries lanterns.

Perhaps this board can serve to not only providenew ideas, but to vet a few of my more questionable

brainstormsusing Pat Benatars We Belong for our wedding dance and dressing our kids in T-shirtsthat say Finally! among others.

Picking and choosing is all part of the process.Want to be a part of it? If you are planning to getmarried, this year or someday, what are you waitingfor? Visit pinterest.com and start pinning downyour dreams.

Sarah [email protected]

PINTEREST PLANNINGcontinued from the previous page

Photo special to the COURIERNicole Nguyen exchanges vows at her Pinterest-perfectwedding. Ms. Nguyen planed the special occasion usingidea boards online at www.pinterest.com. The website issweeping the nation and helping countless brides planthe big day and share their vision with others.


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H ow does your garden grow? Inthe case of schools in theClaremont Unified SchoolDistrict, the answer is beautifully.District Garden Coordinator Dessa DAquila has

been able to put in more hours this year than in the pastanywhere from 30 to 36 hours a week whenschool is in sessionthanks to a combination of dis-trict funding and grant money, namely some awardedto San Antonio High Schools Food Justice program.Sustainable Claremont also contributed $2,000towards the position.

The boost in hours has afforded Ms. DAquila,who is in her third year with the district, greater bal-ance. Once, she juggled four jobs. Now, aside fromone day a week spent working at a local bakery, shecan focus exclusively on tending the districts blos-soming garden programs.

More hours means greater impact. Ms. DAquila is

proud of the progress made this year at sites such asVista del Valle and Oakmont elementary schools.

A greener viewTwo work parties, staffed by school volunteers, mem-

bers of Sustainable Claremont and the congregants of aneighborhood church, have yielded five new raised gar-den beds at Vista del Valle. Rustic stone borders sur-round the beds, which are roughly five by 10 square feet.

The stones come from Claremonts old ServiceCenter property, which this year was sold to a home

developer. It was a true community effort, with Vista

kids sorting the rocks and a local mason donating acement mixer and his expertise.Ron Mittino, head of Sustainable Claremonts

Schools Action Group, participated in the secondVista work party and is delighted by the results. Thestone borders are an improvement over the woodenones previously installed, which tend to rot over time.They are also quite picturesque.

They are beautiful. The feel of the stones is really

CUSD gardens teem with life, enthusiasm

COURIER photos/Steven FelschundneffRon Mittino, head of Sustainable Claremonts School Action Group, mixes the compost heap during a visit to the gar-den at Vista del Valle Elementary School recently. The garden helps underscore the Environmental EducationalInitiative, which has become part of the schools curriculum.

District Garden Coordinator Dessa DAquila looks on asstudents learn how to garden.

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aesthetically pleasing, Mr. Mittino said. And itsnice that we used local materials. They areClaremont rocks.

The new beds will allow Vista to expand its garden-scape, which currently features strawberries,grapevines, arugula, rainbow chard and rosemary aswell as ornamental plants such as roses and irises.

Its gratifying to see that the hard work of many,many folks, including students and parents, as well ascooperation between CUSD, Vistas staff andSustainable Claremont, has resulted in a lovely andthriving garden for the Vista community, Mr. Mittinosaid. The kids love it, and thats the payoff.

Crops from the garden, as well as fruit fromVistas orchard program, dont go to waste. Vistafamilies and staff members often harvest a few herbsor greens to take home. The nasturtiums that grow in

profusion in the Vista garden were notably used for

salads at the Claremont Community Foundationsannual fundraising dinner held at the Padua HillsTheatre earlier this month.

Vista is swiftly turning into one of the most envi-ronmentally forward schools in the district. OnTuesdays, students are encouraged to bring reusablelunch containers, reusable water bottles and clothnapkins. They are also taught to sort waste for recy-cling and composting.

As a result of these efforts, the school was recently

GARDENcontinued from the previous page

COURIER photo/Steven FelschundneffFourth grade students Kaitlyn Gilbert, 10, left, Andrew Guerrero, 9, and Jocelyn Esquivias, 9, pull weeds in the newly-created desert biome at Oakmont Outdoor School on Tuesday.Last year the school replaced significant areas of lawn with three different native environments, or biomes, that have become part of the schools curriculum.

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selected to be one of the top three winners in Gradesof Greens annual Trash-free Lunch Challenge.Sponsored in part by the Sanitation District of LosAngeles, the competition aims to help LA Countyschoolchildren reduce the amount of food-packagingwaste heading for landfills. The winning school, to beannounced in April, will receive a $1,000 educationgrant. The second- and third-place schools willreceive $750 and $500, respectively.

Beautiful biomesOakmont has long been known as Oakmont

Outdoor School because of its focus on nature as ahothouse learning environment. With the ribbon-cut-ting for the schools Oakmont School Biome Gardenheld this past Valentines Day, the school has gotteneven more outdoorsy.

In September of 2009, the school introduced an envi-

ronmentally based curriculum, Learning in theWorlds Biomes, which over time immerses studentsin each of the earths six major biomes or ecologicalcommunities. This year, the Oakmont communityworked together to bring the lessons to life by con-structing landscapes representing three of Californiasnatural biomes: Chaparral, Oak Woodland and Desert.

The biomes project was an exercise in cooperation,involving more than 250 hours of work by volunteershailing from Oakmont, Sustainable Claremont andPitzer College.

This entire project was made possible only because of the community and their dedication to see-ing it come to fruition, Ms. DAquila said in aFebruary interview.

Landscape architect Andrew Bentson and master

gardener Blake McCallion of the BAM water-wiselandscaping company were an invaluable part of the

process, donating untold amounts of know-how andelbow-grease. The Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardendonated the plants used in the biomes, whileWolfinbarger, Inc. contributed gravel and decom-

posed granite.The ambitious project was funded via a $2,000

grant through the Metropolitan Water District. ThreeValleys Municipal Water District kicked in another $300 and Sustainable Claremont contributed $500 tothe project.

Its amazing that this happened, Mr. Mittino said.The plants, helped along by recent rain showers and

a drip irrigation system, have grown tremendouslysince they were put in place in February. After about ayear, the drip system will be removed and the plants all hardy nativeswill thrive on their own.

Oakmont students are already out among the biomes,gaining exposure to the natural world while learning.For details, visit oakmontbiomeproject.weebly.com.

Moving forward

While CUSD has shown growing support for envi-ronmental education in recent years, it is uncertainhow much money will be allotted to Ms. DAquilas

position for the 2014-2015 school year. The boardassesses how much it can contribute toward the posi-tion of gardening coordinator each spring, a processAssistant Superintendent of Human Resources KevinWard says will begin soon.

Ms. DAquila, whose job takes her to virtuallyevery Claremont school, hopes that the district willcontinue to see the value of school gardens for nur-turing whole-child development.

Not every kid gets to go to the beach in the sum-mer, or go skiing, she said. But no matter what their socio-economic background, Claremont students allget the chance to be out in the garden.

Ms. DAquila and Claremont schools will take anactive role in the citys sixth annual Earth Day cele-

bration, set for Saturday, April 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event, which is also presented bySustainable Claremont and the InterfaithSustainability Council, will feature demos, work-shops, kids activities, live music and solar boats sta-tioned along Second Street in the Claremont Village.

Sarah [email protected]

GARDENcontinued from the previous page

COURIER photos/Steven FelschundneffFourth grade student Jocelyn Esquivias, 9, tends a nativeplant while helping to maintain the desert biome with fel-low students Kaitlyn Gilbert, 10, left, Andrew Guerrero, 9,on Tuesday at Oakmont Outdoor School. The fourth gradeclass will take a field trip to The Living Desert Zoo andBotanic Garden later this year to further their knowledgeof the natural habitat.


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