Green-Thumb Guru : Antelope Valley: An ex-forester reminds transplanted urban landscapers that the high-desert climate can be unforgiving for most plants.

Tony Baal likes to tell stories about the hapless horticulturists of the Antelope Valley, who plant trees or shrubs bought at discount chains or hardware stores and are surprised when the greenery withers and dies.

That’s no surprise to Baal, though. The retired county forester preaches with almost spiritual zeal that the Antelope Valley is a desert that boils in the summer and freezes in the winter, making it probably the most uncooperative climate in Los Angeles County for growing things. Landscaping will grow, but one has to know how.

Baal, with a green thumb and a well-established reputation, often is asked to be a guru to the amateur arborists and befuddled botanists transplanted from gentler climates to the desert.

“I just feel there’s so much out there people want to know. My experience is an open book. I’d like to pass it on,” said Baal, a chatty 66-year-old who’s been tending to plants and trees and talking about it for 42 years.

Baal has been kept busy doing exactly that.

* When Lancaster expanded its City Hall a year ago, Baal was called on to use his $70,000 tree spade to relocate to city parks about 40 trees that were in the way.

* When Palmdale wanted a consultant several years ago to help write an ordinance to preserve Joshua trees, the spiny symbol of the high desert, they turned to Baal. He gave his advice but later quit, partly in frustration, when city officials balked at passing the law.

* Developers, landscape architects (including those for the region’s new Antelope Valley Mall) and just plain folks all have sought Baal’s advice, most of which he dispenses for free.

* An ardent promoter of recycling, Baal runs a tree farm that is the only private operation on Los Angeles Department of Airports land near Palmdale that is irrigated with reclaimed water from the county’s nearby sewage treatment plant.

“This man gets jobs done. He doesn’t just talk about it. He does it,” said Jim Bort, an agriculture official with the airports department who has worked with Baal. “We don’t really have many people in our society like him. To him, it’s not work. It’s a labor of love.”

At an age when many relish doing something different or just relaxing, Baal looks for neither, preferring to spend time amid nature, which has been his companion during his 31 years as a county forester and 11 years since retirement as a private arborist and tree mover.

Although he never graduated from college or received formal training in forestry, the Pennsylvania native has taught the subject at Antelope Valley College.

In addition to giving advice, Baal has grown and sold live Christmas trees for the past dozen years, runs probably the busiest tree-moving operation in the valley, and is now doing something new.

Building on his theme that local residents know far too little about the proper kinds of trees for the region, and that not many people are willing to tell them, Baal has set up his 20-acre tree farm outside Palmdale as a showcase of desert landscaping.

Baal and his son, Tom, 28, have about 13,000 poplars, eucalyptus and Monterey-Knobcone pines--one of the largest stands of privately owned trees in the valley--that will be acclimated to the native soil when they are transplanted.

The farm is a green oasis amid the vast 17,500 acres of mostly barren desert where Los Angeles officials hope to build a major airport. Baal and a few other growers lease land cheaply from the airport, but Baal is the only one irrigating with reclaimed water from the Palmdale Water Treatment plant.

Airport officials last week won permission from the California Regional Water Quality Board to nearly quadruple--from 760 acres to 2,600 acres--the amount of airport-owned land where reclaimed water can be used for irrigation. But so far, Baal is the only grower taking advantage of the opportunity.

Baal acknowledges that the treated sewage water smells. But, amid a drought, he said, it’s important to find alternative sources that do not deplete supplies of potable water.

“They aren’t going to stop making people,” Baal said. “As long as they continue to come, they’re going to need trees and plant life. People need greenery. They don’t want to live in the middle of sand and Russian thistle. But use the wrong type of plants and the desert will reclaim them.”

Drawing on his years as a county forester from 1947 to 1979, some of which were spent overseeing the valley, Baal says the high desert desperately needs more trees, not only to color its dusty landscape but also to serve as windbreaks and help control soil erosion which led to dust storms earlier this year.

Too often, Baal complains, potted trees sold at stores in the valley are meant for entirely different climates and merely pouring more water on them doesn’t keep them alive. He said programs should be available to help educate people about how to landscape successfully.

The owners of new houses that are typically landscaped with only front yard grass and a single tree when purchased have a voracious appetite for information, he said. He receives calls from early in the morning until late at night, asking him how to keep expensive, but wilting, shrubbery and greenery alive.

“A lot of people are coming here from the other side of the hill. They’re coming from Long Beach or somewhere and they bring their plants here and they die,” said Baal, adding that trees and plants that may grow well even in the heat of the San Fernando Valley may not do well in the Antelope Valley.

Baal planted the trees at his farm in early 1989 and some are already 20 feet tall.

On a recent hot, sunny day, squinting and sweating after escorting visitors on a tour, Baal ducked out of the sun into tall rows of cool, aromatic trees. “You know where you’re going to find me come summer,” he said, “right here in the shade of the eucalyptus trees.”

Pearls of wisdom from Tony Baal for Antelope Valley residents who want to landscape their yards. Baal, a well-known desert green thumb, was a Los Angeles County forester for 31 years:

* “Walk or drive around in the older areas and see what older plant life strikes you. Find what it is and go from there. Let the other fella make the mistakes.”

* “Ninety-five percent of planting trees is preparing the soil. You don’t put a $10 tree in a 10-cent hole.”

* “When you come into the high desert, you must understand the desert is a hard taskmaster. And you will not defeat it by pouring water onto a plant. It has to be halfway resilient or the desert is going to lick it.”