COUNTY PLOWS UNDER MAN'S SECRET GARDEN.

Byline: Erik N. Nelson Staff Writer

For the past 10 years, Eric Diehl says, he tried to infuse a bit of Eden into the lifeless dirt strip along the Tujunga Wash storm channel behind his back fence in North Hollywood.

The landscape contractor put down soil, planted California pepper and oak seedlings and raised insects used for organic gardening, like praying mantises.

``I'm an organic grower, and I raise beneficial insects. Had a nice little greenbelt here, with praying mantises, lacewing, nematodes,'' Diehl recalled as he stood in his backyard surrounded by potted shrubs, trees, dripping hoses and panels he used to make a greenhouse he set up next to the wash.

Channel-maintenance workers for the Los Angeles County Public Works Department had tolerated his 70-foot mini-greenbelt, driving around it on their regular trips to plow up vegetation that encroached upon the county right-of-way.

Until last week. On Thursday at 7:30 a.m. the county crew used a front- loader to rip it all up, outraging Diehl- leaving him to grieve over the lost trees and wonder what had been so offensive about his greenery.

``Ten years, and it's gone in a day,'' Diehl said ruefully.

For the Public Works Department, it was a simple matter of an inappropriate use of their property that had been overlooked for too long. In their view, the mini-nursery Diehl was running was more pit than paradise, and even Diehl's landlord did not approve of it.

``It was an eyesore. It was a good place for drug addicts to hang out,'' said landlord Don Truby of Sun Valley.

His comments were echoed by Ken Pellman, a spokesman for county Public Works. ``Most of the plants were in pots. There was trash, a wooden structure, a junk car. The owner of the property and the neighboring residents were unhappy with the situation that he was creating,'' Pellman said.

But his neighbors never complained, Diehl said - they actually appreciated a little greenery breaking up the sullen-looking man-made strip.

``We've got hawks and owls and all kinds of birds coming here,'' said Ray Gunter, 61, a Defense Department retiree who has lived in a house that backs up to the Tujunga Wash since 1991. ``Before, it was just a flat, dry land. They would come out and scratch the ground once in a while'' to remove any plants.

Just whose characterization of the situation is more accurate became a moot point Thursday, after the destruction of the little greenbelt by a county earth-mover.

The next day Diehl pointed out the gnarled, splintered roots protruding from the ground where a California pepper tree once stood. One tree was left in place, but next to it were the 3-inch-wide branch stumps from a chain-sawed mulberry tree. Fifty feet north along the fence line, scraps of dark compost specked the uniformly gray, dusty Caterpillar tracks.

The dispute, to hear Diehl or his neighbors describe it, also involves unsuccessful attempts to buy back from the county some of the wide swath of right-of-way. And there's resentment that a local church had been allowed to park cars on adjacent right-of-way.

But the question on cultivation of plants next to the concrete storm channels goes well beyond Diehl's back yard.

``We're trying to get away from the bare concrete look that we have in many of the channels now. Along some channels, we've put in bike trails, that sort of thing,'' Pellman said.

``Nowadays, the thinking is we want to preserve habitat while we go through and make sure the channels are clean ... in some cases, some of the vegetation has been left behind.''

But that doesn't mean anyone can start doing their own landscaping, Pellman said.

Plans for that sort of thing need to be carefully thought up, submitted and approved, officials said.

But as Diehl tells it, he tried to get a county permit to grow plants in the right-of-way several years ago but county officials kept giving him the runaround.

Local maintenance workers were more sympathetic, he said, and at one point even gave him a key to the access gate for the road along the wash.

In a letter last month, however, the Public Works Department demanded that he return the key, which it said had been handed out illegally by a department employee.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Eric Diehl shows what's left of his 10 years of tree planting Friday after their uprooting by Public Works.

(2) This is how the back of Eric Diehl's home looked before the county plowed the trees Thursday.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer