How One TV Writer Made Her Own Thriving Garden Oasis

"Baby Geniuses" podcast host Emily Heller's bountiful backyard grew from a few raised beds, hard work, and some mistakes along the way.

When Los Angeles-based TV writer Emily Heller saw that her dog had zero interest in playing in the backyard of the Atwater Village house she bought with her husband in 2018, she decided to turn it into a garden at the encouragement of her brother, who is a prolific gardener. "I was also getting tired of buying kale and then throwing most of it away on a weekly basis so I was like, ‘Maybe if I grow some food, I can just pick the leaves when I want it and I won’t be wasting so much food,’" Heller says. As for how her humble-sized piece of land became abundant with so much produce, she says, "I think a lot of gardeners will tell you it starts with one grow bag and then it turns into another, and then you’re buying a raised bed and then all of a sudden you’re converting everything."

Heller grew up in San Francisco and lived in New York City before settling in southern California, so learning how to set up a garden for the former city-dweller first required education about the land she was living on. The first thing she did was optimize her property for agriculture. "I looked into the Southern California turf replacement rebate, which is where the water department basically pays you to get rid of your lawn. I signed up for that program and took the free class that they offer and it absolutely radicalized me about stormwater capture," she says. "I ended up getting rid of 1,100 square feet of grass and replaced it with more climate-appropriate landscaping. I got rain barrels. I got a rain chain. I started really doing all of it."

After years of growing out her former garden, which she affectionately describes as a hodgepodge of materials and "a bit Winchester Mystery House, where rooms were added as they went," she and her husband decided to build a guest house in the backyard — which meant that for a year, Heller’s gardening had to pause while the entire backyard was rearranged and redesigned. Once the guest house was complete, Heller then worked with professional landscapers to "redesign from the ground up what I actually wanted my garden to look like" which included custom raised beds equipped with irrigation and a pergola outdoor seating area. Heller says she now has "the garden of my dreams."

When thinking back to the city life she once lived, Heller says, "Let me be clear, I did not used to be interested in gardening at all." But soon, like the flourishing plant life in her backyard that took on grand lives of their own, Heller "really spiraled." "You have to be careful when you start gardening or you’ll start talking about stormwater capture at parties with anyone who will listen," she says, jokingly and earnestly. "I think a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, I don’t have a green thumb. I kill plants too much.’ I think the real measure of a gardener is not whether you kill plants but whether you try again after you do."

Assemble DIY raised beds

When Heller began her gardening journey, she bought DIY kits and assembled two corrugated metal raised beds. "I really did well with EarthBox and I will plug this company because I think for a lot of people who are starting a garden for the first time, it’s a really great, idiot-proof product," Heller says. This kit was instrumental for Heller in learning how to bottom-feed her raised planters. "There’s a little tube where you pour water until it comes out the overflow hole, and then you know you’ve fed your plants enough water. It’s really, really easy to grow in those," she says.

As for what to grow in the raised beds, Heller suggests only edible food because they "need to be watered very different amounts than the stuff in the ground," she says. (And food grown directly in the ground can possibly be contaminated by insecticides, as she learned after a bout with home-grown artichokes and food poisoning.)

Start small—and then expand

One way to get used to gardening is to start with nursery-grown seedlings or replanting something that’s already sustaining. "My brother gave me a kale plant that was alive and already giving me food the second I had it, and it was really hard to kill," says Heller of the cold-season brassica that can effortlessly grow throughout spring and fall. "Starting out with a successful plant made me feel like I could do this."

Once Heller’s confidence was strong, she moved on to the next logical step: growing plants from seed. "For some reason it was really important to me to know that I could do that [even though it’s] a lot easier to buy seedlings from the nursery," she says.

Growing from seeds is always unpredictable. "Even when I have one plant that’s doing really well, I always have another plant that isn’t. The last time I did peppers, I had 12 different plants that were all doing so great and this summer, only one of them survived," she says. "I still troubleshoot my new seed setup, so it’s definitely exciting when a plant that you’ve been taking care of starts giving you fruit. It’s taught me to be patient; you really are waiting so long to get to the point where you can eat something that comes off of it."

Don’t forget native plants, too. "I wanted to plant California native milkweed for the monarch butterflies, which had been declared endangered, so I started a bunch of those from seed," she says. Heller didn’t expect anything to happen while they were little seedlings, but "a bunch of butterflies showed up and laid eggs on them." Nature, as it often does, finds a way. This summer, Heller’s milkweed is now a big bush that’s planted in the ground.

Increase soil permeability

Climate change, poor air quality, and heat waves are factors Heller considered in setting up her garden."There were days when it was so hot that my cactus plants were melting like a Salvador Dali painting, which was terrifying," she says. Shade cloths are useful in protecting your plants, but the first and most crucial step is to get your land set up with climate-appropriate landscaping.

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