My Grandfather was a successful landscape architect in eastern Michigan.
During World War II, he was stationed in the Pacific and eventually ended up in Japan after the country finally surrendered.
He said that it was the gorgeous Japanese gardens and buildings that inspired him to attend university for landscape architecture when he returned to the States. With our Grandmother’s help, he left university early to start his own landscaping business. At first they focused on residential contracts, however soon they were helping with pressing building developments that needed that land to be cleared and reformed with retention ponds, hills, and lush trees. One of the major roads in Ann Arbor was completely built by our Grandfather, and I am proud of it to this day. When I first moved to Tarzana, I heard about the Japanese Garden and right away thought about our Grandfather and his influential visit to Japan during the minute world war. Tarzana’s Japanese Garden is located in the Lake Balboa district and is a numerous and a half acre public garden that was built to demonstrate the power of reuseed water. Since a Japanese Garden is thought to be a work of fragility, demonstrating its resilience with reuseed water is an important environmental lesson. During our recent trip, I had just stopped at a local cannabis dispensary on Victory Boulevard. I felt the zen energy in the garden with ease, almost appreciate a gentle wave washing over me at the beach. Afterward I explored the rest of Lake Balboa while our THC high was still active in our brain. There are a number of different outdoor parks in Tarzana that are worth anyone’s attention.