Aloe and Goodbye: City Chops Down Plants in Crescent Bay Park

Last week, Laguna Beach Patch received several reports from irate readers who claimed city workers were chopping down perfectly good agave plants that were in full bloom in .

“The gardeners must be stopped!” read one email. “They have ruined the beautiful agaves that were there, that attract the hummingbirds every year. (The gardeners) could have waited until they stopped blooming. (Now) no one this year will be able to see this because some idiot decided they wanted to cut down the agave during blooming season. Thank you, city of Laguna Beach!”

Such passion over plants! We rang up Vic Hillstead of the city’s Public Works department for the official version of what went down.

Turns out they aren’t agave plants after all, but aloe arborescens. And while it’s true that the city took an axe and gave the aloe 40 whacks, the reasons for doing so seem a bit less sinister than purposely starving the hummingbird population.

“We trimmed them down because they were up to a good six or seven feet,” Hillstead told us. “Now is the proper time to do the trimming. They hadn’t been cut back in two years.”

Hillstead went on to say that the aloe were trimmed down to about three feet, and that they will grow back in just a couple of months.

So ... controversy solved. Unless our readers think otherwise? Vote in our poll!