Turning a Concrete Parking Lot into a Thriving Garden Oasis

When we bought our house two years ago, I remember thinking they actually paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

When we bought our house two years ago, I remember thinking they actually paved paradise and put up a parking lot. It was so much concrete. So I made it my mission to bring it back to life. I remember when it looked like this, trying to trust the process and reminding myself it was gonna look worse before it looked better. I remember my friends Chris and Aldo coming over to help me install the DG and showing me how much fun landscaping can be. I remember the endless raking and clearing out what felt like years of debris to make room for the new life. And how wildly unprepared we were for the amount of work we were signing up for. And then the 20 cubic yards of free wood chips we had dumped from Chip Drop and the days it spread them before summer hit. I remembered building the garden beds and sanding the deck and patiently waiting for winter, which is our planting season here in Southern California. Then came this massive soil delivery, and we hired these incredible day laborers who helped us spread everything out to lay the final foundation before we started planting. And we put in native plants and fruit trees and herbs and veggies and prayed for rain and then celebrated when it finally came. And in a couple months, we had tomatoes and basil and fruit everywhere. And don't even get me started on the limes. We shared our harvest with our neighbors and friends, and it started feeling like we were creating the kind of world we wanted to live in. And now this place that you be 900 square feet of concrete looks like this. And this. And this. The bugs are back, the birds are louder, and we get to host dinner parties and life's big moments out here. And after everything that Mama Nature does for us, it kind of feels like it's the least we could do to return the favor.