Marie Barnidge-McIntyre, who was hired as the first horticulturist for Rancho Los Cerritos, will be the guest speaker at the Pacific Palisades Garden Club’s holiday meeting.
The Pacific Palisades Garden Club will hold its annual holiday meeting, via Zoom, at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, December 7. The Zoom access can be found on the website pacpalgardenclub.org.
This month’s speaker is Marie Barnidge-McIntyre, who will speak on “The Lore and Legends of Holiday Plants.”
Her talk will focus on the different plants and items used during the winter holidays as well as the history and cultures of the people who developed these traditions.
Barnidge-McIntyre grew up in the San Fernando Valley, where she worked in a nursery and as a landscape designer. Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach hired her as its first horticulturist. She did the majority of the research on the trees for the restoration of the historic orchard there.
Today she also operates Gardens by Design, a consulting firm in Thousand Oaks.
In a 2018 California Native Plant Society story (“Featured Garden/Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site”), Barnidge-McIntyre wrote about the history of Rancho Los Cerritos, a 27,000-acre property that was used to create the City of Long Beach.
Llewellyn Bixby purchased a parcel of about five acres that surrounded the historic adobe and renovated the house in the 1920s. He and his wife Avis hired noted landscape architect Ralph D. Cornell to design the estate garden in 1931.
“In selecting the plant material, Cornell combined popular plants of the day with California natives. This was uncommon as most native plants’ cultural needs were not well understood. Cornell, however, was an early advocate of using native plants and he found a kindred spirit in Llewellyn, a Sierra Club member who appreciated California’s native flora.”
Monday’s Garden Club meeting will also feature prize giveaways, including a balsam fir closet sachet, a kissing ball and an orange clover pomander.
Each attendee on Zoom will be eligible to win a prize for one of these themes: Best Zoom background, most unusual holiday plant, most festive holiday outfit, favorite holiday Zoom beverage, most vintage holiday decoration and zaniest holiday sweater.