Green Thumbs

Jean and Clayton Townsend are getting ready to landscape their new hillside home in Malibu and Jean has big plans for the yard. She’s only been gardening for a year but she has already taken horticulture classes and is doing a lot of reading. “I’m really hooked,” she said of her new pastime.

The Townsends, both 32 years old, spend about $150 a month on gardening, a lot of it for tools (“I’m still getting the basics,” she says).

Jean does most of the work in the garden, but says her husband, a movie executive (he co-produced “JFK”), “likes to do what I don’t,” which is most of the heavy work like digging and pruning. “It works out great,” she says of the job-sharing arrangement.

Flowers are her favorites and she cuts them for the house. “Just one perfect flower in a vase is so beautiful,” she says.

She also likes succulents and plans on using a lot around her new house because she thinks they’ll do well on their mountainside.

She first became interested in gardening when her sister moved into Jean’s apartment, bringing 27 houseplants with her. “They brought so much life to that little apartment,” she says, that she hasn’t been without plants since.