Green Thumbs

Susan and David Mackenbach believe that “landscaping can really make a house” so they do most of their gardening in their flower-filled front yard. (Like many homes in the Naples section of Long Beach, the back yard is tiny.) Although they had Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar landscape the yard originally, they are constantly adding to it.

The couple spends a lot of time in the garden. “Sometimes we even hire a babysitter (for their two small children) so we can put in a whole day of gardening with no distractions,” says Susan.

They also put a healthy chunk of their income toward their new hobby.

“I spend so much on plants,” she says, adding that that’s where most of the $250 they spend on gardening goes each month.

David, 33, a commercial real estate broker, does the heavy gardening work, but Susan, also 33, considers herself the garden’s caretaker. She learned about gardening from her mother in San Marino and her senior project in high school was a vegetable garden. She still grows vegetables but now mixes them with roses and other flowers so the garden is “pretty to look at.” She cuts a lot of the flowers for the house.

Susan’s latest project is a small vegetable garden so her 4-year-old daughter “can see how things grow.”