Ralph Gutierrez, 76, worked at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden for nearly a quarter century, retiring in 1993. He climbed many of the trees himself as a trimmer and grew attached to the magnificent ones, the ones that gave him a thrill, like the 90-foot blue gum eucalyptus next to E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin's cottage on the lake.
"We had an aerial lift that went up 30 feet," he said as he surveyed the damage. "I still had 60 more feet to climb."
PHOTOS: Santa Ana wind damage
The first thing Gutierrez asked when he arrived Monday was whether the eucalyptus ? about 140 years old and one of the first arrivals of the Australian tree now ubiquitous in California ? survived the windstorm last week.
It did.
But so many did not.
The rolling gardens, with duck ponds and glades set among lush stands of trees from around the world, lay in a jagged, splintery mess. Trunks had snapped in half. Boughs as heavy as cars sheered off like bird wishbones. A spiny gray brush of dead branches and leaves covered the once-pristinely manicured grounds.
The wind that laid waste to many of the region's stateliest trees struck at its arboreal heart in Arcadia. Hundreds of trees were severely damaged or destroyed, altering the very landscape of one of the country's largest botanical gardens, a living museum that is home to more than 10,000 types of plants.
Botanists began an inventory of the boot-shaped property, about a mile long from top to toe, to see how many of its trees were lost when the Santa Ana winds howled out of the San Gabriel Mountains last Wednesday night. Arboretum executives were already planning to launch the "largest tree planting campaign" since the park's founding.
"To the people who know the arboretum, the landscape has been reshaped," said Richard Schulhof, chief executive officer of the arboretum and botanical garden.
He pointed to a stand of giant birds of paradise lying flat on the ground.
"Look at this, it looks like South Florida a few years back after a hurricane."
But even as he lamented the widespread loss of plant life, he was brimming with enthusiasm over new opportunities.
"This is the moment we envision the future of the tree collection."
He said some sections of the 127-acre garden would be replanted as they were but that others, notably the section of Australian plants, would be reconfigured to focus more on environmentally sound landscaping and to showcase "the best plants for our region and community."
"A big part of our future will be showing how people can create landscaping in harmony with Southern California."
An immense amount of work lies ahead.
Broken limbs still hung perilously in the shredded canopy. Staff had not even reached some spots. One horticultural supervisor joked with Schulhof that the debris was so thick "it was like walking through chaparral."
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