Community Highlights: Meet Michelle Matthews

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Matthews.

Hi Michelle, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I first met Betty McKenney in August of 2008. I was working as a Senior Designer at MOCA in Los Angeles and ended up visiting a friend who was working with a Boy Scout Troop to do swale parkway along Arlington Drive. Charles, Betty’s husband, talked about the fact that when it rained, the water would sheet off into the street. In November of 2008, when we were at the beginning of an economic crisis, I decided to quit my job to work with the landscape contractor because I was so inspired by what I saw at Arlington.

I grew up in Los Angeles and had a 24-mile commute between my home in Hawthorne and my LAUSD High School in Santa Monica, University High School. Maybe because of all this driving around, I became very aware of the landscape and the built environment and how it affects our quality of life. Ironically, I didn’t even know what a landscape designer was before I came to Arlington!

Fast forward to 2016, Betty contacted me to let me know she had cancer and would I be interested in working with Arlington. I became the Executive Director of the Garden in July of 2017. Unfortunately, Betty passed away in 2018. I feel honored that had a chance to work with her and Charles throughout the years and consider them to be the sledgehammers that laid the foundation for what we enjoy today.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Definitely not a smooth road. I often start with my familial identity in regard to my personal story. My mother is ethnically Chinese made in Vietnam and my father is Black/White/Cherokee, born as the illegitimate progeny of the RJ Reynolds tobacco family. He ended up going to Vietnam as a Christian missionary, meeting my mother, and marrying her (much to the upset of my Grandfather) and having my brother in Saigon, and then myself born in Iran.

Initially, I graduated from high school I applied to UC Berkeley and Brown University. Because of my low SAT scores, I didn’t get into either and was offered a place at UC Santa Cruz. I visited the gorgeous campus with my mother and was thrilled by the idea of going to a forest school. I was heartbroken when she told me that we didn’t get enough financial aid to attend. I ended up going to Santa Monica Community College for a year, then UCLA the following. I didn’t put it together until a dozen years later that my mom didn’t want me to go UCSC because the forest is where you died in Vietnam. (She grew up during the war).

Because I come from everywhere, I often felt I came from nowhere. I have found my identity in the urban landscape of Los Angeles, all of the places I lived, worked, played and went to school. What does the land tell us about who we are? After a brief stint in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute, I came back to LA in 1999 for grad school. How does the built environment shape us, these are the questions I asked in my USC MFA thesis, the “Pedagogy of Space.”

My road has been set with obstacles, diversions, and roadblocks… I’m certain I was pushed off the road, only to climb my way back, bruised and battered. I consider myself a late bloomer and it’s only been since coming to Arlington Garden that I was able to recognize that I had found my way again.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Arlington Garden in Pasadena?
Arlington Garden is many things. Initially, our parcel was the site of a 17,000 square foot mansion, torn down by CalTrans to be the staging ground for construction equipment to build the 710 freeway. The lot sat vacant for over 40 years until Charles and Betty McKenney moved next door. In 2003, Betty said, “I’m not going to look at that empty lot for the rest of my life.” Together with Pasadena City Councilmember Steve Madison, the City of Pasadena, and the community, Arlington Garden emerged as a 501(c)(3) on January 18, 2005, a bona fide grassroots organization.

I came to know Arlington Garden and Mayita Dinos, our garden designer in 2008. Because of Mayita, we were trendsetters and early adopters of climate-appropriate, regenerative and ecological garden design. At the time, we installed berms and swales to “Slow it, Spread it, Sink it” and capture rainwater. We planted small and in the fall and demonstrated all of the principles of the American Professional Landscape Designer’s “California Approach to Watershed Design.”

The garden is now home to over 350 trees, as well as a vibrant, thriving community of habitat, for both people, beneficial pollinators and wildlife. I am still the only full-time staff member and now have a part-time staff of four additional employees.

We are helping to redefine what beauty is in the garden landscape. We are here to show you that lawn is not the only way! In Southern California especially. My hope is that everyone understands that beauty can be messy – and beauty is not just two-dimensional. Beauty is not flat. Beauty can be defined as an outcome of an authentic connection to place. and “What the heck is that?” Come visit us to find out! Our garden is curated with climate-appropriate plants, honoring native ecology, awareness of symbiotic relationships, an understanding of our urban context, habitat creation, and stewardship inspired by sensitivity to local cultural diversity. We are on unceded Tongva land, originally descendants of the Hahamongna.

We are a place of joy, respite, and inclusivity. We are a successful demonstration of the transformative power of an organized community working together. The garden was an empty lot for over 40 years, to be the staging ground for the construction of the 710. Instead of a freeway, we built a garden.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
We are a unique experiment in a public and private partnership between a non-profit organization and the City of Pasadena. We hope that our modest 2.5-acre garden is the inspiration for the creation of more public/third spaces in the City of Angels that foster community-building, open space and spaces that help everyone understand the importance and necessity of caring for the land. We have Volunteer Tuesdays from 9am-12pm and an excellent newsletter, “Letters from the Garden.” Please join us!

Pricing:

• Photo Permits $100/hour
• Marmalade/$10 per jar
• Visiting the Garden: Free!

Contact Info:

• Website: arlingtongardenpasadena.org
• Instagram: @arlingtonpasadena
• Facebook: @arlingtongarden
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arlingtongardenpasadena/
• Youtube: @arlingtongardeninpasadena8241
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/arlington-garden-in-pasadena-pasadena

Image Credits
Elon Schoenholz
Michelle Matthews Aaron
Tupac Thompson
Tahereh Sheerazie.