Water-hungry lawns are symbols of Los Angeles' past. In this seriesWe highlight patios with alternative low-water landscaping built for the future.
Julia Lee didn't need a new yard when she and her husband bought their Cheviot Hills home eight years ago. The traditional 1950s house had mature tropical plants in the back and a sprawling hillside lawn in front, and it suited them very well. But as drought and wildfires dragged on in California in recent years, he began to wonder if it made sense to keep grass thirsty.
“Our water bill was crazy,” he says as he gives a tour of the former lawn, which is now filled with colorful native plants and drought-tolerant plants. “It was a waste of space. Our kids were growing up and not playing on the grass. There was just no reason to keep a big green lawn.”
After reading a Times story about Georg Kochi, a retiree who swapped his Koreatown lawn for California-friendly plants, Lee was inspired by Kochi's wild, wild landscape. wabi-sabi-style garden, which embraces the art of imperfect beauty.
“I'm in chaos,” Lee says, leaning in to smell the minty fragrance of a native blue curl bush (Trichostema lanatum). “It's a true reflection of my personality.”
Lee's lawn in Cheviot Hills before covering it with cardboard.
(Julia Lee)
So in 2022, Lee decided to replace his lawn with a drought-tolerant landscape, using the free LADWP Landscape Design Program, now called the Landscape Efficiency Assistance Program, to help. He also applied for the Metropolitan Water District's sod replacement rebate, which at the time was $3 per square foot (now $5), and received $5,310 when the yard was completed.
She wanted to learn more about native plants, so she took a garden design class at the Theodore Payne Foundation for Native Plants in Sun Valley. But the class felt overwhelming. “I love Theodore Payne,” he says, “but I hate measurements and trying to figure out the landscape. I'm not a math person. The instructor wanted us to use a compass and make a scale drawing of the entire lawn, and I thought, 'I can't do this.'”
Feeling paralyzed, she thought about hiring someone to help her, although she didn't want to spend the money on a landscaper. But when Lee shared her frustrations with her graduate school advisor, noted author and avid gardener Jamaica Kincaid, she got the encouragement she needed. “She told me to do it myself,” says Lee, “since she designed her own gardens and they are as idiosyncratic as she is.”
1. Native Clarkia. 2. A ladybug sits on a dill plant. 3. Non-native borage.
With Kincaid's encouragement, Lee, 49, began planting small salvias that would grow quickly and help prevent erosion as water, mulch and rain often ran down the hillside to the sidewalk. He also scattered Theodore Payne's Rainbow Mix wildflower seeds throughout the landscape, including California poppies, Arroyo lupins, desert bluebells and Clarkia. In spring, the garden was full of colorful wildflowers, but for the rest of the year it lay dormant. “People loved it because it was like a wildflower meadow in the middle of the city,” he says.
Walking through Lee's garden, as birds, bees and butterflies fly around the garden's bright flowers, it is obvious that he loves color. With the help of his friend Ben Liou, who replaced his lawn with native plants, Lee filled the space with a lively mix of salvias and flowering perennials, including yellow Bladderpod, pink Palmer's Penstemon, California blue lilac and poppies. Also in the mix are California poppies, Channel Island tree poppies and tall Matilija poppies that look like fried eggs.
An endangered western monarch caterpillar nibbles on a native California milkweed.
A sign that says “Think Global, Plant Local” next to a handwritten plant identification tag.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
She was surprised to discover that working in her garden helped her connect with her neighbors in unexpected ways.
“I was worried the neighbors would complain,” he says. “But I've met a lot of people because I'm here every day. Other gardeners are curious and often ask me, 'What's that interesting yellow plant? Oh, Palmer's hollyhock?' Even now I know the names of all the dogs.”
When she and her gardener covered the front yard with Amazon cardboard boxes she had collected from her neighbors in October, one neighbor joked that it looked ready for Halloween. “He told me it looks like a cemetery,” Lee says, laughing.
An aerial view of Lee's garden.
Not all of the plants survived, in part because half of the garden is shaded by a large magnolia tree in the parking area. Lee estimates he lost about 70% of his plants in the first year because he didn't water enough. “The first year you're supposed to water regularly, and I didn't water enough by hand, so basically everything died. But the water bill went down drastically.”
Three years later, after losing so many plants, he decided to add an irrigation system. Liou and his gardener helped Lee install it and build a bioswale to collect rainwater, using stones from Valley Builders Supply and some larger rocks from Bourget Bros. “We installed it in one day,” he says. “It was my birthday gift to myself.”
Lee installed the bioswale in just one day with the help of a friend and her gardener.
At first, she was nervous about adding something so different from the other traditional gardens on her street. “There were no other houses that had anything like that,” he says. “But now I like it because it divides the front lawn into separate sections for planting.” You can also walk through the bioswale to do some gardening. “I find garden maintenance very relaxing,” he adds. “It's meditative.”
Lee says plants help her connect with people. A neighbor who knew the previous owner of the house gave him succulents. Another brought him an aromatic sagebrush from California, also called Cowboy Colony. “I really like the fact that I can point to certain things and remember who gave them to me,” he says. “That's really nice.”
She hopes the golden yarrow will spread and is especially proud of the large white sage she grew from seeds a friend gave her. “She's very happy there,” she says, clearly excited by his growth. “Look how big it is. I'm very proud of it.”
Not all plants in unamended soil are native to California or even drought tolerant. Lee kept some plants that have been growing in the garden for decades, such as the jasmine that climbs the front of the house and the white roses. “I don't really like lantana,” he says, “but I hate killing things.”
She hopes to one day establish a free seed library and is excited to see baby bluebirds in the bluebird house that Venetian beekeeper Ian Kimbrey installed in his tree. “I just need to be patient,” Lee says of the bluebird box, which is still empty. “I've entered that phase of my life where I love seeing so many birds, bees and other animals in my garden. It's good for my mental health.” He also wants to add a water feature where birds and butterflies can bathe and drink, and he plans to plant more berries to attract more pollinators.
Lee, who grew up in Los Angeles and teaches English at Loyola Marymount University, says his overgrown yard reminds him of Los Angeles in some ways. “Everyone wants to look young and perfect all the time, and that's not healthy,” she says. “My garden is beautiful in the spring; then it goes dormant in the summer. And that's okay.”
1. Blue non-native Cornflowers. 2. Pink Cosmos, also a non-native. 3. Lee reaches to sniff some hardy Cleveland sage 4. A native Clarkia flower. 5. Pink and white native Clarkia flowers.
She hopes her story will encourage others who who can’t afford a landscape designer or simply feel overwhelmed by the idea of replacing their lawn. “I think sometimes it’s helpful just having somebody who’s there to hold your hand,” she says of her friend Liou. “For me, that was critical. I don’t think I would have ever made any progress without him.”
The project was ultimately about more than just saving water. It gave Lee a chance to connect with her community while experimenting in what she calls a “test garden.” She calls her garden a work in progress, and although she has suffered failures along the way, she values the friendships she has made outside her front door. “My garden doesn’t look designed because it isn’t. I’ve learned it’s OK if things aren’t perfect.”
Actually, she says, an imperfect,-always-evolving garden is “a good lesson for life.”
Lee looks for bees inside the Matilija poppies in her garden.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Plants used in this garden
California native shrubs/flowers
Coulter’s Matilija poppy (Romneya coulteri)
Pigeon Point Coyote Brush (Baccharis pilularis “Pigeon Point”)
Twin Peaks No. 2 Dwarf Coyote Bush (Baccharis pilularis “Twin Peaks No. 2”)
Lilac Verbena “De La Mina” (Verbena lilacina “De La Mina”)
Armstrong California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum “Armstrong”)
Marin Pink California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum “Marin Pink”)
“Bert’s Bluff’ California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum)
Catalina California Fuchsia (Epilobium “Catalina”)
Hummingbird sage (Salvia spathacea)
California Sagebrush (Artemesia Californica)
California Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum)
Red Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens)
“Warriner Lytle” Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum “Warriner Lytle”)
Ashyleaf Buckwheat (Eriogonum cinereum)
Lee grew the white sage from seed.
Sea Cliff Buckwheat (Eriogonum parvifolium)
Ceanothus “Julia Phelps”
Yankee Point Carmel Ceanothus (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus var. griseus “Yankee Point”)
Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa)
Woolly Blue Curls (Trichostema lanatum)
Golden Currant (Ribes aureum var. gracillimum)
Bush Monkeyflower (Diplacus longiflorus)
Jelly Bean Red (and Pink, and Orange, and Fiesta Marigold) Monkeyflower (Diplacus “Jelly Bean Red,” etc.)
Canyon Prince Giant Rye (Elymus condensatus “Canyon Prince”)
Island Alumroot (Heuchera maxima)
Santa Ana Cardinal Alumroot (Heuchera “Santa Ana Cardinal”)
California bee plant (Scrophularia californica)
California Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum)
Common Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus var. laevigatus)
Fragrant Pitcher Sage (Lepechinia fragrans)
“Whirly Blue” Cleveland sage (salvia clevelandii “Whirly Blue”)
“Celestial Blue” Cleveland sage (salvia clevelandii “Celestial Blue”)
Winnifred Gilman Cleveland sage (salvia clevelandii “Winnifred Gilman”)
Allen Chickering Cleveland sage (salvia clevelandii “Allen Chickering”)
“Bee’s Bliss” sage (Salvia “Bee’s Bliss”)
“Mrs. Beard” creeping sage (Salvia sonomensis “Mrs. Beard”)
Russian sage (Salvia yangii)
Santa Barbara Mexican Bush sage (Salvia leucantha “Santa Barbara”)
Deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens)
California bush sunflower (Encelia californica)
Margarita BOP penstemon (Penstemon heterophyllus “Margarita BOP”)
Palmer’s Indian Mallow (Abutilon palmeri)
Island Mallow (Malva assurgentiflora)
White sage (salvia apiana)
Black sage (saliva mellifera)
Butterfly bush (Buddleja)
California Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
Oregano (Origanum vulgare)
French lavender (Lavandula dentata)
Bush Anemone (Carpenteria californica)
Channel Islands tree poppy (Dendromecon hartfordii)
Manzanita
Blue Grama (Bouteloua gracilis)
Showy Island snapdragon (Gambelia speciosa)
Bladderpod (Cleomella arborea)
Wildflowers (Native and non-native)
California poppies (Eschscholzia californica)
Blue Globe gilia (gilia capitata)
Elegant Clarkia (Clarkia unguiculata)
“Farewell to Spring” Clarkia (Clarkia amoena)
Cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus)
Theodore Payne’s Rainbow Mix wildflower seeds
“Indian Summer” Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta, “Indian Summer”)
Cosmos (cosmos bipinnatus)
Various breadseed poppies (papiva somniferum)
