San Fernando’s Valley’s last commercial orange grove is set to lose 1,100 trees

When Jeff Bornstein heard at a recent neighborhood council meeting in Woodland Hills that a developer was planning to remove nearly a thousand trees from the vast citrus orchard known as Bothwell Ranch, he stormed out of the room.

As someone who is weary of the shortage of parks and public space, the Woodland Hills resident was devastated to learn about the impending destruction of a large chunk of L.A.’s historic and last commercial orange grove — the sole surviving symbol of the region’s once prominent citrus-growing boom.

“It’s a big deal to me that they get rid of so many trees without any replacement,” Bornstein said. “When you are going to knock down so many trees, then you will have more density.”

The 12-acre Bothwell Ranch, nestled between the Woodland Hills and Tarzana neighborhoods, is dotted with rows of orange trees and gravel paths, and has been at the center of controversy since its owners put it up for sale in 2019. It was acquired in 2022 by a developer who is now seeking to redevelop the ranch into 21 upscale homes and remove more than 1,100 citrus trees.

Brad Rosenheim, president and CEO of the consulting firm Rosenheim & Associates, Inc. who works with developer Borstein Enterprises, said that of the nearly 1,137 trees that will be removed, “the vast majority are severely distressed due to many years of severe neglect, and the fact that they are reaching the end of their useful life, having been planted over 40 years ago.”

Rosenheim said that in the early 1980s the orchard trees were removed and replanted because they had exceeded their lifespan.

It’s unclear how many trees stand in Bothwell Ranch today. Rosenheim didn’t respond to an email asking him to disclose the number. He said, “545 trees will be retained or planted on-site within the proposed project and the preserved area.”

A Los Angeles Daily News story reported in 2004 that Bothwell Ranch had 1,900 trees.

Under the development plan, four trees will be removed to expand the width of Collier Street and the entrance to the housing development, Rosenheim said, and 15 out of 19 trees located off-site will be preserved. He said two rows of citrus trees along Oakdale Avenue will stay in place and will be managed by the homeowners association to be established in the new development.

Citrus trees became the region’s most exported crop thanks to the completion of the Owens River Aqueduct in 1913 which brought vast amounts of water from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada to dry Southern California — and the game-changing invention of refrigerated boxcars that were common by the 1890s.

The Los Angeles County citrus industry boomed and by the 1920s the county devoted more than 92,000 acres to citrus trees. After World War II, the citrus farms were gradually replaced by urban sprawl as agricultural land gave way to housing.

The Bothwell family purchased the property in the 1920s. Their orchard stretched across 100 acres and was home to several buildings along with an impressive collection of 50 vintage cars. Parts of the ranch were eventually sold to housing developers, shrinking the property to about 12 acres.

When Lindley Bothwell passed away in 1986, his wife Ann took care of the ranch until her death in 2016. According to Rosenheim, she endured financial losses for decades as “necessary commercial citrus practices like regular pruning, fertilizing, and regular irrigation were stopped or severely curtailed, causing trees to deteriorate or die.”

Andrew Fogg, the attorney representing the owners of the ranch, spoke in 2019 during a meeting at a city commission hearing to consider designating the ranch an historic monument, testifying that it was not economically sustainable to maintain the ranch. Fogg told city commissioners that selling oranges from the orchard in 2017 brought in only $25,000, while maintenance reached a whopping $246,000, including $40,000 annually for water to keep the trees alive.

The 100-year-old ranch had failed to turn a profit for decades, according to Fogg.

Luxury home developer Borstein Enterprises bought the orchard in 2022 and proposed to build 21 homes and preserve about 4.15 acres, or 30%, of the land. The preserved area would be maintained and operated by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, or MRCA, a public agency that works with Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and other local park agencies.

The developer, Rosenheim said, will continue to invest in irrigation system repairs and tree rehabilitation, while MRCA will create management plans for the future of the preserved acreage.

Paul Edelman, chief of natural resources and planning for MRCA, said, “It’s definitely sad to lose the last commercial orange orchard. The key thing, though, was the amount of money to water them — which is huge.”

“The MRCA wouldn’t want to take on taking care of an orange orchard and having to pay for all that water,” Edelman said, adding that the Bothwell family was willing to sell the orchard to a nonprofit or a government agency but “nobody has the money and the time to step in and do that, which is sad because the public could have bought it.”

The last orange harvest took place in 2019, Rosenheim said, due to the cost of operating the grove and the worsening condition of the trees.

“All of the trees on the Bothwell Ranch were replanted in the 1980s and are at, or approaching, the end of their useful life,” Rosenheim said.

But Joanne D’Antonio, who lives in the San Fernando Valley and chairs the trees committee within L.A.’s citywide Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance, said she has found that L.A. developers stop watering trees to make it easier to get rid of them.

“Orchards need to be watered,” D’Antonio said. She is concerned that the owners “didn’t do (what) the trees needed,” noting that developers often find it hard to build housing near trees and “they want a clear-cut because it’s easier for contractors.”

Citrus trees — unlike native plants— are not protected, she said, so “you’re not going to motivate tree advocates to come out and fight for neglected citrus trees.”

Still, experts say trees of all kinds are increasingly necessary to help reduce the waves of high temperatures that today more frequently hit places such as the San Fernando Valley. There is widespread agreement that trees provide shade that lowers surface temperatures in urban areas.

A 2022 study found that nearly one in four lives lost to extreme heat in Los Angeles could have been saved if the region had more trees. Extreme heat in cities is the leading weather-related killer and a major cause of negative health outcomes, including an increased risk of ER visits, hospitalizations and premature deaths, according to the study “Increasing trees and high-albedo surfaces decreases heat impacts and mortality in Los Angeles” conducted by researchers at Arizona State University.

“Having so many mature trees and removing so many is a big deal because it’s going to decrease the tree canopy,” said Jeanne McConnell, founder of Angelenos for Trees, based in the San Fernando Valley.

McConnell said the urban tree canopy in Los Angeles is declining rapidly and the city has failed to put together an urban management plan.

“It can be 40 degrees cooler in the shade,” she said, adding that trees and their leaves also help clean up the air.

“Some trees have issues and they don’t live forever,” McConnell said. “But I can’t imagine 1,100 trees being all in bad condition.”

In 2019, a group of residents and activists launched a petition urging elected officials to preserve Bothwell Ranch, collecting more than 3,900 signatures.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents the area, put forward a motion that year to designate the ranch a historic cultural monument, hoping to pause an attempt to sell it.

But in 2022 the L.A. City Council declined to give the ranch historic designation after Blumenfield recommended the city council deny the historic status.

“Aerial photographic evidence in the record shows that the Bothwell Citrus Grove was fully demolished and replanted sometime between 1980 and 1985. Due to the fact that the existing citrus grove was not planted prior to 1945, which is the year that the period of significance ended for citrus groves, the site does not meet the criteria to be designated a historic cultural monument nor included in the list of Historic-Cultural Monuments,” according to Blumenfield’s statement.

Bornstein said he was shocked to find out that hundreds of trees would be removed to create space for only 21 homes during a  time when the city is grappling with an acute housing shortage.

“They are replacing the trees with 21 homes, not 50 or 60 to house more people, so it really isn’t helping the housing crisis,” he said. “We have a housing shortage and if you decide to knock off so many trees, you should have more density. It really isn’t helping the housing crunch.”

Bornstein said he was disappointed that his neighborhood would not only lose the 100-year-old orchard but also hundreds of mature trees.

“Nobody cares about the trees in the Valley,” Bornstein said. “It’s all concrete. Somebody has to stand up for the natural preservation of what little open space we have left.”