If you’ve ever tried gardening at home, you know how challenging it can be to keep a few plants alive and healthy.
Imagine caring for the more than 500 varieties of plants found throughout the Central Garden at the Getty Center, plus all the flora and fauna around the Center and Getty Villa grounds!
That’s the task Getty’s grounds staff faces every day. How do they help each plant thrive? We invited our social media followers to share their questions about the topic, and Brian Houck, Getty’s head of grounds and gardens, revealed the answers.
Read on for all the behind-the-scenes “dirt” (sorry, we couldn’t resist!)
How are specific plants selected? And for what reasons?
Brian Houck: It is fair to say there is a lot of discussion about plant choices for garden beds and our designed landscapes. The one exception could be the Central Garden which is curated by horticulturist Jackie Flor. Jackie is in a constant pattern of adding and subtracting plants to best fit the intention of Robert Irwin’s design. In one sense, these are “painterly” designed beds. Jackie must be a ruthless editor to meet the design expectations.
What’s your biggest gardening challenge? And how many staff do you have working in the garden?
BH: The basics of gardening are water, light, and fertilizer which sounds simple enough. Then there are the challenges of developing maintenance schedules that are specific and flexible enough to handle adjustments. Our crew is 50 people between both the Center and the Villa locations. The plans for each day are loosely set and then we adjust as we go along. The crew is very good at trying to complete the normal operations and fitting in additional tasks that always seem to arise. The Villa’s landscape has had several renovations over the years. In one sense, you could say the deer have done most of the designing as we adjust to their appetites often.
How do you keep the deer from eating everything?
BH: Exclusion is our best method to keep the deer out. For the Central Garden, a significant outer fencing effort was installed. At one point we had staff here overnight to shoo the deer away. The fence is better.
I know there is rosemary at the Villa. What other herbs are there, and what is done with them?
BH: The Herb Garden is replete with many other herbs. A few that come to mind are French tarragon, more than three types of mint, lavender, horehound, thyme, oregano, marjoram, sage, and bay.
When I visited the Getty Center from Canada in 2018, one of my favorite moments at my new favorite museum was coming upon the surprise rooftop cactus garden. Any fun facts about that? Or a cool story from its history?
BH: The cactus garden is one of my favorite places. There is a matching circular space on the north side of Getty which guests pass while on the tram. This is a grass-covered helipad. If you draw a line from the helipad to the rotunda at the Museum entrance and then another line to the circular Cactus Garden, not only do you span the entire top of the hillside, but it also shows you the original ridgeline of the hills prior to the building construction.
All the golden barrel cacti in the garden are original, meaning they are over 25 years old!
Because we are in a drought, what efforts are being made to preserve the gardens? What steps are taken to keep the grounds hydrated?
BH: We are following the customary best practices in horticulture. We have a sophisticated irrigation control program that gets programmed, adjusts seasonally, has its own weather station, and turns off during rain events. We do chart the seasonal use of water to have target use numbers. We also verify our results with a soil probe. Getting that immediate feedback in our gardens as to what exactly the water is doing is very helpful.
We do use less water than one might imagine as most of the 700 acres at the Center do not have regular irrigation. Only the areas around the buildings have supplemental water. This does not include the extensive oak plantings which are now under a plan to adapt to the natural rainfall.
Are all the plantings native to your area of California? Are they also drought-resistant? How much water on average is used in a week for the plantings?
BH: Not all of our plantings are native to California. Southern California is unique as it is classified as a Mediterranean climate. Plants from the Mediterranean and the western coasts of Australia, Chile, and lower South Africa also have the same general climate. Sub-tropical plants from around the world can also grow well here. You might say our plant palette is one of the most diverse, which is why it can be a challenge to learn the many plants here. Some plants are drought-resistant and some are not. These decisions reflect the specific area in discussion and the intended design goal. Typically, we group plants with the same water needs together so we are not over-watering succulents or underwatering our thirstier green friends.
What native plants grow in the Getty gardens?
BH: We do have many and probably more at the Villa in the outer landscape than at the Center. For example, we have California buckeye, manzanitas, native grasses, currents, and several types of California oak trees. At the Center and in the non-developed landscape, there are over 550 acres of natural coastal sage scrub plants. These are untouched except for the brush clearance efforts required by the LAFD along the property border.
When is the best time to see the garden in full bloom?
I have two thoughts here. One, August/September can be nice as the dahlias in the Central Garden are in full bloom. If you like flower power, that’s impressive. Two, This is my snarkier answer: often! Our gardens change with the seasons. For me, it is a privilege to see the gardens evolve throughout each month. I enjoy knowing what they should be doing, when flowers are expected, when green leaves take over the show, and seeing color combinations come into focus.
What plants are edible? Can guests try them?
BH: While we do have some edible plants, I’ll refrain from calling them out. Our standard protocol for guests is to ask them to resist the temptation to pick, touch, or eat plant material onsite. With over 2 million guests in a normal year, our gardens can’t support that much harvesting.
What plants are beneficial to birds, bugs, and critters?
BH: Oh, many! I suppose in some way, nearly all of them. Plants can provide cover, food, nectar, shade, nest materials, and more. If you’re trying to do something specific in your yard, like feed butterflies, you’ll need nectar plants and the specific plants the caterpillars eat. In the case of monarch butterflies, planting the native milkweed is an excellent idea.
Do you have a plant list for your garden? How do you group your plants?
BH: We do. Our plant list has over 1,200 species entries. What that means is if we have 100 agapanthus plants growing in a garden, if they are all the same, they count as a single entry. We use about 50 data points per entry to understand how our collection functions. One of the first markers is, is the plant alive or dead? We do keep track of the plants that die for one reason or the other. Hopefully, we won’t make the same mistakes twice.
What do the plants eat?
BH: I like this question because it lets me jump up on my botany soapbox. Plants are different from animals because they truly—yes, truly—do make their own food with sunlight. As gardeners, we can do our best when we provide the most amount of light a plant wishes, make sure watering is consistent and appropriate, and supply the correct nutrients for the plant to convert into food. This last point is why gardeners care so much about getting the soil “correct” as soil holds nutrients, air, and water.
Why were irises chosen to be planted in your garden? Also, what other flowers are in the gardens?
BH: There are many kinds of iris. We use many types. Commonly, guests refer to the Vincent Van Gogh painting Irises. Van Gogh painted the bearded type. As gardeners, we do use these at times because the connection to the painting is fun; however, we prioritize “the right plant in the right spot” as we want all of our plants to be healthy and look their best.
The list of flowers in the gardens is indeed extensive: bougainvillea, crape myrtle trees, jacaranda trees, agaves in the Cactus Garden, ribes viburnifolium (which smell like vanilla on hot days in August), sweet olive…and I haven’t even gotten to the Central Garden, which has hundreds.
