Palisadians Connect to the World with New Apps

By ERIKA MARTIN | Reporter

With native Palisadian Evan Spiegel’s ubiquitous app Snapchat notching a $20 billion valuation in May, it’s no wonder many locals are following his lead and entering the mobile application marketplace.

Earlier this month Alphabet Streets resident Sean Greene officially launched Bambino, which seeks to connect local families with nearby babysitters, and Huntington resident Peter Trepp has been piloting a beta version of Rivo, an app that organizes a calendar of current events put on by users’ favorite Los Angeles venues and organizations.

After falling ill and being forced to quit her longstanding landscape architecture business, Palisadian Ivy Reid also turned to app building. Her creation, called Spirit & Nature, actually aims to help users unplug with daily meditations.

Each morning, users receive an inspirational quote accompanied by soothing music and photos.

Reid moved to the Alphabet Streets in 1984, a few years after she embarked on a landscape design career that would see her create intricate gardens for the likes of Bette Midler, Laurie David and Jacquelyn Smith.

She is also a longtime devotee of the Self-Realization Fellowship, where she met two monks who would change her life.

The first she met in the ’70s after volunteering to water the center’s plants, and he inspired her landscape career with the advice “stay in the garden and you’ll be happy for the rest of your life.”

The second, Craig Marshall, had been her counsel at Lake Shrine more recently and asked Reid what she had planned for her post-landscaping life.

“I said I want to make people happy and have some purpose, to make people feel good every single day,” Reid recounted. “He said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do that too—why don’t we do it high-tech?’ So we started collecting the quotes, I started to find photos of beautiful gardens that match the quotes, and I have a best friend who lives in Canada who’s a musician, Louis Levin, who’s doing original music.”

The app seeks to provide users a shift in consciousness, much like Reid’s gardens, which always carried an area for contemplation within her signature design of various outdoor garden rooms.

Marshall, who lived at Lake Shrine as a monk for 35 years, lends his voice to deliver each day’s quote followed by a question or prompt he devises.

Reid emphasized that the quotes are non-denominational and from figures of all walks of life, such as Confucius, Ralph Waldo Emerson and even her late mother, Rhonda.

“Anyone can submit, so it’s a living life force, every day,” she said. “I’m opening it up to anybody who wants to spread a message in this troubled time to bring a little peace and a shift to higher consciousness.”

She plans for the app to eventually include meditations, affirmations and ways for people to find out about their spirituality.

Spirit & Nature has garnered “a lot” of interest so far, Reid said, and she hopes to expand its audience by having renowned figures, like those she designed gardens for, contribute a quote or musical piece. However, she sees the app as a vehicle for change rather than income.

“It’s been a big investment,” Reid said. “I want to help send kids to camp whose parents can’t afford it. My housekeeper can’t afford to send her kid to camp and doesn’t know what to do.”