Bringing One's Creative Self Back to Life by Planting a Garden

There’s a part of my life that I don’t talk about very often here because it’s filed under “piddling around the house to fill my cup,” and like most things that fill one’s cup, they’re sacred moments that sometimes we like to keep to ourselves, even if it’s such a simple thing or activity.

Three and a half years ago, I left my corporate art director position to jump into the unknown. I was burnt out from every angle and wanted to see if I could make it doing work that felt up my alley, particularly vintage-inspired design. When I decided to jump ship, I timed it to leave right after my annual bonus was given. I wasn’t about to leave that on the table, so I was very lucky to have some cushioning those first few months and a very supportive partner as I figured my way back into freelancing.

It was April 2023, and leaving a job in the springtime just felt right. Spring is a perfect time for a reset, and my job had felt like a sprint for 4 years, so I needed a second to catch my breath and unclench my jaw and shoulders. We rent a small house with a studio on top of a hill in Northeast LA that miraculously had a vacant lot owned by our landlord attached next door, fenced in with our yard. For years, it sat empty, full of weeds, buried trash, and dead, sandy soil. My permaculture gardener friend Annie and I decided it was time to turn that space into something beautiful: a garden!

How We Did It

We followed permaculture gardening methods, which means working with the land, its natural rhythms, and using non-toxic methods. We knew we had to get the soil up to speed, so the first thing we did was lay cardboard down everywhere we wanted to plant. From there, the soil building looked like this:

• Cardboard (tags and stickers removed)
• A layer of carbon (brown): twigs and branches
• A layer of nitrogen (green): grass clippings and horse manure (yes)
• A thick layer of compost
• A layer of straw

With the help of my husband Dan and friends, we moved old tree limbs we had on the property to form garden beds. Dan dug a terrace into the side of the hill for seating and used cinderblocks found in the yard to create stairs. I (perhaps illegally?) went to the outskirts of NASA in Pasadena near the mountains and gathered 200+ rocks to form more borders. I hauled those bad boys and buckets of horse manure from a very fancy horse stable in Pasadena back home in our Honda Accord. We got heaps of free compost and mulch from the City of Los Angeles’ compost facilities, and I went so often that I caught myself telling a stranger while shoveling compost into a bag that “they’ve got the good stuff today!”

With a lot of trial, error, and time, the vacant lot slowly became a garden! One I couldn’t even imagine, full of native Southern California purple, white, and blue sages, poppies, and buckwheat. And six in-ground garden beds full of vegetables mostly year-round (thank you, California weather!)

The Creative Practice of Having a Garden

Having this garden to tend to has fueled my creative practice in ways I didn’t expect. There are endless ways to be curious, to experiment, and to make things from scratch. It truly feels like making art with the land. I tend; she gives; I make; she tends to the birds, the bees, and the ecosystem; repeat.

From this one patch of land, I have grown peppers to make chili oil and beautiful gem glass corn to make Thanksgiving cornbread. Chamomile for tea. Lemons for limoncello! Greens grow for 8 months of the year here, and then come the tomatoes and tomatillos for salsa. Not to mention the broccoli and cauliflower bigger than my head! There’s a community fridge down the street we can donate to because of the excess, friends to give “salad bouquets” to, and enough garlic, lemons, and at times potatoes to last through “the winter”. And I’ve designed multiple seed packet designs, attempted natural dyes, and grown and made my own balms. The inspiration is endless.

It’s an insane and incredible gift that came from such barren soil. Turns out, two depleted spirits- myself and this land- needed tending to, and thank goodness we brought each other back to life.

Resources to start your own garden!

• Gem Glass Corn Seeds
• Free Compost and Mulch in Los Angeles
• Free Heirloom Seeds! (+ $ for shipping)
• If you live in LA, and you turn your yard into a drought-tolerant space (aka planting native plants!), you can get paid for it! Even if you rent!
• How to Make Limoncello
• The one gardening tool I can’t live without: Japanese Hori Hori Gardening Tool
• A Guide to Sheet Mulching and Building Soil