Houzz. January 2025. By Marianne Lipanovich: In an ideal world, every landscape renovation would proceed without any delays or issues. In reality, landscape pros often need to tackle existing challenges and those that crop up unexpectedly during a project. Read on to learn how five outdoor pros on Houzz created beautiful, functional outdoor spaces despite project obstacles.
Monthly Archives: January 2025
LAFD Station 74 Garden
see the beauty of a low maintenance, fire-defensive garden
Los Angeles Fire Department Station 74 (Website, Facebook) models an optimally fire-wise landscape aesthetic and beautifies an industrial segment of Foothill Boulevard in Sunland-Tujunga. The highly sloped garden includes a young native oak, a dry river to direct water, and a mix of low-maintenance, native foliage selected for fire defense.
January 2025 Notice: While fires and recovery are in progress, we encourage Angelenos
to stay in their home communities and visit our fire defensive demonstration gardens
via their dedicated websites. We’d love for you to visit in person once danger has passed,
and nearby residents are further into recovery processes.
Thank you for your love and consideration.
The garden was then-sixteen year old Travis Whitcomb’s Eagle Scout project. Whitcomb noticed the barren area and committed to providing the fire fighters with a beautiful, easy to maintain space. He also aimed to provide the Sunland-Tujunga community with a model for fire-wise landscaping. Whitcomb harnessed the goodwill of community members from throughout Sunland-Tujunga, including FormLA Landscaping, to design and install the garden.
Plant Palette
While no plant is fire proof, there are plants that hold hydration well in high, dry heat and do not travel to wild spaces. When well placed, spaced and maintained, they can be fire defensive. See our Pinterest page for the LAFD Station 74 palette, as well as those for other fire defensive landscapes.
Authentic Foothill Gardens, Sierra Madre
New 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 Authentic Foothills Gardens at Sierra Madre City Hall are now well-established, lush and leafy, and now attract residents, birds and butterflies!
January 2025 Notice: While fires and recovery are in progress, we encourage Angelenos
to stay in their home communities and visit our fire defensive demonstration gardens
via their dedicated websites. We’d love for you to visit in person once danger has passed,
and nearby residents are further into recovery processes.
Thank you for your love and consideration.
The Authentic Foothill Gardens
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.
visitation and vitality.
water independance.
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.
Plant Palettes
The foothills have distinctive needs: Fire defense and resilience. Slope retention. A tolerance for low water and high heat. Wildlife habitat. Fulfill them all with the Authentic Foothill Gardens plant palettes. Enjoy more fire defensive garden palettes via our Pinterest.
