GREEN THUMB, WARM HEART VOLUNTEER'S SPIRIT CAN'T BE CONFINED.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Not a day goes by at the Panorama City Post Office that customers don't ask manager Brian Vander Pluym or maintenance man Eddie Hernandez about the man out front in the wheelchair.

The man sitting on the ground planting flowers where weeds used to be.

His name is Arturo Herrera. He showed up one day about a year ago, and asked if anyone would mind him turning the weed patches around the post office into something a little nicer on the eye.

He used to live in the area, Arturo said. He'd come by every day to pick up his mail, and just hang out in front talking with people. But then he moved to Pacoima a few years ago.

He missed the place and the people, so he'd been taking the bus a couple of times a week to Panorama City just to hang out.

He might as well do something constructive while he was here, Arturo figured.

Eddie and Brian told him to be their guest. The property was being leased, and the owner showed no desire to spend any money on landscaping. So go for it.

And that's exactly what 50-year-old Arturo Herrera did. Big time.

``I'm looking out my window one day and see Arturo pull up in his motorized wheelchair with a flat of flowers,'' Brian said.

``He climbs out of his wheelchair and sits on the ground, pulling out the weeds and planting flowers. He came back the next day, and the day after that to beautify the place.

``That was a year ago, and he's been back just about every day since,'' Brian said. ``He's also put in a brick walkway, and brick planters under the windows. The guy's incredible.''

It's therapy, says Arturo, who was put in this wheelchair by a drunk driver when he was a young boy. He was the lucky one. His parents died in the car crash.

``I'm an epileptic, and gardening is good treatment for me,'' he said Friday, taking a break from the heat.

``It feels good to turn something ugly into something beautiful, and to have people stop by to thank you for caring and taking the time.''

He's been all over the Northeast Valley in his wheelchair through the years, Arturo said. A lot of people know him. A couple of them are in the nursery and concrete business.

``One day I showed up to work and there were 1,000 bricks piled up, waiting for Arturo,'' Eddie, the maintenance man said. ``Some guy he knew just gave him the bricks when he found out what he was trying to do.

``Arturo built a brick pathway through the garden for his electric wheelchair. The guy can do more from that wheelchair than any gardener I ever saw.''

He doesn't know about that, Arturo says. But he does know about this.

The world would be a better place for all of us if more people took the time to turn something ugly into something beautiful.

And that's the story of the man in the wheelchair who turned weeds into flowers outside the Panorama City Post Office.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Arturo Herrera, who lost a leg because of a drunk driver, tends to a garden he planted outside the Panorama City Post Office.

(2 -- color) As maintenance worker Ed Hernandez watches, Arturo Herrera tends his unofficial garden outside the Panorama City Post Office. Herrera visits regularly to tend to his flowers. He is a former resident of the area, but now lives in Pacoima.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer