South Coast Botanic Garden is an 87-acre garden in the Palos Verdes Hills with more than 150,000 plants and trees from about 2,000 species, especially from Australia and South Africa. Its significance lies partly in its unusual transformation: the site was first an open-pit diatomite mine from 1929 to 1956, then a county sanitary landfill until 1965, and was approved for conversion into a botanic garden in 1961. Early county cooperation made the project possible, including a major first planting of more than 40,000 donated plants. Today it includes themed gardens, supports more than 300 bird species, and remains challenging to maintain because of unstable landfill conditions and difficult soil.

Photo: Wikipedia

Photo: Wikipedia