Reel Urban News Exclusive
By Michael Reel
Following a two-year hiatus caused by the global pandemic, the View Park-Windsor Hills Spring Garden Tour, Blooms With A View returned Sunday, May 1st of this year. Touted as the longest-running event in the communities of View Park and Windsor Hills, which are located in the very heart of Los Angeles, the 10th Anniversary garden tour sparkled.
Reel Urban News first covered the Spring Garden Tour in May of 2014 where we spoke with real estate broker Teresa Mack of Pacific Playa Realty. Eight years later we again speak exclusively with Ms. Mack, who provided historical context for the garden tour while describing L.A.’s complex and diverse real estate market.
Mack, a distinguished real estate broker and garden tour participant, stated she was not surprised at the public interest in returning garden tours. “People have been wanting to get back connected to one another and this event has been a staple for this community.”
“The garden tour is the brainchild of Inspired Garden Artistry. They are the community committee that sponsors the tour every year,” Mack explained. “Now it’s nine houses and two different neighborhoods with 800 participants and over 800 guests a year.”
The homes in View Park and Windsor Hills according to Mack are situated on the higher end of the real estate scale in Los Angeles. “Those neighborhoods are starting at an average price-point of a million-three, million-four, but there are a lot of opportunities in condominiums and townhomes and people are beginning to take advantage of that,” said Mack. “And there are lots of ways to learn how to buy a house that didn’t exist before.”
Local focus, local expertise and global reach is the descriptive tagline of Pacific Playa Realty, where broker and manager Teresa Mack and team recently sold the highest sale-priced home in View Park for $3,120.000.
Before leaving the garden tour pavilion at Ladera Park, Lorinee Jackson, a long-time community committee member, explained how the tour got its start.
“It started in 2000 and our first tour was in 2001. It started as the vision of a View Park neighbor who was a member of the California Horticultural Society: “Why can’t we have a garden tour in our community, View Park and Windsor Hills? We have lovely houses with diverse yards.” According to Lorinee, the founding committee was small. “There were only three of us that started the first garden tour and we had over three hundred people come out.”
The Blooms With A View tour featured nine spectacular gardens in the communities of View Park, Windsor Hills and Ladera Heights. Reel Urban News concluded our coverage on Kenway Avenue, which featured the architectural mastery of Paul R. Williams. The Williams-designed home is owned by Mario and Romelle Ecung, who spoke exclusively with Michael Reel of Reel Urban News.
“We’ve always felt quite blessed to be here from day one. When we purchased the home 26 years ago knowing it was a Paul Williams home, knowing it would take quite a bit to maintain it and keep it in the way you see it today, we were looking forward to doing just that. This is a legacy home for us,” Mario stated.
In the closing moments with Mr. and Mrs. Ecung, Romelle discussed the responsibility of caring for the storied home. “We just wanted to preserve what was here, that elegance, that quality of simplicity and beauty at the same time. That was really what we were going for in all of the spaces that we sort of put our touch on. Paul Williams—How do you improve upon him?”
