OTL’s Role:
Hillside Memorial Park Garden of Solomon, Phase II
LOCATION
Los Angeles, California
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
BrightView Design Group
PROJECT OVERVIEW
- Design
- Build
- Architectural Fountain
- Rockwork
- Waterfall Construction
At Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles, the Garden of Solomon offers Temple Israel of Hollywood’s Jewish and interfaith families a tranquil setting for remembrance. OTL, having built the garden’s original ponds and rockwork in 2008, returned in 2022 to design and build Phase II: a new waterfall and rockwork extending that same private oasis.
PROJECT
CHALLENGE
The Temple asked for a seamless extension, indistinguishable from the phase built 15 years earlier. Working within a burial ground meant no utility line could conflict with a crypt, and space for new water features had to compete with nearly 150 columbariums along the cascade and pond edges.
OTL’S
SOLUTION
Working with a landscape architect, OTL matched the original materials and techniques exactly, then built retaining walls with bridge-like recesses so water appears to pass beneath them from two entirely separate systems. Narrow, coordinated utility corridors kept every pump line clear of the crypts, while OTL tapped extra capacity from the Phase I pumps to gravity-feed Phase II, cutting costs and avoiding new pipe trenches. One cascade now flows past the resting place of Leonard Nimoy.
Phase II now gives grieving families a peaceful backdrop that reads as one continuous garden, carrying decades of comfort forward at Hillside Memorial Park.
