Discovering Griffith Park. Casey Schreiner

You can usually find some shade and a picnic table at the Berlin Forest.

       Bird Sanctuary

      In the 1920s, when Van Griffith was drawing up ambitious development plans for the park, nearby residents balked at his proposal to build a new zoo in Vermont Canyon, but a nice little bird sanctuary found hardly any opposition.

      Reachable By: Hikes 13, 30

      By the middle of that decade, the bird sanctuary was irrigated with a series of artificial streams and had become a popular stop for those looking for a quiet spot in the park. Unfortunately, drought, bark-boring beetles, invasive plantings, and fires have taken a toll. The park and volunteers have done some maintenance work in recent years and even planted new trees and cleared invasive plants, but it was definitely feeling like a forgotten corner of the park. Thankfully, in late 2019, the Friends of Griffith Park and Grown in LA kicked off a multistage habitat restoration using native plants grown at Commonwealth Nursery from Griffith Park seeds.

      Today, the bird sanctuary has a small parking area, water, and restrooms. A rarely used trail meanders through the sanctuary and still provides a nice, quiet rest stop.

       L.A. Aqueduct Centennial Garden

      Depending on whom you ask, William Mulholland was either the savior of a thirsty Los Angeles or the villain who robbed an entire watershed of its lifeblood. Like Griffith J. Griffith, the guy was a complicated figure, but there’s little doubt that Mulholland’s magnum opus of engineering—the Los Angeles Aqueduct—is what allowed the pueblo to grow into the megalopolis it is today.

      In 2013, the existing Mulholland Memorial Fountain was renovated to include the L.A. Aqueduct Centennial Garden, which celebrates the onehundredth anniversary of when Mulholland opened up the floodgates, taking water from the Owens Valley and giving it to Los Angeles. The garden—which is technically outside Griffith Park on Department of Water and Power land—tells the story of the aqueduct with a short trail that mirrors its actual path and a piece of the original aqueduct that visitors can stand inside. The garden consists of drought-tolerant and California native plants, and sits near the spot where Mulholland supposedly lived in a shack when he first moved to the city.

       This section of the aqueduct has become popular with portrait photographers.

       Fern Canyon

      Tucked away just a quick hike from Park Center is the Fern Canyon Nature Trail, which leads to a small, wild garden of California native plants installed by the Friends of Griffith Park as part of a fire-recovery effort.

      The plantings near the Fern Canyon Amphitheater were specifically chosen because they tend to attract butterflies, and in the late winter and spring this area can truly come alive with the winged insects. Some of the plantings have labels on them, but this is a great place to come back to once you’ve learned a few of our local native plants—you’ll see almost everything that’s been planted here growing naturally throughout the rest of the park.

      Reachable By: