Landscaping

Hortense Miller, founder of the Hortense Miller Garden in Laguna Beach, died Monday at the age of 99. Miller, an avid amateur gardener and a writer, donated her garden to the city of Laguna Beach in 1976 with the stipulation that she be allowed to live there until she died. Miller was moved to a facility two years ago. She had been sleeping most of the time in recent weeks, said Marsha Bode, of the Friends of the Hortense Miller Garden. “She was peaceful,” Bode said.

The Laguna Art Museum pays homage to beach culture, consumerism and pastries with its latest offerings, which run through Jan. 27. The main exhibition focuses on Wayne Thiebaud. Titled “70 Years of Painting,” the exhibit surveys the American painter’s development. The earliest painting is from 1936. In addition to his famous works depicting common objects like cakes, the show includes a number of more unfamiliar genres in Thiebaud’s oeuvre, including impasto seaside settings, quick studies and drawings, and several figural portraits.

The Laguna Beach Garden Club will host its annual fundraising Gate and Garden Tour on Thursday, and the homes on the tour's path have been getting spruced up in preparation. The tour takes a mostly downhill meandering path from St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church to Mountain Road and Catalina Street. It visits a dozen gardens. The types of gardens and plants vary from sets of tropical flora to traditional flower beds. Myriad plants, including standard but beautiful roses and the rare purple trumpet tree, are represented.

Three of Laguna Beach?s street ends ? roads that dead-end at the ocean ? are getting virtual makeovers from Cal Poly Pomona landscape architecture students. Members of the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce?s Beautification Council asked university officials to incorporate the street ends project into the students? curriculum. Ends of Brooks, Cress and Mountain streets were selected and assigned to the third-year landscape architecture students in three separate classes. ? ?

The Irvine Museum is known for its splendid collection of California landscapes and a selection of its paintings is now being shown at Laguna College of Art & Design in a wide-ranging exhibit, "Masterpieces from Irvine Museum," that has a surprisingly historic aspect. The Irvine Museum, founded in 1992 by Laguna resident Joan Irvine Smith and her late mother, Athalie R. Clarke, is "the only museum in California dedicated to the preservation and display of California Impressionism or Plein-Air paintings, an art style that flourished in California from 1890 to 1930," according to the museum's website.

Art is a component of the Broadway Street improvements designed to beautify the portal that connects the city to the canyon. The $700,000 project includes renovated sidewalks, landscaping and irrigation, and is partially funded by a $480,000 grant. Sculptures by Cheryl Ekstrom and Marsh Scott will beautify it, if the City Council approves the Arts Commission's recommendations at the July 17 meeting. "This is the first time I have ever won," Ekstrom said. "I felt like Susan Lucci.

A new gallery has popped up at 480 Ocean Ave., and it's serving up art for different tastes in town. CES Contemporary offers contemporary art that's a far cry from the seaside landscapes and marine life paintings seen in Coast Highway showrooms. "One of the main points I'm trying to drive home with the work that I'm showing in the gallery … [is that] there is another side of the art world that is under-represented in our town," owner Carl Smith said. Mike Parillo is the first artist on display in the exhibit "Reckless Optimism.

City orders grading, landscaping changes at 17,000-squarefoot hillside home; effort to revoke permits underway.For the second time this month, the City Council took issue with a 17,000-square-foot home under construction on Mar Vista Avenue in South Laguna. On Tuesday, the council ordered changes to grading and landscaping plans that exposed more of the project than had been approved. On Nov. 1, the council issued a stop-work order for the project, which has been a lightning rod for criticism by neighbors and community members because of its size.