Hello All, This is a message I forward from Gary Lyons, Curator of the Desert Garden at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in California. The damage was severe. Anybody living in the Southern California area would be welcome to help out. Leo Martin Phoenix Arizona USA What happened in the San Gabriel Valley last week has been called by some, a meteorological anomaly. As a whole, the botanic gardens look like it experienced a deadly hurricane. However, I am pleased to report that the Huntington Desert Garden is the least damaged of all our gardens; it does not mean we did not have significant damage. The north end of the Desert Garden suffered the most damage and we are having trouble getting to the worst of the damage, which is in the Desert Garden nursery and the Madagascar bed. In the Mad. bed our beautiful Fever Tree (Acacia xanthophloea) was blown out of the ground and is on top of the west side of the display. We still have to chainsaw our way into the north end of the Desert Garden nursery to see how many plants were crushed by fallen acacia limbs. Our large Euphorbia ammak hybrid (our largest tree euphorbia} was blown over on an E. tirucalli. Numerous Aloe ferox, A. spectabilis and A. marlothii were blown over but can be rescued. Near the garden entrance and across from the Palm Garden, our largest Aloe bainesii is now half its original size. Throughout the garden there is a thick carpet of leaf litter, broken tree branches, broken ceroid stems, yucca branches (plus our tallest Yucca rostrata across from the Baja Bed, which was blown out of the ground). Cereus and Stenocereus limbs are scattered throughout the garden, numerous flowering agaves blown over. Wherever there are beaucarneas there are thick carpets of their leaves. A few Yucca filifera lost a branch or two, but all are still standing. My guess is the garden will be cleaned up sometime in the Spring. The boojums didn't do so well. Three went over and one was heavily damaged. The Heritage Walk in the lower garden was left nearly intact. We still have to do a more thorough inventory of damage in the non-public areas. As far as I can tell the Desert Conservatory has no outside damage but I did find a bit of broken glass. Perhaps you can get an update on the collections nursery and conservatory from John Trager. [V]olunteers are most welcome to help to helpus with the cleanup. If anyone would care to help, you can email me at glyons@huntington.org or to mheydorff@huntington.org (Mikki H. is our volunteer coordinator). We will be doing cleanup every day except Sunday. Hopefully we can get most of the leaf litter out of the beds and especially out of the cacti. It is a tedious job and not for the faint hearted. As for the other Huntington gardens---well, the Japanese Garden is closed for renovation, the Jungle is closed (now it really is a jungle and impossible to see the paths}. The tree cover is mostly destroyed. The subtropical hill and Australian Garden are heavily damaged and will be closed for several weeks while the fallen trees are removed. Much of the North Vista, the Camellia Garden and Mausoleum are closed because of fallen trees. As of today it is estimated that 100-150 trees were blown over or so badly damaged that they will be removed. We took a hit from what appears to be turbulent hurricane force winds. If we had experienced soaking rains prior to this wind event the damage to all the gardens would have been absolutely devastating beyond words. I haven't seen an event like this since 1969 when the Huntington lost over 200 trees. We need help, Gary Lyons, Curator of the Desert Garden