Urge Laguna Honda to bring back native plants

Rebuilding offers chance to revision landscaping

Laguna Honda Hospital opened in 1867 as an almshouse and to help care for "the permanently disabled and superannuated". The hospital was situated on a site with about 80 acres on the then fringes of San Francisco. A prominent feature of the original hospital was the Farm: space outside the buildings was used for farming, with the intent of making the hospital as self-sustaining as possible. Farming took place on 75 of the 80 acres, with a wide variety of crops - oats, potatoes, and vegetables.

Over time, the farming was abandoned, and the grounds grew more buildings and many eucalyptus trees. In the current rebuilding, the building footprints are now expanding to more than half of the acreage, but the hospital will have a small farm for residents (no longer called `inmates').

We applaud the retention of the Farm. We also hope that where possible the formal planting around the hospital buildings will include native plants, appropriate for the site. We also strongly recommend that the remainder of the grounds undergoes a conversion to native plants in keeping with nearby public open spaces, Twin Peaks and the hillside above Laguna Lake. An example of this kind of effort is at the top of Mount Sutro, where under community pressure the University of California San Francisco did a master plan to diversify the eucalyptus-monoculture forest and introduce native plants in specific areas.

WhatYouCanDo

Contact Arla Escontrias at:

Laguna Honda Hospital
375 Laguna Honda Blvd.
San Francisco, CA  94116
(415)759-4597
fax: (415)759-4584
Arla_Escontrias -at- sfdph.org

Request that:

• the landscaping around the buildings include nature and native plants as a major consideration;
• a master plan for the other areas of the site be formulated with nature in mind.

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