Story and photos by Donald H. Harrison
ENCINITAS, California — The Treehouse at the San Diego Botanic Garden here might have been called “The Leichtag Family Foundation’s Treehouse” but Rabbi Lenore Bohm says that wouldn’t have been in keeping with Toni Leichtag’s lack of pretentiousness. Instead, Bohm suggested, and fellow members of the board of the Leichtag Family Foundation agreed, that the 16-foot-high treehouse, spreading horizontally some 25 feet, be called “Toni’s Treehouse.”
Not only was the name alliterative, explained Bohm, but also “Toni’s Treehouse” was “a much simpler and friendlier way to describe it — something that kids could interact with and have a vision of. ‘Toni’ is such an easy name. I was hoping that the memory of Toni, Joli and the family could become part of people’s vocabulary.”
The “family” is that of the late Max “Lee” Leichtag, who sold his company, MD Pharmaceuticals Inc., in 1991 for more than $78 million. His company manufactured and distributed generic drugs to treat a variety of conditions including ADHD. That same year, he and his wife Toni started the Leichtag Family Foundation, which they expected would eventually pass into the control of their daughter Joli Ann. However, Joli Ann died of cancer in 2007 a few months before Lee died. Toni died in 2009. The Foundation became an independent grant-making organization, responsible for realizing the Leichtag Family’s desires to fund programs in northern San Diego County that benefit young children, and care for the sick and the elderly.
Julian Duval , who worked in zoos before coming 18 years ago to the San Diego Botanic Garden (formerly known as Quail Botanical Gardens) where he serves as executive director, said Toni’s Treehouse reminds him of the life he led as a youth in the Midwest. “When I was a kid growing up, I never traded my lightning bug collecting bottle for a baseball mitt. I never got the sports gene; I was always looking for another bug or lizard. I quickly got into plants too, because Mother Nature put all these plants and animals together.”
An amazing thing about the treehouse is that it looks and feels like a real tree — its bark-like exterior having been molded from what Duval calls “a mixture of Portland cement and fiberglass.” But although the many-trunked creation is artificial, each day it becomes more alive and real. It is what might be described as a giant trellis. Hundreds of small rubbery ficus plants were affixed to the concrete trunks, watered, and fertilized so that their shoots would grow down the trunk and into the ground. Eventually, explains Duval, the more than 200 cuttings obtained from the Los Angeles Arboretum will become part of an extensive intertwined root system.
Today children run up and down stairs, clamber over a bridge, and navigate a rope walk to explore the various nooks and crannies of the multi-leveled Toni’s Treehouse. Someday, when the children’s children visit the park, in perhaps 25 years, it’s likely that little or no trace of the original artificial structure will remain. It will be totally engorged in living plant material.
“The tree that we collected all these cuttings from (at the Los Angeles Arboretum) is a fica from Africa,” Duval said. “It sends roots down the trunk, so the trunk gets thicker and thicker. As its canopy grows, it creates more humidity, and it sends down even more.”
The point of the interactive Hamilton Children’s Garden is to get children of the generation of computers, iphones, DSs, video games and other electronic devices, out into nature, where they can experience things to enjoy that don’t require batteries, says Duval. My grandsons Shor, 11; Sky, 5, and Brian, 3, can attest to how much fun scrambling over the tree is. For Toni’s Treehouse the boys were but a minimal load; Jim Farley, a former board chair of San Diego Botanic Garden who now heads the Leichtag Family Foundation, says the Treehouse was “engineered so that elephants could climb on that thing.”
Duval says he considers Farley a mentor, just as Farley once considered Lee Leichtag his mentor. When naming opportunities for various activity areas inside the Hamilton’s Children Garden became available, Farley brought the idea back to the Leichtag Family Foundation board. Initially, he said, the Leichtag board was inclined to make a more modest donation than the $500,000 required for naming the tree.
However, he said, the more people thought about it, the more they felt the tree was a perfect memorial for Toni.
“Toni had a real interest in nature and a real interest in early childhood education. Toni had an amazing collection of frogs — little tshotchkes from big frogs to little frogs all over her house. She was famous for her frog collection and she loved all things of early childhood that were nature related.”
Rabbi Bohm recalled that when Toni’s Treehouse was dedicated in June 2011, Joli Ann’s daughter, Heather Greene, came into town from her home in Texas. She brought along her two little boys — Toni’s great grandsons — “and they had a blast in the garden and of course fell in love with the treehouse.” Since then Heather has given birth to another son. The three great-grandchildren are Mason, Brody and Colton.
“It is nice to know they will retain the connection,” the rabbi said.
Toni’s Treehouse is set in the interactive Hamilton Children’s Garden among such other exhibits as an alphabetical “smell and spell” garden (with “A” being for “Aloe” and “Z” being for “Zenia.”); a labyrinth through a mini forest of red fountain grass; a sundial; and a percussion area with drums, xylophones and other instruments built from bamboo and other natural materials.
In the last few years a strong relationship has been fostered by Farley between the San Diego Botanic Garden and the Jerusalem Botanical Garden. The two gardens trade ideas about exhibits, fundraising and promotion, and have agreed to reciprocal free visits for their respective members. Farley said that the Jerusalem Botanical Garden is embarking upon an interactive children’s area which, though likely to be different in many ways, will draw upon the San Diego Botanic Garden’s experiences. For example, he said that Alan Berkley, chair of the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, has asked to see the blueprints for Toni’s Treehouse.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com