The Cutting Edge of CFP Container Cultivation

The family — who are keen gardeners themselves — wanted help re-thinking their front yard presentation. All the lavender along the walk, but one, had up and died. They had hoped for birds and bees zooming through the yard, especially since they have a fine raised vegetable bed. They wanted color and flowers, bright and homey. From back East originally, they missed lilac blossoms and fresh scents. The lavender almost fit the bill, until it didn’t. I knew many wonderful California plants could fit the bill too, but where to put them?

I reckoned that the lavender failed because there wasn’t enough soil area in the walkway planting strips, which are only a foot wide. Plus they were covered with hot, dark stones. Underneath was compacted clay soil, almost concrete. (Apparently the people from whom they bought the house had parked cars in the front yard for years.) The hopelessness of the front yard, I understood, was what led them to the solution of the artificial turf.

I never had experience with artificial turf. I was wary at first, afraid that I would accidentally rip it, like billiard-table felt; that it would seal off the yard from air- and water-exchange completely; or that it would act as a hot spot. I quickly learned how practical and comfortable it is, and appreciated the clean lines and modern look. But still, no place to plant. How to bring pollinators, scent, color, and seasonal variety from two narrow, low, clay strips?

I learned the family themselves had built the raised veggie bed, and also the other chic wooden planter boxes scattered around the house. I got excited by the idea, and asked if they could actually make planter boxes that would give enough cubic feet of soil to support Zen meadows, or bonsai arroyos. Even a foot high planter box could raise the level of good soil up over the hot concrete; and support plants tall enough to lure your fluttery pollinators, and also various creepers and wall-hangers to shade the sides of the boxes. I got even more excited when they said sure, they would build such boxes. And I was ecstatic when, two weeks later, I saw how elegantly they did it, shaping the planters to hug the slope. The result added depth at the front gate, perfect to anchor a showy blue ceanothus, which will give the family and the birds and bees, the California version of lilacs in spring.

The parkway strip was a hard-baked adobe brick covered in red mulch. It had only one tree from the city, plus a dying gardenia. These strips are notoriously tough to plant in satisfying ways: neglected in the past, frequently abused in the present; subject to all kinds of city ordinances; subject to wind-blown trash and doggie doo; shadeless and dry. Parkway strips are extremely restricted in plantable soil space. But given the already restricted space for planting, I realized we could double the yard’s total habitat area by contiunuing the Zen arroyo idea out to the street. It would be the week’s work of a Southern chain-gang to break up all thirty feet of that baked clay; but with a pick-axe and some sweat, I filled four small discrete “bowls” with enough good soil and drainage to hold suites of scrub plants and succulents. In between the bowls is like cement, but in the bowls the soil is soft and friable. By watering only in the bowls, and letting the edges bake, the creeping natives, I hope, will have time and space to establish themselves while, I hope, the weeds won’t. The natural look, and weed-repulsion, is enhanced with specimen rocks that will als shade the ground, and provide safe habitat for adorable lizards and birdies browsing for grass seeds. Luck gave me a bone-sere 90-degree day to work the transformation. It was terribly stressful on the plants as well as the gardener. We all shrank. I thought I had lost the yarrow and the buckwheat and the spreading sagebrush. But they are all already showing new growth, and general signs of happiness.

I wanted to continue the modernist avenue of plants — formal but exotic, wild but constricted — right up onto the porch. I wanted also some showy flowers to bring the hummingbirds right to the front door. But the porch is north-facing and perma-shaded. I put in Coral bells with sword fern at the foot of the stairs, which do okay in darker conditions. So do succulents, which I used to create a discrete, but dignified stage. Then I looked and looked for a pair of hummingbird sages, which thrive in deep shade, to fill matching pots I intended for the first step. The only ones I could find, however, maybe the last two in LA, were tiny seedlings no bigger than my thumb. It would be absurd to put them in big pots until they have had some time to grow up a little bit, so I gave them pots ”the next size up” and set them along the window bay, for next year.

It was a fascinating project trying to ”re-wild” such constrained plots. The results, in a year or two when it is all grown in, will I hope pay off.