Spiraling Orchard | Temple-Beaudry Neighborhood, Los Angeles, CA | 1996-2014

Spiraling Orchard was an ArtPark and environmental learning center on a former oilfield that was leased to Ward by the Los Angeles Unified School District. What began with an NEA individual artist grant became an initiative of Ward's non-profit ACLA (art…land…community…activism), through which she engaged students from the Los Angeles Conservation Corps along with neighborhood youth and their families. Ward and the volunteers collectively built a mosaicked amphitheater, sculptural gardens, and converted a pre-existing house into a community classroom. The site’s central icon was a subterranean concrete spiral planted with fruit trees.

The project grew to encompass the two adjacent land parcels and included the formation of a community council (the "Vecinos") to both guide and generate public programming. From Friday night potlucks to 9-day posada celebrations, painting tutorials to civic engagement classes, the Spiraling Orchard ArtPark provided a place for alternative education and community celebration.

Community Programs

The Site

Spiraling Orchard

Community Casita (Classroom and Meeting Center)

Community Casita (classroom and meeting center)

Original Entrance to Spiraling Orchard

Oil-drilling rods extracted from beneath the Spiring Orchard site

Building the foundation

Garden class

Tool Shed Mural

Mosaicked Amphitheater

Building stepping stones for the sidewalk gardens

Garden class

Community Clean-up

Muraling across the street at Tasso's Bodega

Community Tile Mural

Diorama for Community Puppet Show

Posada Shrine

Making a Puppet for Posada Celebration

Posada Celebration

Detail of Puppet for Posada Celebration

Hand-embroidered Tablecloth by the Spiraling Orchard Women's Group (the Vecinos)

Project participants

spiraling roots: A project of Spiraling Orchard

From 2002 to 2007, Ward and representatives from the University of Southern California's Center for Sustainable Cities, along with volunteers from the Urban Wildlands Foundation, designed a soil remediation initiative for the entire neighborhood surrounding the Spiraling Orchard ArtPark. Curb-lined micro gardens of California natives were planted to begin the process of naturally rehabilitating the contaminated soil.