The 4th Annual Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase

The Mar Vista Community Council invites you to participate in the FREE fourth annual Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase - a citywide Earth Day celebration on Saturday, April 21st, 2012 from 10 am to 4pm. See the gardens already on the tour here.

The tour will showcase drought-resistant landscapes and edible gardens with sustainability features ranging from composting techniques to water capture practices. Urban farms range from aquaponic farming to chicken coops. This year the tour places special emphasis on the critical need for ocean friendly gardens and California native gardens that support much needed pollinators such as honey bees and monarch butterflies. See how creating outdoor rooms provides much more useful livable space than a traditional lawn and creates a sense of community.

This giant eco-festival will be comprised of approximately 80 private resident gardens broken into 6 compact self-guided walking tours throughout Mar Vista. On the heels of three wildly successful prior tours that topped 2,000 attendees last year, the Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase will include special guest presenters at many gardens to enhance your knowledge of sustainability in daily living. Especially valuable is the chance for guests to meet do it yourself gardeners who share knowledge and experience. This is truly a giant block party throughout Mar Vista and you will have a blast meeting your neighbors as you visit their gardens.

The Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase seeks to empower Los Angelenos to adopt environmentally conscious living solutions. With most people walking or biking their tours, there is a tremendous sense of community as residents throughout Southern California come to Mar Vista to celebrate our shared vision for a greener life.

Guest presenters on the tour include Surfrider Ocean Friendly Gardens, HoneyLove.org, Los Angeles County Master Gardeners and The Seed Library of Los Angeles. Landscape designers will be at many gardens to answer questions and share information.

Mar Vista can make a difference!

For more information please email sherri@marvista.org or jeanne@marvista.org. 

Media is welcome.

3508 Butler Avenue

Come sit on the porch…and learn the benefits of getting rid of the lawn

These owners wanted a front porch where they could relax with the kids and visit with friends. They also wanted to get rid of the front yard lawn, replacing it with a garden that reduced their water usage but was still interesting, with plenty of color to attract wildlife.

In fall of 2010, they asked Heather Trilling (Trilling Landscape Design) to come up with a family friendly, water wise design. They replaced the old lawn with a drought resistant garden and Del Rio washed gravel path, installed a low stucco sitting wall and landscape lighting, and resurfaced the porch with flagstone.

The low maintenance garden combines California-friendly plants with small boulders for playing or sitting. Trilling used succulent plants such echeverias, aeoniums, agave, and protea, along with phormiums, lavenders, and echium (Pride of Madeira) to create an inviting and colorful garden for this family. There is year round color and blooms with lots of textures. The garden attracts birds, butterflies, and hummingbirds for all to enjoy.

The owners don't miss the lawn at all! The garden encourages them to be in the front yard more and they enjoy visiting with neighbors in the garden. There are so many interesting places for the kids to explore! The small stucco sitting wall doubles as a balancing beam for the kids to climb on and they love playing around the small boulders.

Bark mulch and individual emitters for each plant reduce weeding and water use. Water-wise-targeted drippers, located at each root, water for 20 minutes once a week. Little to no irrigation is needed in winter.

This is a blower, fertilizer and pesticide free zone. Weeding and trimming is done by hand. No lawn means less garden waste and cuttings end up in the compost bin.

Trilling Landscape Design will be at the house for part of the tour.

3343 Inglewood Boulevard

This garden has been designed, planted, and maintained by the homeowner.   The front garden came into being about 4 years ago due to the old grass yard being demolished during a house remodel and the homeowner deciding it would be interesting to create a landscape without grass.  The only goal for the garden was an intent that foliage create contrasting colors, shapes, and textures.  

Water is supplied to the garden using micro sprinklers and drip outlets.  Now that the front garden is mature it is watered at most once a week for an hour or so, and during the winter months it can go for multiple weeks with no watering at all.  It is definitely a drought tolerant landscape.  

This home has previously been on the Garden tour, but this year has added an edible garden in the back yard using both fenced off ground areas along with planter boxes built by the homeowner.  They are in the process of setting up a composting system, and hopefully will be using the product of the system soon.  Additionally, the family has become interested in Monarch butterfly habitat, and this year planted an area with milkweed and are enjoying watching caterpillars turn to chrysalis', and finally into beautiful butterflies.

Photos by Renee Tondelli

13204 Rose Avenue

This garden host has experimented with many vegetable gardens over the course of living in different cities and countries.   Now they are finally putting this lifetime of experience into practice at home. Last year the process of converting the front lawn began, starting with the building of raised garden boxes. The pilot year exceeded expectations with fruits and vegetables almost growing themselves. The homeowner has continued to reclaim even more front lawn - one garden box at a time - and looks forward to continuing to subsidize their fruit and vegetable consumption. It is wonderful and nothing tastes better than to walk outside to the garden, gather vegetables for a meal and eat them freshly picked.

This Mar Vista resident now knows even more people in the immediate neighborhood.  They were even asked if they build gardens as a fulltime job.  But there will be no job change anytime soon.  This is just for fun and to be able to share the produce with family and friends.

Photos: Allison Diamant

12214 Charnock Road

A beautiful example of how lush a succulent garden can be!

This garden began 11 years ago, when the then new owners transplanted beloved cacti and succulents from their previous home in Venice. Over a ten-year period, they broke the old driveway to expand the front garden and created paths from the concrete fragments. They also dug up the parkway turf, filling the space with grosso lavender that bloomed gloriously for five years. And they continued to expand their succulent collection through sharing cuttings with friends and neighbors.

A year ago they began working with landscape designer Sheri Powell-Wolff, owner of Compost TEAna’s Organic Landscapes, to enhance the sustainability factor in the garden. Their main priorities were to redistribute existing plants to the extent possible rather than buy a lot of new ones, improve soil quality and replace an old and inefficient irrigation system. They wanted the look of the redo to be as personal—and even idiosyncratic—as the garden had always been.

Working with Sheri was a satisfying partnership. The garden is now a pleasing integration of the garden they had and the garden they wanted. It is primarily succulents, with the addition of some native and low water herbaceous perennials to complement them and ensure four-season interest. All turf is gone. There are DG pathways. Bermed planting beds are designed to trap rainwater coming off the roof.

A drip irrigation system waters most zones every other day. The new garden requires generous watering. They anticipate a reduction in water consumption within the next year.

More birds, bees and butterflies visit the garden now. There’s no reduction in squirrels!

12307 Dewey Avenue

Walk through the garden doorway into a world of calm and beauty.

This do-it-yourself garden is about five years old. The owners replaced lawn in their front and back yards with a combination of drought-tolerant plants and trees native to Australia and California. As a result of these changes, the owners now enjoy a plethora of humming birds and bees—they love rosemary flowers.

The solid concrete driveway is also gone, replaced with pavers interspersed with pebbles to reduce rainwater runoff to storm drains.

Gone also are the sprinklers. A targeted drip watering system has lowered their monthly water consumption by more than half!

3745 Maplewood Avenue

This garden is a home project that they play in daily with their three children. They have 5 chickens that lay eggs for them, eat greens from their garden and are sweet pets for their children. They grow a range of seasonal organic edibles; almost anything that they can eat straight from the garden. Some of their favorites include, Taiwanese spinach, snap peas, basil and swiss chard. We also have a very productive peach tree, lime, apple, guava and persimmon tree. They also have a large composting area with three bins that house red wiggler worms. They make their own organic compost to fertilize the garden. Their garden is a wonderful place where their children learn and explore about our natural world.



They water once a week by hand with a hose and watering cans. They used a lot of compost as mulch on top of the soil that keeps the moisture in the ground from evaporating. They compost almost all their household green waste; food scraps, paper towels, grass clippings and leaves. They love composting!

Their website http://www.kidscancompost.com/ provides a free digital instructional illustrated guidebook for all ages, to anyone interested in starting a compost or learning more. They will have some hard copies of the book available and red wiggler worms to share.

As a committed environmentalist who teaches composting to kids, Parker has concerns that run deeper than simply sticky, stinky shoes. Rainwater and sprinklers wash dog waste into the storm drain. It then flows, untreated, into Santa Monica Bay where it poisons marine life, she says. Surfers, swimmers and lifeguards become ill from fecal contamination.  In an effort to change the way dogs do their “business” in Mar Vista, and together with LA Stormwater’s efforts to keep pollutants out of local waterways, Parker will be distributing free biodegradable dog poop bags at her home. Read more about her efforts in this article by Jeanne Kuntz in Mar Vista Patch.

3983 East Boulevard - UP House

Urban Permaculture House

UP House is an urban permaculture farm and an intentional health and homesteading community education and activities center. They practice what they preach on a daily basis. For example - 

Local organic food sourcing

They are learning to grow as much food as is ecologically sustainable on their large suburban plot of land while also supporting local organic food initiatives in our community. 

Currently they have fruit trees (avocado, orange, tangerine, bananas, persimmon, peach, fig), several garden areas, self-seeding edible “weed” areas, monthly bulk local organic food, distribution and pick up location for the California CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), and two members working a booth for a vendor at the Mar Vista Farmer’s Market ( Dey Dey’s Best Beef Ever).

Future and Ongoing Projects – Building an efficient green house system, chickens, bees, aquaponics, and vending value-added products from our urban farm at the MV Farmer’s Market.

Intentional Community

These householders are highly involved with volunteer and activism in the realms of health, art and sustainability. Many members of the 11-member community are founders of, or highly involved in some of the most active and productive philanthropies in LA.

To name a few: Habitat for Humanity, Label GMO’s Initiative, LA Unified School District, Tree People, Venice Art Crawl, The Joyful Activist, Venice Community Gardens, City Repair, LIVIN’, and The Big P Project.

Health and Sustainability Efforts

• Six of the eleven members do not own cars and a seventh commutes to work by bike every day.
• Converting the front yard into a cityrepair.org style public space project with a COB bench, an activities/events kiosk, a community garden and an herb spiral.
• Built an outdoor kitchen and an amphitheatre out of re-purposed materials to host gatherings, potluck events and workshops.

Learn more. Check out their facebook page!

2571 Armacost Avenue

 The color and design of loose stones and rocks, the curves of the landscape and the fountain make this a special garden. Larger boulders and sitting rocks give the garden a relaxing, Zen feeling.

Re-landscaping of the front and side yards began in November 2009, with a goal of replacing all the grass with a rock-based hardscape and drought resistant garden. Their across-the-street neighbor (see 2564 Armacost), owner Linda Rose Levine of Rose in Bloom, is the landscaper.

An attractive line of lavender and New Zealand fax and loose gravel replaces the ugly, usually dead grass that “grew” next to the driveway.

Many butterflies and hummingbirds frequent the garden. Birds love the fountains. The garden also attracts small children who like to play with the stones.

An automatic sprinkler system waters the plants twice weekly using a minimal amount of water. The house has solar panels. Two barrels collect rainwater in the back yard and the owners use an area behind the garage for composting.

The owners removed most of the lawn in the backyard—retaining a small patch for the dog—and added a dry riverbed in 2005. The backyard will be open if fill-in landscaping currently underway is completed in time.

12220 Everglade Street

This homeowner was inspired by morning walks around the neighborhood - especially the gardens designed by Grow Garden Design, who they chose to design their own garden.

Both the front and back gardens are a balance of drought tolerant plants from around the world and Yosemite flagstone and Yosemite pebbles. They removed all of the grass from both front and back garden to drastically reduce their water use. Their favorites would have to be the three Cercis canadensis forest pansy in the front garden and the Dymondia between the flagstone. The garden attracts butterflies, bees and tons of birds. The irrigation is a combination of traditional sprinklers and drip irrigation.

2564 Armacost Avenue

Photo credit: Izumi Tanaka Photography

The owner, a landscaper (Rose in Bloom) uses this garden as a testing ground to see what plants work in what areas as well as to push the envelope somewhat by planting unusual species and seeing how they grow…and how sustainable they are. Inspiration came from a desire to bring some unusual gems to client’s gardens, giving their gardens that extra pizzazz.

 

One “client” that has certainly benefited is the owner’s own family. There is movement in the garden everywhere. With four water features and fruiting vegetation year round, birds and other wildlife come and go constantly.

The pondless waterfall is a favorite. On spring and summer Sundays, the owners sit on a swing with their coffee and watch the water all morning. The waterfall draws people in. Many guests say it is so relaxing that they‘ve never sat still for as long as they do in this backyard.

The owners love the mixture of succulents and Mediterranean flowering plants. There are some very unusual plants. They wait all year for rare bulbs to display their once yearly blooms. One favorite, Draculuncus Vulgaris (a black lily), only lasts a week, smells like rotten meat, but is so beautiful that all is forgiven. Most of the year, the spider lily looks like an agapanthus but, when it blooms every August, hundreds of white flowers—with tendrils make them look like elegant spiders—cover it.

Trees include Japanese persimmon, orange and loquat. Alpine strawberries grow in pots; their tiny, tiny fruit is heavenly—the owners pick and eat them by the bowlful! Tomatoes, herbs, lettuce, blueberries and other vegetables grow in a small vegetable garden. Laura Taylor from LauraTaylor At Home will be on hand to talk about growing vegetables; she is an expert on growing hundreds of tomato varieties including heirlooms.

The carefully chosen plants thrive with deep but infrequent irrigation. The garden is watered once weekly in winter and twice weekly during the hot summer. Running the traditional sprinklers for two rounds of 5 minutes each—for a total 10 minutes—eliminates runoff and insures that the water goes deeper to the roots.

Photographer Izumi Tanaka—source of these garden photos—will be taking photos during the Showcase. Guest Janet Mitsui-Brown of The Joy of Feng Shui will explain the plant placements and how Feng Shui principles can improve a garden.

11349 Victoria Avenue

After an extensive home remodel, this homeowner decided to create a drought tolerant front yard.  The Mar Vista Garden Club arrived with plants, tools, gloves and advice to help them start the project.  Almost two years later, their plants are healthy and thriving.  The garden continues to change as they add plants and hardscape.  There are primarily succulents and California native plants.  They have yet to put in a drip system, so they water by hand about twice a month.  This is a real “do-it-yourself” garden! 

3710 Mountain View Avenue

The front garden, once mere sloping suburban lawn

Terrace garden set under two Pittopsorum trees planted in 1951

All Photos:   Michael Moran, Tim Considine, and Steve Lacap

This garden is the summation of twenty years lived in one place, and reflects the changing inspirations of the two owners -  Katherine Spitz, AIA, ASLA, LEED AP (landscape architect of garden) Daniel Rhodes, Architect.  It is always a work in progress.  They have been inspired by the places where building and architecture become one - hedges are walls, trees are columns, paving stones are floors, and tree canopies are ceilings. Enjoy this profile of the garden by Lisa Boone in the LA Times before the tour!

The rear fountain garden, with view of Hidcote Garden (England) inspired twin "follies"

This garden has a strong architectural layout; composed of five discrete garden "rooms," it was inspired by the gardens of England (Hidcote), Italy, Japan, and most recently, Spain. Each room is animated by the sounds of water, and each has a distinct planting scheme.  The "keyhole" shape of the rear garden creates what is known as a “false perspective", enhancing the illusion of depth.  The front garden, influenced by the gardens of Japan, is also focused on a circular fountain, and is surrounded by shrubs that are being coaxed into the forms of cumulus clouds!


The garden has become more drought tolerant over the years, with each successive planting removing more lawn and replacing it with either California natives or compatible plants.  The simple drought tolerant palette of the Spanish gardens - myrtle, rosemary, lavender, and Cypress - have been particularly influential. The most recent addition to the garden, the circular fountain garden in the rear, is planted with their favorite California friendly drought tolerant plants - a distinctive change to the lawn that had been there since 1951! 

Some fun features:  Look for the hidden mirror! The wood pergola was built from columns found in the trash in Silver Lake. And the twin "follies" are used as a nursery and their translucent roofs become lanterns at night. And the frogs spit!

There is drip irrigation in the rear garden and the natives will not need additional water by the fall of 2012. The front garden has been weaned off water except for monthly in the summer.

Overview looking towards house

3338 Corinth Avenue

Going California green…a work in process

This is a corner house, so the front yard is large. The owners are transforming it, one section at a time, doing all the designing, digging and planting themselves. They are using primarily California native plants from nurseries at Theodore Payne Foundation and the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens.

The project began in 2009 with the parkway strip on Kingsland Street. The owners removed the grass and planted a variety of low-growing California native shrubs as well as California poppy seeds. This was their test area. It is a beautiful success, and a lesson in what on a parkway.

Several of the low-growing manzanita shrubs grew more robustly than predicted and are happily blooming. Ashyleaf buckwheat reseeds itself and blooms in a range of beige to rosy pink flowerettes on long stems. Monkeyflower and blue penstemon add color in the spring and summer. The plant mix includes a few milkweeds and the owners now enjoying seeing Monarch butterflies throughout much of the year.

The owners are now redoing the Kingsland side garden, working on hardscaping with stepping stones and planting more California natives. Their goal is to have a beautiful flowering California native garden on the south side of the property requiring little water, low maintenance and no chemical herbicides.

They’ve installed a composter, purchased inexpensively at a City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation composting workshop. And they have some home-grown mulch from a tree that had to be removed.

Once the south side is done, the owners will begin work on the larger garden area on Corinth Avenue. Lots of digging ahead! Come and see how far they’ve gotten.

12613 Appleton Way

This drought resistant garden was designed with a grey/purple theme and is planted with mostly California native plants from Native Sons, Armstrongs and other far-flung nurseries. Everything was (and continues to be!) done by the homeowner – they were inspired by an article in the Home section of the newspaper and built the garden over the course of six months.


It has various kinds of sages and manzanitas and several fijoa plants that fruit. It is anchored by an olive tree and has several ornamental plum, Australian tea trees and three melaleucas.

12734 Rose Avenue

The front yard of this well-designed, water thrifty garden includes a Blue Fescue (Festuca glauca) lawn that was installed in the early 1990’s.  That’s almost 20 years ago!  It has never been replanted, uses minimal water and still looks fantastic.

Just imagine how much water has been saved by this non-lawn over the years. And how about the CO₂ that has not been emitted by lawn mowers?  The lawn clippings that did not end up in the waste stream? The chemical lawn fertilizers that were not applied? 

The front garden planting, deck and irrigation system were designed by Jo Cunningham who has since moved to Eureka, CA.  The design brief: a garden that fit the climate, was easy to maintain and used minimal water. Over the years, the plantings and shrubs have changed, but the layout has not. Nicely established evergreen pear (Pyrus kawakamii) trees are original to the plan. The gravel was added 3 years ago to cover bare dirt and replace mulch.

The back garden was designed in 2000 by Nancy Giffin of Marina del Rey. Over the years, the design has not changed much but the plantings have been upgraded to more drought tolerant selections. The Gingko trees are original to the design.

The irrigation system was installed when the landscaping was done. The ground cover areas are watered by sprinklers and the trees and shrubs are irrigated by a drip system. 

3721 Barry Avenue

This garden is truly an extension to the home. They have created areas for different activities - entertaining space, fire pit area, pool and sun deck area. Drought tolerant, California friendly, beautiful outside rooms.

The homeowner is a Garden Designer (Grow Garden Design) and the goal was to create space that had a strong sense of design and sense of place in our desert by the sea. They incorporated drought tolerant plants from around the world to create an outdoor environment that proved that drought tolerant gardens do not need to be hard, barren and uninviting.

The designer was most inspired by gardens that have a strong sense of design and drama whilst remaining climatically correct and site specific. They love the garden's created by Jay Griffith in Venice, a Dutch Garden Designer Piet Oudolf and Dan Pearson from England.

Irrigation is a combination of drip and conventional sprinkler. They water only occasionally between November and March. In the hotter months they can get away with a deep soak once per week. Water consumption is way down and there is no run off at all.

They love plants that have natural movement - grasses like Miscanthus sinensus and Stipa tenuissima. A favorite small tree is Cersis candensis -'forest Pansy' - it has something to offer all throughout the year. Succulents are also a big favorite for year round color and minimal maintenance. Agonis Flexuosa 'jervis Bay afterdark' is a current favorite. This year they installed a raised vegetable bed.

2822 Barry Ave

These homeowners are pioneers in the sustainable living movement, having designed and maintained this climate-appropriate, blower-free garden for over twenty years. The garden is composed primarily of California Natives, Edibles and Succulents. It’s nice to know that, despite reducing water consumption by more than 50%, they still enjoy their nine rose bushes, watering by hose and watering can when needed.

They always have a good deal of wildlife, but some notable additions have been an ongoing display of Monarch butterflies with the addition of the milkweed plant. Visitors include a variety of birds including hummingbirds, ladybugs, bees, squirrels, a few possums and the occasional raccoon visit.

Their soil has benefited greatly from twenty years of composting. They will be happy to answer your questions, although the composting areas, in the back, will not be visible during the tour.

3465 Stewart Avenue

Featured in the LA Times by Lisa Boone - see more pictures here. 


This landscape designer owner of Elow Landscape Design and Build, Inc. designed the garden for their daughter. She wanted to bring wildlife into the yard. They have humming birds, butterflies, bees, squirrels. They also wanted her to be able to explore the yard, hide and play under trees. Everything is soft and durable enough for children. However the yard still maintains adult spaces and does not look like a play ground. When their daughter goes to bed, the grownups enjoy the space just as much. They live in a very small house so their yard becomes an extension of their home. It has been designed to allow them to live outside. 

They have incorporated lots of features that are green, easy to use, and beautiful. They used composite decking for their decks and reclaimed wood for our dining pergola as well as dining table and bench. Drip irrigation has saved them about $400.00 a month in watering. We have a 6'x6x'6 reclamation pit that catches excess rain water and releases it back into the yard. 

After careful research, they also incorporated synthetic turf which cut their water use down even more. It is made from recycled plastic and can be recycled. It is no longer made out of recycled tires that off gas. For those who have considered this alternative, this is a great stop to learn from a professional who made a studied, informed decision.