Plan

Twenty-one acres around a lake, laid out in 1892, with a bridge over the water and the Golden State Freeway cut along one edge. There are pedal boats on weekends, a bandshell, and a steady crowd of people fishing and walking laps. It is the oldest park on this side of the river and it still works as the neighborhood's back yard.

Daily, 6am to 10:30pm

A triangle of pavement at First and Boyle where mariachis have waited for hire since the 1930s, still in uniform, still negotiating by the hour. A kiosk donated by the state of Jalisco stands in the middle and the Metro entrance is built into the corner. On a weekend afternoon there are usually several groups standing around, and sometimes one of them plays.

Open all hours. Mariachis gather mostly in daylight and on weekend afternoons

Three small islands in Alamitos Bay laid out in 1903 with Venetian canals, arched footbridges and streets named Toledo and Ravenna. A public walkway runs the whole way round the Rivo Alto Canal, about a mile, flat the entire distance, with boats tied up on one side and back gardens on the other. The city rebuilt the seawall and reopened this stretch in 2015. The fountain at Naples Plaza is where people arrange to meet.

Public walkway, open at all hours. Free. Use it in daylight, because it is unlit in places

A free public park on the spit between Rainbow Harbor and the main channel, with lawn, sand and the Lions Lighthouse at the end of it. The lighthouse went up in 2000 as a Lions Club project for sight charities and is not a working navigation light. From the point you can see the Queen Mary across the water and the whole downtown skyline behind you. It is flat, paved and takes about twenty minutes to walk end to end.

Park, daily 8am to 6pm. The lighthouse path, sunrise to sunset. Free

Ivar and Selma close to traffic every Sunday morning for a certified growers market started in 1991 by the city council office as a weekly event for residents. Around 160 California farmers and food producers set up, and buskers work the corners. It is run by Food Access Los Angeles, formerly SEE-LA.

Sundays only, 8am to 1pm, year round, rain or shine

Twenty-three acres of lawn wrapped around asphalt seeps that are still bubbling, with the Lake Pit and its life-size mammoth models at the Wilshire edge. The excavation pits are fenced but visible and people are often working in them. The museum building closed in July 2026 for a two-year rebuild, and the grounds, the Pleistocene Garden and the playground stayed open and free.

Park grounds daily 6am to 10pm. The museum building is closed for renovation until 2028

Twenty-eight acres on the site of the old Pan-Pacific Auditorium, which burned down in 1989 and left the park behind it. Grass, a walking path, a playground and a recreation center, sunk below street level so the traffic on Beverly disappears. The Holocaust Museum LA sits on the north edge of the same lawn.

Recreation center Mon 9am to 7:30pm, Tue to Fri 9am to 9pm, Sat 9am to 6pm, closed Sunday. Park grounds keep longer daylight hours

A city park on the seaward side of PCH across from the Pepperdine entrance, sitting on the bluff with ball fields, a jogging loop and trails that drop toward the water. There is a whale watching station on the edge, and from December through April gray whales pass below it. Parking and entry are both free.

Daily, 8am to sunset

Twelve acres stepping down from the Music Center to City Hall, opened in 2012 and renamed in 2023 for the county supervisor who pushed it through. The pink chairs move and the Arthur J. Will fountain is open to anyone who wants to stand in it. It is open from before dawn until 10pm.

Daily, 5:30am to 10pm

Ten and a half acres on a hill above the Harbor Freeway, built on a former oil field and opened in 2008 as the first new park in this part of the city in a century. There are oak plantings and a stream running through a meadow, and the skyline view from the top is the clearest in downtown. A playground and a soccer field sit at the lower end.

Daily, sunrise to sunset. Listings vary between an 8pm close and dusk, so treat it as daylight only

Fifty-five acres of Inglewood park, renamed for the city's first Black mayor. Sports fields, tennis courts, a playground, an Olympic-size pool and enough paths to walk for half an hour under mature trees. It is where Inglewood actually spends a Saturday, rather than a place anyone visits.

Every day, 8am to 8pm

The hilltop ranch of William S. Hart, a stage actor who did not start making films until he was around fifty and then became one of the biggest Western stars of the silent era. He left the property to the public. The grounds are open all day and free, there is a barnyard with animals partway up, and his mansion at the top reopened to visitors in April 2026 after being shut. It is a real walk uphill and worth the time if you have an hour.

Park daily, 8am to 8pm. Barnyard Tue to Sun, 9am to 2pm. Museum Wed to Fri, noon to 3pm, and Sat and Sun, 11am to 4pm, guided tour only

Sixty-odd acres of grass, old trees and ball fields behind the Lankershim strip, with a bronze Amelia Earhart standing near the Tujunga corner because she lived in North Hollywood in the 1920s. There are picnic tables under the shade and a recreation center building with restrooms. On a hot Valley afternoon the tree cover is the point.

Grounds open daylight hours. Recreation center, Mon to Fri 9am to 9pm, Sat 9am to 5pm, closed Sun

Old trees shade a triangle of lawn in the West Adams historic district, ringed by Victorian houses that survived the freeway. There are benches, a path and not much else. It is the nearest patch of green between the Shrine and Adams Boulevard.

Daily, sunrise to sunset

A large city park on the east end of Soledad Canyon with open lawn, trails up into the hills behind it, an amphitheater and playing fields. It is open 6am to 10pm every day, which is a wider window than anything else out here, and it costs nothing. Worth it if you are already driving out to Canyon Country with time to spare rather than as a detour on its own.

Daily, 6am to 10pm

A certified growers' market that sets up in the dirt lot on Calabasas Road every Saturday morning, year round, 8am to 1pm. Produce, bread, eggs, flowers, prepared food to eat standing up. Parking in the lot is five dollars flat and there is free parking in the dirt. It is the busiest that block gets all week.

Sat, 8am to 1pm. Closed the rest of the week

An acre and a half in the southeast corner of the Cal State Northridge campus, started in 1959, holding over 1,200 plant species across California natives, Mediterranean climate beds, cacti and succulents, herbs and an ethnobotanical section, plus four greenhouses. Free to walk into on a weekday. It is small enough to see properly in half an hour, which is the right length for the gap before a curtain.

Mon to Fri, 8:15am to 4:45pm. Closed weekends and university holidays

Five acres of Valencia orange trees along Nordhoff Street, planted in the early 1940s when this was farmland and kept when the campus was built around them. Carved paths run through the rows and students use it for picnics. Volunteers pick the fruit for the campus food pantry, more than 153,000 pounds of it since 2009, and biologists use the grove to study bee populations. It is the last working piece of the agricultural Valley on this side of the 405.

Open daylight hours, no gate and no admission

The concrete public stairway Laurel and Hardy hauled a piano up in The Music Box, which won the 1932 Academy Award for short comedy. It is still an ordinary right of way between Vendome and the houses above, and there is a small City park called Laurel and Hardy Park in the triangle at the foot of it with a marble plaque put up in 1992. In June 2024 the City Council voted to name the intersection for the film, so there is a street sign now as well.

Public stairway, open at all times. Park hours are not published.

A 2.2 mile path of dirt and pavement around the Silver Lake and Ivanhoe basins, with a three-acre meadow on the east side that has been open to the public since 2011. The path is not gated. Dogs are fine on the loop and not on the meadow.

Path open and ungated. The dog park at the south end runs 6am to 10pm

Thirty-two acres of open ground on the site of the old River Station rail yard, reopened as a park in 2017 after a long fight over whether it would be warehouses instead. The path along the top of the slope gives a clear line back to the downtown towers. The Metro A Line stops at its north end.

Daily, 8am to 5pm

Eighty-six acres north of the Claremont Colleges planted entirely with California natives, which makes it the largest garden in the state devoted to them. The collections run past twenty-two thousand plants, some of them rare or endangered, and the paths are wide and mostly flat. It closes at five, so this is a daytime stop and a long one if you let it be.

Tue to Sun, 8am to 5pm. Closed Mondays and on major holidays

A city lake with a lotus bed that blooms in summer, a fountain in the middle and a path all the way around. Wheel Fun Rentals runs swan-shaped pedal boats from the boathouse on the east side, one hour at a time. Walking the loop costs nothing.

Park open daily. Pedal boat rentals daily from 9am, last boats out about an hour before sunset

What survives of Abbot Kinney's 1905 canal scheme, six blocks of water with footbridges and narrow walkways between back gardens. There is nothing to buy and no gate. Ducks, kayaks and people's vegetable beds are most of what you see.

Open at all hours. The walkways are unlit in places, so it is a daylight stop in practice

A hundred and twenty-seven acres on what was Lucky Baldwin's ranch, with his 1885 Queen Anne Cottage still standing by the lake and the descendants of the peacocks he imported from India walking the paths. More than two hundred of them live on the grounds and they are loud. The planting runs by continent, so you can cross from Australia to Madagascar in twenty minutes, and the whole loop takes about ninety.

Daily, 9am to 5pm. Last entry 4:30pm. Closed December 25

The small triangular plaza at the head of Degnan that anchors Leimert Park Village, with a 1930s fountain in the middle and shade trees around it. On Sunday afternoons the drum circle sets up here and has for decades, and on most other days there are vendors and people sitting. The streets off it hold what is left of the village's bookshops and galleries.

Daily, sunrise to sunset

Sixteen acres of terraced formal garden around a 1928 Tudor Revival pile built for the Doheny family, now owned by the City of Beverly Hills and open as a public park. The grounds are the reason to come: balustrades, reflecting pools, a cypress allée and a view straight down over the basin. You will recognize the exterior from a great many films.

Grounds daily 10am to 6pm, 10am to 5pm in winter, closed Thanksgiving and Christmas

Seven acres of city park below the Hollywood Hills on the grounds of a 1907 estate, with a Japanese garden, a community garden and a trail that climbs into Runyon Canyon from the back. It is free and almost nobody is in it on a weekday.

Daily, 6:30am to 8pm. Free

A city park on the crest of Olive Hill with Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House at the top and a west lawn that looks across to Griffith Park and the hills. It is free to walk up and sit down. In summer the park runs Friday evenings on the lawn with wine and food trucks.

Park daily 6am to 10pm and free. Hollyhock House tours Thursday to Saturday 11am to 4pm, last entry 3:30pm

A seven-acre sunken garden between the Coliseum and the Natural History Museum, laid out in 1928 with a fountain in the middle and benches around the edge. There are something like twenty thousand rose bushes and in spring the smell carries across the lawn. It is free, it is quiet in the way a walled garden is quiet, and almost nobody on Figueroa knows it is there.

Daily, 8:30am to dusk. Closed January 1 to March 15 for pruning

A small neighborhood park off Western with a playground, a lawn and a recreation building, ten minutes from Lico. It is a park for the blocks around it, and quiet in the middle of the afternoon. Benches, shade and somewhere to stand outside before you go in.

Daily, sunrise to sunset