Van Nuys >> Amid the synchronized pounding of taiko drums, dignitaries and community members gathered Sunday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Japanese Garden in Van Nuys.
“I’d like to invite the public to come out here; it’s the best kept secret in the Valley,” said Gene Greene, the garden’s director, who assisted the late Koichi Kawana, a native of Japan and a prominent UCLA professor, in designing the garden three decades ago.
The 61/2-acre garden, located at 6100 Woodley Ave., was named No. 10 of about 300 public Japanese gardens in North America a decade ago by the Journal of Japanese Gardening for displaying traits such as subtleness, natural beauty, moderation and human scale.
The Japanese Garden — which is actually composed of three gardens — is irrigated with reclaimed water from the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, which treats about 80 million gallons of wastewater per day.
“For us to have a top 10 garden in Los Angeles is an extraordinary thing, especially when so much of this is done on volunteer work,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti, who attended the event with daughter, Maya, and father Gil Garcetti and who grew up not far from the garden on Woodley Avenue.
The mayor said he attended the event that coincided with Father’s Day at the request of his dad, a former Los Angeles County district attorney and photographer who has a strong passion for Japanese culture and gardens.
“A lot of people don’t know this but he has practiced Japanese gardening for decades, ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arrangement) as well,” he said.
Councilwoman Nury Martinez, whose District 6 includes The Japanese Garden and who was sworn in here last year, said the site is important because it shows people the importance of reclaimed water in irrigating park and city facilities. The garden is also a symbol of the Japanese community in the Valley.
She said she had the opportunity while growing up in the Pacoima area nearly four decades ago to interact with the sizable Japanese community that lived there in the Northeast Valley and take in their history.
“The true story of the Japanese community during World War II was that in Pacoima, a lot of the internment camps were there,” Martinez said. “A lot of families were split up, a lot of your businesses were lost during World War II and these are the stories that we need to tell generations.”
Among the visitors Sunday were the Ryhals from Sacramento, who opted to visit The Japanese Garden before their visit to Disneyland this week.
“I found it online on Yelp; it looked really pretty,” said Lisa Ryhal, who attended with her husband, Nathan, and their two children, Justin, 11 and Isabel, who is 21/2. “I figured it was a place for (Isabel) to run, to explore the flowers and feed the ducks.”
