Gardening : Drought-Tolerant Garden Blooms
In some old gardens, you can feel the spirit of former owners. Perhaps that is why snapdragons look so comfortable in a weathered gray stone urn by a front stoop; four generations ago, snapdragons bloomed there, back when the house was new and the cement planter was white.
Jennifer Charnofsky’s garden in the West Adams district of Los Angeles is a place for such ghosts--friendly ones with green thumbs--and all interested parties seem happy to see her beautiful, old home with a fresh coat of paint and a yard full of flowers again.
Charnofsky’s plantings are different from her predecessors’ in a key way, however. Once it matures, her garden will be drought-tolerant.
Today and Sunday, you can take a walking tour of the historic West Adams neighborhood; Charnofsky’s house and garden, along with nine others, will be open to the public.
This was once one of the most genteel areas of Los Angeles, built around the turn of the century; the homes are huge and elegant and the streets are wide and still lined with trees. But during the housing shortage after World War II, many homes in the district were either razed and replaced with apartment houses or were clumsily subdivided into multi-unit buildings. Even homes left untouched fell into disrepair as people fled the inner city for new suburbs.
In the early ‘80s, with the growing interest in historic preservation and an influx of families from Latin America, the neighborhood was reborn and is becoming a mecca for those who enjoy seeing how our ancestors lived.
Charnofsky and her family moved to the neighborhood about 1 1/2 years ago. They found that the price fetched by their small tract home in Mar Vista was enough to buy a 2,800-square-foot mansion and completely remodel it. Since she’s a long-time gardener, Charnofsky’s Westside yard had been featured in Sunset magazine, but it wasn’t until recently that she got interested in drought tolerance.
“We can’t behave as if we have unlimited resources,” she says.
She knew that a cactus and succulent garden would be completely out of character for her 1910-era Craftsman-style house, so she set about designing plantings that look old-fashioned and delicate. The house is painted a deep shade of plum, and most of the flowering plants in the front yard are purple, lavender, white or clear yellow.
Charnofsky says the yard was a disaster area when she moved in.
“We took out a lot of huge, non-blooming green plants, and the dirt that was left was like concrete. We had to use a jack hammer to break up the soil.”
She installed the “hardscapes” first--winding paths that are laid out so a gardener never has to set foot on any beds. The paths are carpeted with bark chips, which Charnofsky supplements with seed pods from a towering camphor tree near the street. An organic gardener, she used only compost to amend the soil, which is now rich and friable.
“I also turn in grass clippings and dead leaves,” she says. “And I make many trips to stables for manure.” She suggests getting straw for mulching from local feed shops, which will often allow you to take some free.
“The thrust of the garden is perennials,” Charnofsky says. The centerpiece of the yard is a gorgeous Mexican bush sage plant with tall purple spires; this is the third home to which she has transplanted the shrub. In the same bed are cosmos, which, while annual, bloom several times during the summer and provide a delightful, lacy companion to the sage.
Also planted in the main section of the front garden are verbena, freesias and alyssum, all heavily mulched and all unthirsty.
“This is a garden in the round,” Charnofsky says. Since the house is on a corner and is bordered by a low fence, passers-by see it from several angles. “All beds are tall in the middle and low around the edges,” she says.
Secondary beds are studded with society garlic, which sends up lavender sprays of flowers (but smells too strong to be good for cut flowers), deep blue salvia, iris, sea lavender, bright yellow gazania and trailing African daisies. Charnofsky selects plants at the nursery in containers no larger than one gallon--not only are they cheaper, but she thinks they naturalize better and end up hardier.
“Most of these plants need regular watering when they’re young, but once they’re established, if you mulch heavily, you rarely have to water.”
Some of her favorite drought-tolerant plants are the fortnight lilies, which grow in big clumps and look like white orchids with purple and yellow markings. She’s fond of the dainty, dusty-pink Mexican primroses.
“I use a lot of the pink and white vincas too because they bloom steadily,” she says.
In the back yard, Charnofsky has found remnants of a traditional “white garden” (plantings with only white blooms), which were popular early in the century. She has tried to re-create the garden, to some extent, by planting citrus trees and preserving some ancient datura bushes with their creamy trumpet-shaped blossoms.
The walking tour of the West Adams district runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Sunday; tickets are $12 and may be purchased at a booth near the intersection of 27th Street and Van Buren Place. In addition to the 10 houses featured, you can visit the ongoing restoration of the Segundo Guasti/Busby Berkeley villa in the neighborhood. The Theodore Payne Foundation will be selling drought-tolerant plants at the festival and fair held during the walking tour; ask at the ticket booth for directions.
