13004 Venice Boulevard: The Learning Garden at Venice High School is Showcase Central

SHOWCASE CENTRAL:  The Learning Garden at Venice High School

We'll kick off the 2018 Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase at 10am with 11th district Councilmember Mike Bonin welcoming visitors at The Learning Garden at Venice High School.  The Learning Garden was the first school garden started by community activists, setting the model for many of the other school gardens in the Mar Vista area. Attaching their endeavors to the existing gardening classes at Venice High School, The Learning Garden has been a beacon for the community since 2002. Great place to start your tour.  Tour this enormous peaceful and sustainable garden and learn about what David King does for the community.  Then pick up a map and figure out your route for the day, apply your sunscreen, talk to experts and meet lots of garden lovers. 

The entirety of The Learning Garden is grown without any pesticides, herbicides or fertilizer and depends on the soil food web to provide the plants with the appropriate nutrients. 

The garden is watered by hand; as a teaching institution, part of learning how to care for plants is watering them. Some passive water saving is employed, capturing runoff and sequestering it back into the aquifer. The gardens are well mulched. There are three or four (depending on the week) different ways of composting in the garden.

Inca berries

You'll also be able to dig deep into the expertise from the Seed Library of LA (SLOLA), the local organization protecting the diversity of our food supply. SLOLA is a collection of seeds and a community of passionate gardeners and volunteers, which facilitates the growth of open-pollinated seeds among residents of the Los Angeles Basin. A hub and repository for seed collection, SLOLA's mission is to educate members about the practice of seed-saving through their free monthly workshop and outreach events, such as MVGGS.  





Please note that you enter through the gate on Walgrove just south of Venice Blvd.

12520 Caswell Avenue

Several years ago, we decided to get rid of our lawn and put in sustainable plants, purchased in Moreno Valley at Adam Hall's Nursery. We added a pathway up to our home through our new garden and love the colors and textures of our yard. The front garden is comprised of succulents and two wonderful trees, an olive and a Palo Verde, instantly recognizable by its gorgeous green trunk. Additionally, we built a small berm and added large scale rocks for added interest. The recent rains have led to an explosion of some of our bigger cacti, some of which are taking on other-worldly dimensions.



While most things have come in beautifully, we have had some frustration with our persnickety dymondia.  It continues to be a challenge by refusing to fill in the parkway area fully, but we are letting it come in at its own pace.  That's part of the fun of having a sustainable garden, isn't it -- working with a garden's evolution and developing patience to see where the garden wants to take us. We look forward to seeing what else might happen in our garden in the coming weeks.

A spectacular Palo Verde tree

12517 Mitchell

This is our drought-tolerant turf replacement project. We added a flagstone walkway to the front door, with an open area to enjoy our morning cup of coffee. We replaced the sprinkler system on the main part of the yard with drip irrigation, and plan to do the same to the parkway and driveway strip when time and budget allow.

We irrigate once a week, when necessary. We use wood chip mulch to retain moisture and provide nutrients, and we apply compost tea seasonally. Our garden is designed to attract monarch butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds and provides some of our favorite foods and herbs.

Colors are chosen to suggest the iconic California sunsets. Our 3-year old garden is a work-in-progress, as we discover which plants do well and which do not, and as we take inspiration from neighboring gardens during our morning and evening dog walks. We are delighted to share our gardening journey with our neighbors, many of whom have taken the time to stop and chat, appreciating our contribution to the neighborhood.

3300 S. Centinela Ocean View Farms

Don’t miss this Mar Vista treasure! 

Come for the compost tips, stay to tour the gardens!  Visit Ocean View Farms between 10am and 1pm for a tutorial on composting from OVF’s resident compost guru Karl Lisovsky.  One of OVF’s most important long-term commitments is to continually increase its awareness of, and participation in, our neighboring community.  One example of this synergy is a cooperative effort with the City of Los Angeles to reclaim and reuse city-collected stable waste in conjunction with a vigorous internal composting program. Today, OVF's composting program entails mixing reclaimed stable waste with the green organic waste produced in the garden. Last year, over 200 tons of shredded soft green waste, 900 cubic yards of woody material and 80 tons of stable waste were combined to produce a virtually unlimited supply of compost for plots.  Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase visitors are invited to bring home some compost from OVF’s supply.

500+ garden plots overflow with organic veggies, flowers and fruit, all organically grown. From artichokes to agave, OVF has it all. This season gardeners are planting tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, potatoes, chard, lettuces, and onions. Several gardeners have cactus and native plants, and the perimeter of the garden is filled with fig, avocado and citrus trees, as well as pine, eucalyptus, black walnut and palm trees.  Organic Gardening Magazine donated a 1,100 gallon cistern to OVF and it sits at the top of the hill (at the far end of the parking lot) and is connected to one of the dugouts near the Little League baseball field. Just one rainy day collects over 600 gallons of water! The water is piped down to the composting area to be used on the pile. Ocean View Farms is on six acres of land owned by the DWP and under the jurisdiction of the Department of Recreation and Parks and is the largest of more than 60 community gardens in Los Angeles County.

3635 Grand View Blvd

One year ago most of this front yard was a concrete driveway (1400 sq.ft.) and now it's transformed into a two car garage surrounded by eclectic, self-seeding, drought tolerant and drought resistant gardens (1200 sq. ft.) utilizing lots of repurposed pots, bricks and broken cement materials throughout. Pinwheels and Nepalese flags add color and movement to the environment. 

I use a Do-It-Yourself approach and improve the yards as time, budget and energy permits. I built a small retaining wall in the front to address the slope of the yard and used broken concrete creates pathways throughout the property.

Many plants and flowers were started from free seed packets and seedlings from the Master Gardeners at the Mar Vista Farmers Market or from 99 cent store plants.  Neighbors contributed mulberry saplings to my endeavors. Large agave, some fruit trees, grape vines, and artichokes were transplanted from other parts of the property. 

Shade trees (some from City Trees), flowers, fruit trees, herbs, vegetables and vining plants invite lots of bees, birds and butterflies. Monarch butterflies frequent my milkweed plants. A layer of mulch (supplied by the City) keeps the soil moist. Water efficient drip irrigation is monitored by a Rachio Irrigation controller, accessible by my smartphone. 

There's also a beautiful mural on the side of the garage by local artist, Gus Harper.

12300 Dewey

This garden has been a 10-year labor of love. Design launched by replacing the ugly, skinny concrete path to the front porch with beautiful red-hued pavers interlaced with dymondia and some red brick to tie into the home exterior. 

This garden stop is a must for those with corner properties, as the evolving work added wrap around stairs to the entrance and multiple paths throughout the large space creating a thoroughly "walkable" space where you can appreciate all angles of the design.

Some brick was added to the limestone paver design to tie in with the home exterior.  But for some time, that was it...the law was still there.  Then the drought hit so it was time to make the front yard drought tolerant. Little by little, the lawn was replaced with dry stream beds and low water plantings.  In the backyard, the lawn was removed and replaced with drought-tolerant plantings, and a mini bike path was installed for the grandkids. There is also a pondless waterfall built into an existing planter.

11969 Woodbine Street

Inspired by prior Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase events, we resolved that 2015 was the year in which we would remove the old lawn and transform the outdoor living space into a drought-tolerant oasis. The result has cut water usage by more than 50%, and provides interesting colors and textures throughout the year.  Maintenance time in the garden is about the same as before, but gone is the noise of the lawnmower, replaced by the appreciative humming of bees.

Master Gardener Sara Saxonberg will be with us at our garden...so be sure to stop by. And Landscape Designer Linda Levine will be visiting as well.

Resources: 

Rose in Bloom Gardens

David Kent, deck contractor

Go Pavers hardscape

Volt Lighting LED landscape lighting 

3610 Ocean View Avenue

This fantastic 120-foot deep front yard was an uninspiring swath of half-dead lawn. The homeowners asked Kevin Connelly of Park Connelly Landscape Design to make it into something welcoming. The aim was to make the long access to the house a pleasant stroll through a park-like setting, with various areas for lounging, entertaining, meditation and vegetable gardening. 

The design incorporates an existing Chinese Elm and a mature pine. A rectangular concrete patio which was cracked and displaced was recycled into a more gracious, wandering and “softer” walkway leading from the sidewalk to the front door. 

The homeowners' favorite feature is a yin-yang symbol constructed with white and black river stones as a 6ʼ diameter “junction” midway in the yard. A secondary gravel path leads from here to a quiet area bench and continues on to the raised vegetable planter box. It also helps to visually break up the distance to the house. A water feature near the deck entrance also reflects the welcoming aspects of a Feng Shui design. 

Landscape designer Kevin Connelly will be on site all day to answer your questions.

3590 Ocean View Avenue

This front yard garden was added eight years ago when the owners moved into the house. The previous yard was nothing more than weeds and the owners wanted to make it into a water-wise garden. With the help of a local landscaper, they designed the garden to feel like a wild field and to include specific plants such as the Foxtail Agave, Firesticks, Dodonea, Sage, Aloe and other drought-tolerant plants. The biggest addition was the California Live Oak Tree. While the main layout hasn't changed, some plants had to be changed or removed over time. The best part of the garden now is the maturing FireStick plants which tower over the front yard. The owners love to watch the ever-present hummingbirds zoom around the garden.

The garden has no irrigation so plants must really be able to survive dry conditions. During the summer months, the garden is watered by hand but mostly survives on its own during the winter.

3424 Keeshen Drvie

If you think ultra modern home design can't also feature drought-tolerant, well considered and beautiful, inviting gardens, then be sure to visit this home on Keeshen Drive. It's a stunner!

This garden was designed to enhance the bold aesthetic of the modern style of the house. Homeowners called upon landscape designer Linda Rose of Rose-in-Bloom to create a sustainable garden that would prevent the "sterile" look of many modern style homes.  Plants were chosen to soften the hard edges and make the entry warm and inviting (drought-tolerant all stars dymondia, kangaroo paw, and agave, among them).  

A weeping mulberry is a touch of whimsy and something special for the homeowners' two little girls.

The mulberry and the red bark Arbutus Marina tree ("strawberry") are the only plantings that need regular watering so bubblers were installed.  While taking care of the needs of these trees, this form of irrigation does not overwhelm the neighboring drought-tolerant plantings, which are watered much less frequently with drip irrigation sprayers.