Community Gives New Life and Look to Avenue

The community spirit is alive and well on Worster Avenue in Studio City and Sherman Oaks.

About 75 residents and members of a local Girl Scout troop gathered Saturday morning to plant 16 trees they purchased with $1,440 raised in a door-to-door fund-raising drive.

After a morning of tree planting, they gathered for a “good, old-fashioned neighborhood picnic lunch,” said Ron Frankle, the 38-year neighborhood resident who organized the event.

“I love this neighborhood and I love my neighbors,” Frankle said. “And do you know what makes this neighborhood what it is? The trees. They’re unbelievable.”

A few years ago, however, disease and old age started to claim the neighborhood’s venerable Brisbane box trees. About one-third of the neighborhood’s trees have died so far, Frankle said, and six trees died last year alone.

Concerned that he would someday live on a tree-barren street, Frankle took matters into his own hands. He contacted City Councilman Mike Feuer’s office and persuaded the city to remove four dead tree stumps and plant six new trees.

Frankle also contacted the Tree People, a nonprofit group that plants trees all over the city and provides free tree planting training. Some Tree People volunteers assisted in Saturday’s project to make sure trees were planted correctly, Frankle said.