No. Designers serve as a bridge between clients and contractors. My job is to listen to what clients want, study the project site, and create a design that contractors can build.

I can make recommendations – and advise against certain companies – but I don’t have exhaustive knowledge of every contractor in LA. Some clients ask for design work after they’ve already picked a contractor, and some clients search for contractors only after they have their designs in-hand. Both methods work well.

All gardens require maintenance, and that’s part of the point of building them. Gardens get people outside where they can enjoy the seasonal changes of plants, breathe the fresh air, and soak up some vitamin D. Low-maintenance gardens are absolutely possible, but if you want a garden you never have to touch, then you might be happier with a painting of a garden or a binge of Monty Don’s classic BBC show Gardener’s World.

Every place in the world except Antarctica has native plants, and natives are always the best choice simply because native plants have evolved to thrive in their specific local environment.

Plants that are native to California have adapted over countless generations to handle the intensity of our summer heat, our sparse rain, and our occasional fires. Additionally, native plants have well-established relationships with insects and animals, providing food and habitat, and getting help with pollination and proliferation in return.

There is an essential California-ness to our local oak trees, just like there’s an essential Colorado-ness to aspens and an essential Michigan-ness to paper birches. Native plants give a garden a sense of place, a sense that if you woke up there, you’d be able to look around and accurately guess, based just on the plants, where you are.

Plants that are drought-tolerant are usually natives that have evolved techniques for staying alive through long, dry summers. Common misconceptions about drought-tolerant plants are that they require no water (they do) and that they always look good. Most drought-tolerant plants cope with drought by going into hibernation. They drop their leaves and look dead, but once they start getting water again, they leaf out and return to normal.

Invasive plants are bad because they didn’t evolve in the region they’ve invaded, which means local animals don’t recognize or eat them, so they’re not part of the natural food chain. Invasive plants tend to grow quickly, out-competing native plants for water, sunlight, and space. They also tend to have tiny seeds that are distributed by the wind, making it all-too-easy to spread them absolutely everywhere.

The invasive plant I encounter most often in residential gardens is Mexican Feather Grass (Nasella tenuissima, formerly Stipa tenuissima). It’s a gorgeous grass, but its tiny seeds spread like mad, sticking to everything from dog fur to car tires to the bottoms of shoes. Local animals don’t eat this plant, so it has no natural predators, and it unfortunately grows all over the San Gabriel Mountains because it’s sold and planted in local gardens. For clients who love the look of this grass, I recommend native alternatives that fit into our local ecosystem and co-exist respectfully with other plants while also looking absolutely gorgeous.

If you want to learn more about invasive plants, visit the California Invasive Plant Council.

Xeriscaping (ZEE-roh-scaping) means “dry gardening”, which should not be taken literally. All plants require water. A xeriscaped garden is neither completely dry nor water-free, but it does use significantly less water than a traditional garden. A properly xeriscaped garden has dense clusters of plants and utilizes methods like berming, bioswales, and boulders to use water as efficiently as possible.Xeriscaping is a great approach for gardens in Southern California, but please note that a yard full of gravel with no plants is not xeriscaping.

No, lawns are not inherently bad. They have a bad reputation because they require sprinklers, which use a lot more water than drip irrigation systems. If clients have dogs or kids that like to play on a lawn, I think that’s fabulous. If clients want their front yard to have a lawn but they don’t plan to use it, then I’ll present some alternatives and encourage them to go in a different direction. Lawns are great when they’re well-used and irrigated as conservatively as possible.

Astroturf is plastic, which - in my humble opinion - has no place in a garden except in irrigation components. Astroturf smothers the soil and creates an ecological dead zone. It does nothing to cool a space and weeds grow right through it. There are many better alternatives to artificial turf, including groundcover plants that can fill a space while using significantly less water than a traditional lawn.

No, but this is a common misconception. Southern California has a rare but biologically rich climate that is found in only a few places on Earth. Our climate is Mediterranean, which means we have comfortable, rainy winters and hot, dry summers. Our climate is roughly equivalent to places like the Mediterranean area of Europe, the southwest coast of Africa, and the southwest coast of Australia, among others. The good news is that plants that thrive in one Mediterranean climate are likely to thrive in others.

For some reason, palm trees have fallen into a bad reputation that is based on several misconceptions. One is that palm trees require a lot of water when the reality is that most palms have very low water requirements. A second misconception is that palms are not native. We have a beautiful native palm that not only thrives in Southern California, but has become a symbol of Los Angeles that I would be sad to see disappear. Our native California Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera) is a fabulous tree, especially in parkways. The final misconception going around is that palm trees are highly combustible. The reality is that highly oily trees like the non-native eucalyptus are dangerous to grow in areas prone to fire. Palm trees are only dangerous when they haven’t been maintained; if dead fronds are regularly removed, then palms are…

For gardeners like myself, squirrels are the worst because they rip immature fruit off vines – tomatoes, grapes, cantaloupe, pumpkins, watermelon, etc. – take one bite, then leave the fruit to rot. If they were eating the whole fruit or taking it home to their squirrelly babies, that’s one thing, but that’s not what they’re doing. Hence, they are the worst.