Martha Stewart’s whole living visited one of our gardens, and wrote this little feature about it, and how Stephanie designed a Healing Garden for her parents at their home in Seattle.

From tiny clusters of cherry tomatoes to gigantic heirloom varieties, tomatoes grow abundantly in Los Angeles, year-round if you plant winter-fruiting varieties.

Support your plants well with cages, poles or bamboo towers, grow them in compost-rich soil, water them deeply and regularly, but not too often. Keep their roots mulched, watch for pests, and pinch back or prune vines to control growth.

Too many tomatoes to eat? Simply freeze whole tomatoes for cooking later, and/or for Frozen Bloody Marys.

Los Angeles urban gardens are perfect for growing your own fruits and vegetables. This garden, above, already has citrus trees lining the back yard paths. We also converted an existing sunny planter bed into a beautiful small vegetable garden. We planted herbs, greens, edible flowers and tomatoes for their first summer.

We are thrilled that two of our gardens were included in the Venice Home and Garden Tour this year. Upwards of 3,000 people came through to peruse the residences. People were especially interested in the wonderfully secluded fire pits and the custom wall screen covered with Orange clockvine, above.

We are so thankful for Debra Prinzing’s beautiful LA Times article, and we are very proud of this project.  Lisa and Phil were wonderful to work with, and we were honored to be part of this project.  But, we were disappointed that the LA Times didn’t include any pictures of the garden to illustrate Debra’s verbal tour. Here are some images of the garden, Debra has posted some great shots on her blog, too.

We’ve planted our California native grape, Vitis californica ‘Roger’s Red‘ by this covered front porch.

Deciduous vines offer passive solar cooling benefits and easy maintenance. On hot summer days vines provides extra shade. When cool fall weather arrives, the leaves turns bright red before falling off. Fallen grape leaves are great garden mulch, and the bare vines are easy to trim. Self-cleaning vines!

Dymondia is one of our favorite ground cover plants. It never needs mowing, gets by with very little water, can take light foot traffic, and is generally well behaved. We planted it here between pavers along the edge of the pool, after taking out the concrete slab. Softer, greener, and cooler – less Concrete Jungle, now more Urban Oasis.

The Los Angeles Times agrees:  The lowdown on dymondia and three other lawn alternatives.

Stephanie discusses outdoor furnishing with HGTV!

A few snapshots of projects completed in 2009.