[Hannah]: Gardening in Los Angeles

Hi all,am visiting family and doing some work in Los Angeles now. I always get a kick out of how people garden around here (my family lives in Santa Monica). They all have this distorted version of how gardening works, because the ground is so fertile and the climate is so mild and sunny that just about anything will grow beautifully, and all you have to do is stick it in the ground. My uncle, for example, has a fruit tree garden. How? He bought a couple orange trees and put them in the ground. More in the mood for grapefruit? No problem! He buys a grapefruit tree and puts it in the ground. In two years - boom, grapefruits. Avocados work the same way.

I took a jog around the neighborhood this morning and was also amused by how people "landscape" around here. Because anything is possible, there is no particular look or feel to the neighborhood - it's incredibly gorgeous but also ADD. One neighbor has decided he lives in an English garden, and planted a lawn, some deciduous trees, a green hedge, and a white picket fence. Another neighbor thinks she lives in the desert Southwest, and has gone with the bare earth/clay tiles/flagstones look. Still another has gone with "mysterious tropical rainforest" and has planted exotic flowering trees so thickly that you can't see into the yard at all.