Jose Palacios may have picked a better spot to get to in Griffith Park — a spot to create his sanctuary — however that wouldn’t have suited him. His life has by no means been simple.
Over the course of a number of years, Palacios has recurrently climbed the steep North Path that provides a view of the Harding golf course and the realm close to the again of the outdated zoo. He has hauled stones and carried instruments, seeds, saplings and the burden of his previous alongside winding dust paths.
The day I walked with Palacios, a 70-year-old retiree, I puzzled what was in his backpack, assuming it was one other seedling or some such. However I didn’t wish to interrupt him as a result of Palacios was telling the story of his life, with sufficient darkness and light-weight to fill a e book.
Retired gardener Jose Palacios, 70, stands on a hillside subsequent to a portion of the key backyard he planted in Griffith Park in Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
California is about to be hit by an getting older inhabitants wave, and Steve Lopez is using it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and the way some of us are difficult the stigma related to older adults.
As a younger man, many years earlier than he grew to become a gardener and a caretaker for purchasers with most cancers and Alzheimer’s illness, Palacios labored in Idaho’s potato fields. He labored on cattle ranches and poultry farms in Texas, left his sweat in Sonoma County vineyards and Fresno County orange groves.
None of which was as torturous as what he endured as a toddler, a few of which he would later share with me.
“You see the flowers?” Palacios requested as we walked.
They have been unattainable to overlook, explosions of white and yellow forming a fringe alongside the path.
“Margaritas,” Palacios mentioned, Spanish for daisies. He threw his hand out in a sweeping movement, demonstrating how he had tossed seeds on his many climbs.
Palacios checks a mustard plant for seeds that he can use for his secret backyard in Griffith Park in Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
Palacios lives alone in Echo Park, within the small room of a home the place he’s the caretaker of the property and, in fact, the gardener. He didn’t get far in class in Guanajuato, he advised me, however after coming to the USA greater than half a century in the past, he went to grownup evening faculty at Roosevelt Excessive after his days of arduous work. He took some college-level psychology programs, he advised me, and he likes to learn and paint.
And he loves gardening.
“It’s in my coronary heart,” he says of his have to create and nurture life, to convey colour and light-weight to a world that was as soon as so unsparingly bleak.
As a boy, Palacios mentioned, he usually retreated to the darkest locations he may discover whereas making an attempt to flee his father’s drunken brutality. He would scamper beneath his mattress, solely to be dragged out. He ran the streets at evening, hiding beneath vehicles till police grabbed him and tossed him right into a cell or, worse, delivered him into the arms of his father. He took cowl in fields of corn, keeping off rodents and snakes via the evening. Something to keep away from going dwelling.
Palacios was the youngest of 12 and doesn’t know precisely why, however his now-deceased father was an offended man, and Jose was the first goal of his alcohol-fueled rage.
“He used to string me up and beat me,” Palacios mentioned, telling me his father would hold him the wrong way up from a tree and take a keep on with him with assist from one in every of Jose’s brothers.
Palacios cries as he recollects all of the tragedies he has endured in his life in Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
He mentioned he cowered when that very same power was turned on his mom, and that his flights to security typically led to extra abuse by the hands of others.
These reminiscences are a part of the load Jose Palacios carries up the hill within the park that’s been his escape for many years. As somebody who thinks of himself as “a really shy individual,” wandering Griffith is a manner for Palacios to be alone and but within the firm of these with whom he shares a love of L.A.’s nice city wonderland. It’s a park that endures, as he does, regardless of its many trials, from hearth to vandalism to drought, and the press of individuals, vehicles and growth.
Palacios calls it, merely, “probably the most stunning park I’ve ever seen.”
One of many extra well-known hiker locations in Griffith Park is Amir’s Backyard, which we visited briefly on the way in which to Palacios’ personal little paradise. A brush hearth in 1970 scorched that ridgeline, and Iranian immigrant Amir Dialameh, a hiker and wine service provider, led a volunteer effort to revive the land as a backyard oasis, with benches providing respite and nice vistas.
“There are such a lot of issues, so many pressures,” the late Dialameh as soon as mentioned of metropolis life in an interview with The Occasions. “All folks do is complain. They should get away from that.”
Palacios mentioned he’s been one of many many volunteers lending a hand over time at Amir’s Backyard, however he needed to create his personal little heaven. So we stored transferring up the hill, previous an LADWP operations supervisor who caught up with Palacios earlier than tending to one of many massive tanks within the park that retailer water for firefighting.
There’s an extended historical past in Griffith Park of volunteers creating and tending to gardens. Along with Amir’s Backyard, there’s Dante’s View, named after one other immigrant and maintained by volunteers. Palacios mentioned he didn’t get official permission to begin his personal challenge, however no park or public company workers have objected. Some would possibly protest the thought of guerrilla gardening, but it surely’s not as if all of our public areas get the love and a spotlight they deserve.
You could possibly stroll proper by the trail that juts off from the primary path and simply miss what Palacios has constructed, however that appears nearly proper for a solitary man reminiscent of Palacios.
Palacios walks on the base of the key backyard he planted in Griffith Park in Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
On a steep and shady incline lies a verdant Shangri-La, constructed right into a rocky nook like one thing you’d look forward to finding on a treasure-hunting expedition.
Crimson, pink, yellow, orange and purple flowers pop in a lush inexperienced backyard, with succulents sprinkled into the combo and prickly cactus standing guard. All these stones Palacios lugged up the hill have been used to terrace the backyard and type a stairway as much as two perches — a bit of stone bench and an oak tree with a low department that types a pure lounge chair.
Palacios rested on the stone bench and took within the glory of his creation — a retreat constructed with seeds and saplings and trimmings from his gardening jobs, years within the making and nonetheless a piece in progress.
Palacios mentioned he selected this shady spot as a result of a sluggish trickle from the large water tank fills a horse trough utilized by riders who come via, and he’s gotten permission to attract buckets out of the trough to maintain his backyard entering into dry months. The very first thing he planted right here was a white sapote tree, which has shot up a number of ft beneath his care. At its base, somebody — Palacios doesn’t know who — left a small wood disc with two phrases scrawled on it.
“Jose’s Backyard.”
Those that are happiest in retirement, in my expertise, have a way of function. That may contain reinventing your self altogether, it could actually imply discovering a brand new expression of what greatest, it may be about making a contribution to the world.
Palacios talks concerning the creation of the key backyard he planted in Griffith Park.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
Palacios has this found out, it appears. He’s a spiritual man, he mentioned, and throughout the pandemic, the backyard grew to become his home of worship. He visits to not overlook the previous however to rejoice the current. That is the place he prays, nurtures his vegetation, and hopes that others could be lifted, as he’s, by the very sight of them.
After Palacios opened his knapsack, he eliminated the picnic lunch he had ready that morning — quesadillas with ham, cheese and nopalitos. One for me, one for photographer Genaro Molina, one for himself.
A effective lunch it was, on a beautiful day, in a small backyard, well-kept .
steve.lopez@latimes.com
