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Tours

1. FormLA Landscaping

   Check out this tour featuring native landscape projects by FormLA

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   1. Shotgun House Coastal Garden

      Experience an Authentic Coastal Garden Aesthetic in Santa Monica
      The Santa Monica Conservancy's new Preservation Resource Center represents years of community effort to preserve an historic shotgun-style beach cottage. Community members from throughout Los Angeles contributed to its restoration and move to a new highly-visible location adjacent to the library in Ocean Park.
      FormLA Landscaping designed the garden to showcase a landscape aesthetic authentic to Los Angeles beach communities. The well-established garden features native blooms that thrive in sandy soils and salt air. While petite, the garden is a water-positive powerhouse, absorbing and cleaning runoff in its last mile to the big blue.
      https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/preservation-resource-center-shotgun-house

       

   2. Sunland Welcome Nature Garden

      Experience an Authentic, Nearly No-Water Valley Aesthetic
      Master gardener Roger Klemm saw an opportunity to mitigate the extreme fire danger of the Sunland-Tujunga community by removing arsonist Fountain Grass from the community's welcome garden. He inspired and drives a community effort to model the areas authentic aesthetic using California native plants particularly suited for the high, dry heat of San Fernando Valley summers. Community members from throughout Sunland-Tujunga, including FormLA Landscaping, contributed to the welcome garden's rewilding and expansion to include a Wildflower Annex.
      FormLA Landscaping designed the Sunland Welcome Nature Garden to mitigate the site's fire and slide dangers. It incorporates a broad dry river to direct water and a mix of native foliage particularly suited to protecting slopes and thriving on very little supplemental water, even in drought.

       

   3. LAFD Station 74 Fire Defensive Demonstration Garden

      Not long ago, the LAFD Station 74 garden was a barren 1,800 square foot planter at the front of the station. The department left the space unplanted for many years due to the extensive scope of work required to improve it.
      While barren space may seem low maintenance, it can can attract invasive, flammable foliage. Obviously not a good look for a fire station! As a result, firefighters were spending time doing a great deal of weeding without getting the benefit of beauty for their work.
      Travis Whitcomb, just 16 years old at the time, noticed the barren space and the work it created. He saw the opportunity to show his gratitude by providing beauty while lessening the work it would take for the firefighters and paramedics to maintain it. Whitcomb recruited local businesses to help. Nearby FormLA Landscaping created site plans a model fire-defensive garden that would need no overhead watering and little maintenance.
      The station now maintains the garden, an eye-popping, fragrant array of drought-tolerant foliage in the heart of this busy business district.

       

   4. California Native Garden at Descanso Gardens

      FormLA Landscaping designers Cassy Aoyagi and Isara Ongwiseth helped Descanso Gardens develop an 8-year plan to evolve an expansive space originally designed by Theodore Payne. As you stroll the trails, you’ll see the garden aesthetic holds its own alongside Descanso’s other demonstration gardens while also carrying the look and feel of nearby wild space. Take note: Where do you see the most blooms and butterflies? Where do you hear the most birdsong?
      
      https://www.descansogardens.org/visit/gardens/

   5. Authentic Foothill Gardens at Sierra Madre City Hall

      New Sierra Madre City Hall Gardens Reflect Rich History
      The City of Sierra Madre, Sierra Madre Garden Club, the Sierra Madre Community Foundation, and FormLA Landscaping brought the new look of LA landscapes to Sierra Madre City Hall in November 2015. The gardens are now well-established, lush and leafy, and now attract residents, birds and butterflies!
      The garden reflects a lush, leafy aesthetic authentic to the Sierra Madre area, and it has been featured on the 2017 Theodore Payne Foundation's Native Plant Garden Tour as well as a tour during the 2016 International Greenbuild Conference.
      While elevated by the San Gabriel Mountains, Sierra Madre has a Mediterranean climate, and the garden is designed to thrive in it! Like the rest of LA, it will be dry throughout the year with occasional wet winters. As a foothill community in an alluvial fan, seasonal fires and subsequent slides are of great concern. When systematically used by the community, the Sierra Madre City Hall's authentic plant palette can improve the resilience of adjacent wildspaces.
      In addition to fire defensive and slope saving plants, the garden includes a variety of native edible and medicinal plants. These honor the area's history as an agricultural hub for the largest indigenous population in North America. Birds, butterflies, and native fauna will flock to the gardens, as native foliage provides their most favored sources of food and shelter.
      The public gardens both conserve water and fuel the groundwater table via two beautiful bioswales. When the swales are not doing their "real" job, they entertain the city's children.

       

   6. Fire Defensive Garden at Sierra Madre Post Office

      The City of Sierra Madre and its residents are committed to reclaiming water independence. This garden will help! Its expansive bioswale helped prevent runoff in the dramatic rains of 2023, adding to the water sunk by city hall’s two rain gardens. The community worked together to install foliage native to the foothills of LA in early 2023. It will be fully established by the 2025-26 rainy season.
      This garden would meet the fire defensive specifications of USGBC-LA's course and/or DefensibleSpace.org.
      defensiblespace.org