The Birdhouse →

Our Vision

Our vision is a lush and vibrant urban landscape where people are cooperating with nature to attain health and wellbeing born of genuine concern for each other and the environment.

Our Mission

The BirdHouse is a community garden in Hollywood, serving as a hub of exchange for those attracted to caring for the land and people, through arts and ecology. Our purpose is to engage each other in finding creative solutions to the most pressing issues of our times. Through permaculture, systems thinking, medicinal plants, art, singing, science and storytelling, we aspire to a new story of interdependence, to restore shared wisdom, and to have fun doing it. 

Our Projects

The BirdHouse selects and develops projects that support our mission to engage each other in finding creative solutions through permaculture, systems thinking, medicinal plants, art, singing, science and storytelling. Early projects have focused on the development of physical structures, and the establishment of biological resources at the BirdHouse Community Garden.

In our built environment, we seek to maximize energy gains by harnessing the power of the sun, the land’s topography, and the relative arrangement of the system’s components. In our biological systems, we value diversity, resiliency, and nutrient cycling, composting our garden trimmings along with food waste from community members.

Part think-tank and arts lab, part urban greening experiment and sustainable land use model, the BirdHouse is born out of cooperative intentions, all circling around the question: What does it take to live a life that the planet Earth now demands?

This inquiry finds its way into the various activities and projects we host, the workshops in permaculture, food and plant medicine, singing and storytelling – All an attempt to grapple with, and find language for, how to be response-able in this time of trouble.

Really it’s about how to love a place, and take care of it, and how to take care of each other in the process. Creating the conditions for ideas to hatch and things to grow. We are partnering with the place itself to build an abundance of diversity of interdependent insects, plants and animals. There is a vision we are nursing, that our canyon, our watershed, can become a lush and vibrant place that feeds a whole and complete system – A living thing, embedded in the urban environment of Los Angeles.

—John & Bella

Hollywood Orchard →

Founded in 2011, Hollywood Orchard engages community in growing and using locally harvested fruit. Together, we have forged a vision of creating a community "virtual" orchard with a unique mission. 

OUR MISSION 

To better neighborhood quality of life by operating a community orchard that is a teaching model for sustainability through its workshops on growing fruit locally, and sharing the food in open-air events held in the Beachwood Canyon community, outreach communities, and food-charity organizations.

OUR VIRTUAL ORCHARD

While it may not be on one plot of land, our orchard is more bountiful than ever. Because, together, we created more than an orchard. We created community.  

In 2011, the founders of the Hollywood Orchard realized that the Beachwood Canyon community was in a unique position to serve as the center of an environmental, agricultural, and food-use organization. Sitting just below the Hollywood sign, between Griffith Park and the 101, this neighborhood boasts a large number and variety of fruit trees. From pomegranate to grapefruit to lemon to loquat, these trees are divided among properties and cared for individually. The lucky families feast on their crops year round, making lemonade, lemon cake and limoncello. But who can eat a ton of lemons? And who can reach the fruit at the top of the tree? Fruit that wasn't picked in time falls to the ground and rots. So many fruiting trees and not enough hands to gather the harvest. Is there something we could do to ensure that fresh fruit doesn't go unused? Who in our Los Angeles community could benefit from the harvest? And with the answers to these questions in mind, the Hollywood Orchard was formed and a virtual orchard was created. Members of the community reached out to neighbors and friends with fruit trees on their property, asking them to donate a portion of the fruit from their tree to the Hollywood Orchard. Community-wide picks are scheduled and the neighborhood comes together to harvest fruit from the trees. Some of the fruit is processed and preserved, and the remaining harvest is donated to local food-charity organizations, including A Place Called Home, a South Central Los Angeles Center for at-risk youth. The first year alone, we harvested 5000 lbs. of fruit, donated 4000 lbs., and processed/preserved 1000 lbs. as food items for fundraisers. Today, we have over 100 fruit trees in our virtual orchard. Knowing that the food is not wasted gives us our purpose, but seeing the community gather throughout the year to lend a hand with harvests gives us our heart and soul.