Descanso Gardens is a 150-acre botanical garden located in La Cañada Flintridge. Open to the public in 1950, it is an urban retreat known for its significant botanical collections, nestled under groves of more than a thousand twisting Coast Live Oaks. Descanso Gardens focuses on exhibitions and programs that engage artists and the visiting public in conversation about the evolving human relationship with the natural world, how gardens and plants are part of people’s lives today, and how a diversity of voices reveals surprising connections to nature.

PAA funds will support Sound of Water, an exhibition commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Japanese Garden at Descanso Gardens. This all-female contemporary artist exhibition will explore the significant role of water, a fundamental and vital element in Japanese gardens, symbolizing renewal, life, and purity. The exhibition will explore this element as a source of beauty, softness, and calm, as well as a powerful, threatening force in our lives, especially as we face an increasingly extreme climate throughout the world. The exhibition will be on view at Sturt Haaga Gallery beginning June 20, 2026 and run through January 3, 2027.