The BirdHouse, the first of the urban Ecosystem Restoration Communities in the mighty movement is regenerating the land under the Hollywood Sign, in California.  Los Angeles, once a basin of woodland, chaparral, riparian, and coastal floodplain ecozones is now covered in compacted soils with very little water infiltration capacity. Hillside erosion, mudslides and wildfires are also a major concern. The initiative focuses on growing gardens on public and private lots, sharing the bounty, and creating a culture of care in various ways by cooperating with nature to restore the biodiversity of soil biology, plants, insects and animals, and restoring the lost topsoil and organic matter. Hollywood is an incubator for the images and ideas that shape our entire cultural way of thinking and acting, and The Birdhouse aspires to making the ecosystem restoration community a visible and iconic restoration initiative. The Birdhouse acknowledges that they are guests on Gabrielino-Tongva land. The Gabrielino-Tongva have been tending this land for thousands of years. This restoration community joins them in bringing this land back to its fertile and verdant systems. Together they are learning to become more indigenous to their place.

Since 2016, The BirdHouse has been creating community around ecosystem restoration for people and places on the ancestral lands of the Tongva-Gabrielino, now known as Hollywood. Through various partnerships, and the practices of permaculture, singing, science and storytelling, they are moving from resignation and despair to imagination and active restoration. The Birdhouse is aspiring to a new story of interdependence, to restore shared wisdom, and to have fun doing it.