About Our Garden

About Our Garden

Our medium sized suburban garden is in the southwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California. Malibu and the Pacific Ocean are about 10 miles south of us, as the crow flies. But no beach climate here! The Santa Monica Mountains rise about 1,500 feet (450 meters) separating us from the ocean and the moderating effect it has on the climate. The mountains stop those ocean breezes from reaching us on most days. We are about 900 feet (275 meters) above sea level.

We are right at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains to our south and the flat terrain of the San Fernando Valley to our north. Our location is relatively flat, but a 15 minute walk can give us some good uphill exercise on the hills in our neighborhood.

The Santa Monica Mountains are sparsely populated with many great trails for hiking and observing nature. They provide a large natural area with quite a variety of terrain and wildlife. The north facing slopes of the mountains often have dense vegetation with large live oak trees and sycamores in the cooler moister canyons.

There is a great hiking trail that follows the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains, called appropriately the Backbone Trail. It runs about 70 miles from Will Rogers Park in Santa Monica to near Point Mugu in Ventura County. We took on the challenge of hiking the whole route, in short pieces of about 5 miles each. Some fabulous hiking just a short distance from the busy freeways of Los Angeles.

Many nice quiet cycling roads wind through the mountains and canyons. A few major roads carry most of the daily traffic, leaving the small canyon roads relatively traffic free. We have enjoyed many miles of cycling on these scenic roads. Some get a bit steep and winding, so it takes good climbing legs, but well worth the effort.

With the mountains keeping the mild coastal weather away from us, we are often 20 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the beaches just 10 miles away. Our nights and winters are colder than the coasts, with December and January nights often getting frost with temperatures in the low 30’s.

According to the maps we are in USDA Zone 10b, bordering on 10a. This means expected low temperatures in winter are in the 30 to 40 degree Fahrenheit range (about 0 to 5 degrees Celsius). On cold winter nights, cold air comes down the nearby hills giving us colder temperatures than some of the surrounding areas. On days after a significant cold snap, we see sensitive plants, like bougainvillea, with frost damage in our immediate neighborhood, while a few blocks away up the hill, similar plants are untouched by the frost.

We have a Mediterranean climate, with nearly all our 15 inches of annual rain falling in the cooler winter months. Summers are hot and dry. The humidity is typically low, in the 10% to 20% range. We have a large day/night temperature variation, often 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Here in Woodland Hills we have some of the hottest and coldest temperatures in our local area. The nearby weather station at Pierce College set the record high temperature in Los Angeles County at 121 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius) in September of 2020.

In May and June we often have a strong marine layer crawl over the mountains bringing low clouds and fog overnight that burns off to warm sunny afternoons. Makes for some really pleasant days. Locally it is called the “May Gray” and “June Gloom”. Some of us, and the garden plants, enjoy the higher humidity and more moderate temperatures. A little break before the real heat of summer sets in.

Fall brings the hot dry Santa Ana winds that come off the dry Great Basin and deserts to our Northeast. The winds are often 40 mph or more with humidity below 10%. Our largest wildfires come at that time of year when the wind driven fires are extremely difficult to control. Also hard on garden plants!

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Garden Layout

Our primary vegetable production comes from 5 raised beds, each about 35 square feet for a total of about 175 square feet. Not a large space, but enough to give us over $40 worth of produce each week.

The photo above shows four of our five raised vegetable beds. The bed on the left foreground is mostly eggplant, with some marigolds as well. The right foreground is the sweet potato bed with vines climbing up their poles. On the left background is a bed with trellises for cucumbers and winter squash, as well as some basil and lettuce. On the right background is more lettuce and basil.

In summer of 2022 we added 3 more raised beds at 48 square feet each, nearly doubling our raised bed space. These 3 beds are currently devoted to our new adventure in garlic growing, with about 500 garlic plants coming up in December 2022.

We also have a couple beds that are not raised beds primarily for herbs and flowers. These have rosemary, oregano, marjoram and garlic chives for perennial herbs. They are also support some of our annual herbs and flowers.

We have grown quite a few different plants in our garden over the past years. We started making a list of them and it became quite long. A future project may be creating a full list to publish.

For fruit trees, we have pomegranates, figs, Meyer lemon, sweet lemon, and a Satsuma mandarin orange. The citrus are well suited to our climate and don’t get bothered too much by our pesky fruit loving animal visitors. The squirrels do grab some of the mandarin oranges. They typically peel them completely before eating! Since we typically get over 100 pounds, we let them take a few. We have a 2 per day limit for the squirrel before he gets chased away!

However, the figs and pomegranates are quickly devoured by squirrels and probably other 4 footed visitors. The figs are now in “cages” made of poultry fencing to keep the critters out. Seems to work well. The pomegranates were in cages for a while but grow so fast it became too confining for them. This year we are trying some new squirrel protection. See our post on Protecting Pomegranates from Squirrels.

Many herbs do quite well here, especially the Mediterranean herbs, like rosemary, lavender, sage, mints, oregano, thyme, lemon balm and marjoram. They are happy in the heavy, low nitrogen soil. We have also had good results from cilantro, chamomile, dill, savory, basil, fenugreek, and garlic chives.

We started growing sweet potatoes and found they do well here. They like hot weather but like more moisture than we typically have. They have become a regular in our garden every year and we usually get 75 pounds or more.

For greens, we have had some great lettuce, kale, collards, escarole, frisee and chard. The lettuce and kale prefer the cooler weather, but chard, collards, escarole and frisee can handle our summer weather. The wild arugula has also been a big producer. The bees like the flowers and some of our bird friends like the seeds, so we let some go and now they volunteer in all corners of the garden.

Eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, squash (summer and winter) and cucumbers are usually reliable summer crops. In our climate they can be productive into November, so we get a long productive season.

Birds are a very noticeable part of our garden. We have many species that are regular visitors. There is regular chatter of one bird or another on most days. Here is an audio clip of a couple minutes in the garden on a recent morning. Listen to hear the hawk, hummingbird, song sparrow, woodpecker, mockingbird, finch, and maybe a towhee, as well as bees buzzing around.

The following is a list of the birds we see and hear from our garden. We’ve noted whether they are a frequent or occasional visitor, and brief notes about them.

Acorn Woodpecker – Frequent
Often heard before seeing them, they have that woody woodpecker voice. The bright red cap along with their black and white coloring makes them easy to spot.

Allen’s Hummingbird – Frequent
Often seen sitting on the power lines resting between visits to flowers in the garden. Have had a couple nests in a bush near our kitchen window, making it easy to observe the progress of the young birds.

Bewick’s Wren – Frequent
Often seen darting around the garden. Not much for flying, they are very quick with hopping here and there in quick jumps and bounces.

Black Phoebe – Frequent
Often seen perching on low stakes in the garden then quickly swooping to grab some flying insect for a meal.

California Towhee (or Brown Towhee) – Frequent
A regular visitor. They like to kick up the leaves and find some good bugs to munch hiding under leaves and mulch. Also surprised to see them eating some Rudbeckia seeds that were scattered on the concrete patio. They are generally insect eaters.

House Finch – Frequent
Commonly found around the garden. They love to chow down on arugula seeds! We let some arugula go to seed for them to enjoy. They can come in groups and seem to enjoy have some social chatter along with their meal.

Lesser Goldfinch – Frequent
Commonly found feeding on seeds of cosmos and black-eyed susans in our garden. We have seen them eating a wide variety of seeds, like lettuce, basil, savory. Have also seen them feeding on kale, probably grabbing a few aphids for extra protein. They often come in a group of 4 to 8. The males have a very distinctive black cap that stands out against their yellowish heads.

Mourning Dove – Frequent
These are commonly found wandering around the ground finding little seeds. When they are not searching for seeds they like taking in the view from their telephone wire perch.

Northern Mockingbird – Frequent
Commonly seen and heard in the garden. We had a couple with a nest in our garden bushes. They are very territorial and even more so when they have a nest nearby. We often see them trying to intimidate the ravens and even hawks. One benefit is they were also chasing away the squirrels! 

Oregon Junco – Frequent
Fairly common ground feeders found poking around the garden finding tasty tidbits.

Raven – Frequent
Usually in groups of 2 or more foraging on the ground or having some kind of noisy conference in a local tree. Sometimes we see them pestering the hawks. Then the ravens are getting pestered by the mockingbirds, so guess that’s fair. They have quite an interesting range of calls, croaks and clucks. It would be interesting to be able to translate those sounds, as it seems like a language.

Red-shouldered Hawk – Frequent
Not so common in the garden, though we have seen one feeding on the ground in the garden (could not see what it had caught). Also have seen them perching on trees or power poles. We frequently hear their distinct call around the neighborhood.

Rufous-crowned Sparrow – Frequent
Often seen foraging around on the ground.

Song Sparrow – Frequent
Most notable in the spring when they are in full singing form. They have a very distinct melodious song that ends in a nice trill.

Spotted Towhee – Frequent
A regular visitor. They like to kick up the leaves and find some good things to munch hiding under leaves and mulch, similar behavior to the California Towhee, however the Spotted Towhee has a much more colorful attire and has a better singing voice. They often end their songs with a trill similar to the Song Sparrow.

White Crowned Sparrow – Frequent in winter
They migrate into our region in the winter, when we often see them as one of the ground feeders.

Bullock’s Oriole – Occasional
Not a daily visitor, but their brilliant orange color with black and white markings makes them easy to spot when they are around. Just a flash of that orange color and you know who it is.

Bushtit – Occasional
Often seen in the citrus trees in groups of 10 or 20 darting around and picking a few bugs. Hopefully they are getting some of the citrus leaf miners. They are small grey birds that can be hard to notice, but when they are visiting in their small flocks, they are constantly making a light “chip chip” that lets you know they are around.

California Scrub-jay – Occasional
An unmistakable voice and bright blue color. Have seen them carrying acorns and looking for a place to hide them. We have had a few small oak trees sprouting in the garden that probably came from a jay.

Canada geese – Occasional
None seen in the garden yet, but often heard flying overhead, particularly in the fall and spring. There is a small lake about a mile from us (as the goose flies). One day we were walking in the neighborhood of the lake and saw a man with a trained falcon. When we asked him about it he said the local neighborhood association hired him to fly his falcon around and keep the geese away from the lake. I think it only has a very temporary deterrent as we often see geese around that lake.

Oak Titmouse (formerly called Plain Titmouse)- Occasional
As their name suggests, they are found around oaks. Their former name of Plain Titmouse was appropriate as they are plain grey birds with no really distinctive markings. They do have a nice hairdo with a little crest on their heads. Not a frequent visitor, they are seen in the trees and bushes looking for a tasty bug snack.

Turkey Vulture – Occasional
Flying overhead on occasion. Saw one in the street in front of the house where a squirrel had bad timing crossing the street, leaving a meal for the vulture.

Western Bluebird – Occasional
Seen usually spring and fall. Assume they are making a short stop on their travels. Often see them across the street in the neighbors trees where they swoop down and grab some bug from the ground and then quickly return to their perch. They must have really good eyes, as one made a quick dive from across the street to our yard, grabbed a bug and returned. Spotting a bug from across the street takes better eyes than mine!

Western Kingbird – Occasional
We often see them when we are walking around the neighborhood, but only occasionally do we see them visiting our garden. 

White-breasted Nuthatch – Occasional
Typically seen walking up and down tree trunks looking for some unsuspecting bug to grab for a snack. They can be seen walking headfirst down the tree trunks, while the Woodpeckers keep their heads pointed up.

Wild Parrot – Occasional
Seen and definitely heard flying by on occasion. They travel in raucous groups. Often 10-15 together with lots of noisy conversation between them. Not native to this area, however they have become localized.

Lawrence’s Goldfinch – Rare
Spotted one day in a group of Lesser Goldfinch, but was clearly larger in size and had the very distinct black mask on the face. The Lesser Goldfinch have a black cap, but no black on the face.

Red Whiskered Bulbul – Rare
Not a local bird, but we had one visiting the mandarin orange tree when it had fruit on it. They are fruit eaters, so probably came for lunch. Their distinctive black head crest with white and red face markings make it hard to miss.