Your Next Front Yard

The Los Angeles single-family front yard for decades was the green-turf, water-intensive carpet that united the landscape and social life of this City's sprawling neighborhoods. Drought, loss of native-habitat, climate change, and cultural shifts now challenge this type of lawn-intensive design. Today, front yards and their curbside parkways are increasingly fenced-off, drought-barren, tree-bare, parked-with-cars, and neglected private spaces. This illustrated book provides historical...
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The Los Angeles single-family front yard for decades was the green-turf, water-intensive carpet that united the landscape and social life of this City's sprawling neighborhoods. Drought, loss of native-habitat, climate change, and cultural shifts now challenge this type of lawn-intensive design. Today, front yards and their curbside parkways are increasingly fenced-off, drought-barren, tree-bare, parked-with-cars, and neglected private spaces. This illustrated book provides historical context and new design principles, to both revitalize the landscape purpose of the typical Los Angeles front yard and reimagine its important role as a community commons. Design guidelines, prototypical front yard designs, and a brief plant guide with an emphasis on native flora inspire the homeowner, beginning gardener, or committed horticulturist to reconsider and redesign their front yard, and thereby contribute, front yard by front yard, to the realization of a more sustainable and neighborly Los Angeles single-family landscape.Your Next Front Yard is a project of the Hancock Park Garden Club, whose members are at the forefront of re-imagining the garden landscape of Los Angeles. Architect, urban designer, and planning educator John Kaliski provides the historic context, edited the book, and developed the conceptual approach for the project in collaboration with designer and landscape and architecture educator Takako Tajima, who contributed the illustrations. Garden designer Judy M. Horton, with Tajima, designed and illustrated the prototypical garden designs. Garden Club member Julie Grist developed the plant materials guide, while in the afterword Lisa Novick, Director of Outreach for the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants, reminds everybody of the importance of always gardening with California natives.