Brand Park was once was San Fernando Mission's driveway, the dusty mustering place and livery court and work yard just off the Calle San Fernando.
The control of, or vision for, the land across the street from the Mission passed under the hands of many famous and powerful people: Gov. Felipe de Neve, Don Francisco Reyes, Gov. Alvarado, Gov. Echevarria, Lt. Col. John C. Fremont, Don Andres Pico, Pres. Lincoln, Helen Hunt Jackson, Collis P. and Henry Huntington, Charles Fletcher Lummis, archaeologist John P. Harrington, the Archdiocese of LA, and the WPA.
It came finally into the hands of a Mr. Brand, who deeded it to the City of LA for a park in 1920. The Memory Garden was put in starting in 1922, so this is already a centenary rose garden.
It is a Hall of Fame of LA botanical history, with specimens of the important horticultural products of Los Angeles, many of which (olives, Valencia oranges, Mission figs, lemons, native and Canary Island palm trees) were first introduced at San Fernando, cultivated, then re-exported locally and globally, in ox-drawn caretas, clipper ships, railcars and trucks.
Today the light was so clear, I got caught up by the Humanist lines of the corredore, and almost knocked senseless by the garden. It was fragrant as Cordoba, scented by roses and camellias and orange blossoms but also the grasses and pepper trees, with boxwood in high aroma, bottomed by old oak mulch. Click on the links as you come to them for more history about this place.
Fr. Fermin Lasuen, founder of the Mission and of Mission architecture, built MSFRdEsp as one of the first Vitruvian buildings in America; in fact it may be first, finished before Monticello was.
The Convento was the largest building in California until Pico House (1870). The Mission as a whole is the largest adobe complex ever built in Spanish America (begun 1797). Recall there were almost never more than two Franciscans resident at a Mission site at any one time. The Franciscans themselves were the architects of their Missions, learning their arts and techniques out of a single dog-eared copy of Vitruvius. Indian neophytes built and decorated every inch of the place. Each crew learned its tasks, its recipes and techniques, in oral translation from Latin through Spanish and into Shoshone and Southern Chumash. Somehow, they overcame the Tower of Babel Effect. Scholars have pointed to the role of the church choir as the native leadership group in the community. Since they were the quickest to learn both Latin and Spanish, as well as European canons of art, choir singing Indians often became principle artisans in their "day jobs". MSFRdEsp is an astonishing artifact of cultural connection. It has been expertly restored several times.
The corredore, or porch, was like a great hotel lobby for Alta California. Here, people of diverse visions met and ate, paced and smoked, bunked down before a battle, or read from the Mission's vast library. Many momentous decisions in California history were taken while gazing south to Cahuenga, over what is now Brand Park.
https://valleyvillage.home.blog/2019/04/30/chinigchinich-or-the-curious-franciscan/
Below is the cholla cactus which was the sole plant left in this meadow after the fires/floods. I rescued it recently from a bizarre dumping/vandalism event involving a fluorescent light box tied to it with thick loops of wire. See it fairly obscured, in the middle of the other plants. Awesome.
