LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif.—Descanso Gardens has long been celebrated for what it grows and where it grows it. Nestled northwest of Altadena in the foot-hills of the San Gabriel Mountains, it is a leafy Eden on the edge of an urban metropolis, the apple of many a Los Angeleno’s eye.
Descanso was established in the 1930s as a private 165-acre ranch. It was founded by newspaper magnate Elias Manchester Boddy, a man crazy for camellias, who by the early 1940s had collected enough of the winter-blooming beauties to form the basis of the gardens’ modern Camellia Forest. In 1953, Boddy sold his estate to Los Angeles County to establish it as a public floral park. Its Japa-nese garden opened in 1966, new buildings were added in 1982, and a five-acre rose exhibit debuted in 1994.
Now, a new attraction is blooming at Des-canso—and it’s sprouting everything from giant cherries to a Jimmy Carter peanut: “Road Trip Across America,” an art installa-tion arranged along the tracks of the gardens’ outdoor G-scale model train. The scenic min-iature experience is precisely what you’d hope it would be—a homage to the odd attractions and programmatic buildings that lure so many traveling families on detours.
The quirky recreated structures include Seguin, Texas’ World’s Largest Pecan (debat-able, but they were first), Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood, California, and the Dole Pine-apple Tower, which loomed over Honolulu from 1928 to 1993. One of the cherries sits atop the ice-cream swirl of the Twistee Treat from Orlando, Florida; the Jimmy Carter peanut is a replica of the wide-smiling legume statue from Plains, Georgia.
Many more Easter eggs are hidden along-side the tracks, but we won’t spoil the surprises. Visit Descanso Gardens to count how many roadside attractions you recognize—and thank your parents for having dragged you to them.
