Func­tional sculp­ture at Gar­den Temple

This is the kind of store, a life chang­ing sort of store, that makes me want to open the same busi­ness so I could spend all of my time there. That is kind of what hap­pened with David Mills, who with wife Mari, founded Gar­den Tem­ple in in Stu­dio City in 2002. Prior to open­ing the show­room David trav­eled the world buy­ing and sell­ing eth­nic art, includ­ing stone basins from Cen­tral Amer­ica. It seemed a log­i­cal next step to install pumps, but the logis­tics are more com­plex. “We get the stone in var­i­ous states of com­ple­tion from India, Guata­mala, Vietnam.…than the foun­tains are fin­ished locally. “I love being in a cre­ative busi­ness that offers a bit of nature in the city,” says David. “I grew up in the val­ley and miss the open spaces. This is a neigh­bor­hood space. We wel­come peo­ple to come in and wan­der around, like the fam­ily with small chil­dren who come almost every weekend.”

The sim­ple, attrac­tive forms David designs and fab­ri­cates facil­i­tate water flow and fall. “We also install and main­tain our foun­tains, and we are very safety con­scious. It’s also impor­tant that the parts under­neath that you don’t see are durable and made of high qual­ity mate­r­ial.” Gar­den Temple’s large out­door show­room and indoor area show­cases hand chis­eled stone troughs, basins and blocks, cop­per ves­sels, exotic indoor plants and planters.

Gar­den Tem­ple, 13055 Ven­tura Blvd., Stu­dio City, 91604 /​818−783−0079 /​10 — 5 /​7 days a week /​www​.gar​den​tem​ple​.com

On the web: Burkard Nurs­ery in Pasadena is hav­ing their Labor Day sale Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 3 thru Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 6. All items 30% off. (626) 796‑4355 /​www​.burkard​nurs​eries​.com /​More infor­ma­tion in Find a nurs­ery under East Val­ley and beyond.