MySoCalGarden
Find places to visit, learn the plants and ecological relationships that shape them, and bring those observations home to your own garden.
Garden Guide
Gardens, trails, waterways, and public landscapes to experience through their plants, habitat, history, and design.
Demonstration Garden · Rosemead
California American Water’s demonstration garden outside of their location in Rosemead, CA. Their garden uses a mix of cacti, succulents, and California native plants to demonstrate water tolerant landscaping.
Trail · Azusa
Azusa Canyon Trail begins at the developed entrance to San Gabriel Canyon, where the river, the city of Azusa, and the steep front wall of the San Gabriel Mountains meet. Official descriptions generally call the site Azusa Wilderness Park or River Wilderness Park. From the Hilda L. Solis River Outlook, a roughly one-mile route follows North Old San Gabriel Canyon Road beside the river, making a two-mile round trip. The walk is modest, but the setting gives it more significance than its mileage suggests. This is one of the clearest places to experience the transition from the built San Gabriel Valley into the mountain watershed that supplies and shapes it. Throughout much of the route, the river remains visible below or beside the road while canyon walls control the light, shade, vegetation, and sense of enclosure. The river curves through the canyon below San Gabriel Canyon Road, emphasizing the narrow corridor shared by water, vegetation, and transportation. The trailhead includes a visitor center, public-agency offices, a picnic area, native landscaping, parking, and the river overlook. Some of the visitor infrastructure still feels incomplete or lightly used, particularly on a weekday, but there is evident public investment in turning the canyon entrance into a welcoming and interpretable place.
Public Park · Covina
Cougar Park is a small neighborhood park in Covina with a playground, community center, and community garden. The garden is what brought me here. The community garden is not open for casual wandering, although much of it can be seen through the fence and over the low walls. The rest of Cougar Park is a public park. That distinction matters: the controlled access applies to the growing plots, not to the park as a whole. A cougar silhouette marks the entrance to Cougar Park at 150 W. Puente Street in Covina, framed by mature trees and river-rock masonry.
From the field
Visits and photo essays connecting plants with water, habitat, history, and ordinary public landscapes.
July 10, 2026
A morning visiting the LA River pocket parks in Frogtown and Elysian Valley became a lesson in how small public spaces, restoration, graffiti, and civ...
May 24, 2026
The abandoned cages of the Old LA Zoo are a reminder that progress is real, but rarely moves in only one direction.
At home
Gardening advice grounded in Southern California rather than generic rules.
April 13, 2026
Most seed catalogs do not really prepare you for it. They tend to show the more attention-grabbing forms, like the birdhouse gourds. Those can be drie...
February 8, 2022
If live in a house in Southern California there is about a 50% chance you already own at least one citrus tree. Here is everything you need to know to...
January 26, 2022
Hemp is an ancient crop, but there are a lot of myths about it. After about 100 years of oppression, the U.S. finally fully legalized the farming of h...
