A Southern California Gardener’s New Fruit
Lili Singer is the person every Southern California gardener wants to know.
For 12 years she was the witty, unstumpable voice of KCRW-FM’s “The Garden Show,” canceled in 1996 to the consternation of every Angeleno with a problematical begonia or troubled bougainvillea.
Until recently, she was co-editor of “The Southern California Gardener,” a newsletter focused on local gardens that attracted 7,000 subscribers.
Early this year, Singer left “The Southern California Gardener,” which has not published an issue since late 1999, and decided to launch something new.
As Singer explains, “In January I was turning 50, I had done 50 issues of ‘The Southern California Gardener,’ it was the new millennium and I wanted to do something different.”
Singer’s longing has borne fruit. She has just shipped the premiere issue of a new bimonthly guide to local gardening called “The Gardener’s Companion.”
A handsome “magazette,” as Singer calls it, the new newsletter has a sunflower on its cover (the work of art director Eileen Nakada) and is filled with the horticultural sagacity people expect from Singer.
Within the 24 pages of Vol. 1, No. 1, Singer, who is editor and publisher, writes about gardening topics dear to her heart, including native flora and pest management. And she explains what the publication (pre-punched, so you can save issues in a three-ring binder) aspires to be: “We hope to become as indispensable as a sturdy trowel, as comforting as your favorite sweater and as welcome as the people with whom you share your garden.”
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The similes are all very nice, but the reason people heed Singer is that she’s full of invaluable information. Southern California may look like the Garden of Eden, but it can be tricky to grow things here. And because we garden 12 months a year, an unsuccessful garden is a constant rebuke (there’s nothing like a dying tomato plant to convince you that you’re a bad person).
Southern California is a challenge for many gardeners, Singer says, because they have preconceived notions of what to do--notions based on the experiences of people in other parts of the country. Van Nuys (where Singer lives and gardens) is very different from the northeastern United States, where Martha and so many other media gardeners sow and reap. For local plant lovers, Singer points out, “Even the instructions on seed packets are wrong.”
Singer understands the Southland gardener’s pain. “Southern California is not a simple place, geographically or climatically,” she says. Basically, we have a Mediterranean climate, with warm (or hot), dry summers and mild, wet winters. But Southern California is remarkably diverse. “Thirteen of the world’s 15 climate zones can be found within 100 miles of downtown Los Angeles,” Singer says. Only the two coldest zones are not represented.
“What we have been gifted with,” she says, “is diverse and extensive native flora.” Singer is a passionate advocate of native plants, but she cautions that all natives are not equally suitable for all gardens.
“Just because a plant comes from California doesn’t mean you can pop it into your garden and it will do OK,” she says. “Coastal plants aren’t going to do well in Redlands.”
Singer recommends two books to her local followers--the “Sunset Western Garden Book” and Robert Perry’s “Landscape Plants for Western Regions.” The latter, she says, “is a big tome, expensive but very valuable,” especially in its counsel on what combinations of plants are most likely to flourish locally.
The newsletter has an upbeat tone, even on such potentially downbeat topics as pest control. Singer advises everyone to invest in a jeweler’s loupe or hand lens, not to scrutinize your valuables, but to get a good close look at what’s living on your plants. And, unlike the pesticide people, Singer is non-alarmist about sharing the garden with interlopers. “Most insects and mites in our gardens are beneficial,” she says.
Besides giving specific advice (fall is the premiere time for planting most things locally), Singer offers a philosophy of gardening. In her view, a garden is not a static plant-it-and-you’re-finished project, it’s “a living, breathing system.”
Before Singer was a garden guru or mulch maven, she was a nursery-school teacher. “The way I relate to 2- and 3-year-olds is how I relate to plants,” she says with a laugh.
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Singer isn’t kidding. She is always aware that plants are living things, deserving respect. It is one of many indelible lessons she learned from her late father, a mechanical engineer who ran Growing Things nursery in Northridge for 25 years until her parents sold it in 1992. Once when working with her dad at the nursery, which specialized in succulents, she got mad about something and threw one of the plants.
“I don’t care how angry you are,” her father said, “don’t take it out on the plants.”
“A green thumb is not a genetic thing,” Singer says. If you want your garden to thrive, you need to get to know your site. But more than that, you have to spend time with your plants. Singer recommends going into your garden every day to check things out.
“You have to be an observer,” she says. “And when you notice a change for the worse--a drooping leaf, a few mites too many--you have to act.”
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For more information about “The Gardener’s Companion,” call (818) 780-5072 or fax (818) 780-1179.
Spotlight appears every Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.
