Insane water bill inspires Julia Lee to create a stunning ‘wabi-sabi’ wonderland
- Last updated: July 26, 2026 | 09:27
Julia Lee had no need for a new garden when she and her husband purchased their Cheviot Hills home eight years ago. The traditional 1950 home came with mature tropical plants in the back and a sprawling grass hillside lawn in front, and it suited them just fine. But as drought and wildfires dragged on in California in recent years, she started to question whether keeping the thirsty lawn made sense.
“Our water bill was insane,” she says as she offers a tour of the former lawn, which is now filled with colorful native plants and drought-tolerant plants. “It was a waste of space. Our kids were getting older and didn’t play on the lawn. There was just no reason to keep a big green lawn.” After reading a Times story about Georg Kochi, a retiree who swapped his Koreatown lawn with plants suited for California, Lee was inspired by Kochi’s wild, wabi-sabi-style garden, which embraces the art of imperfect beauty.
“I’m into chaos,” Lee says, bending down to smell the minty fragrance of a native Woolly bluecurls (Trichostema lanatum) shrub. “It’s an accurate reflection of my personality.” So in 2022, Lee decided to replace her lawn with a drought-tolerant landscape, using the LADWP Free Landscape Design Program, now called the Landscape Efficiency Assistance Program, for help. She also applied for the Metropolitan Water District’s turf replacement rebate, which was $3 per square foot at the time (now $5), and got $5,310 back when the garden was finished.
She wanted to learn more about native plants, so she took a garden design class at the Theodore Payne Foundation for Native Plants in Sun Valley. But the class felt overwhelming. “I love Theodore Payne,” she says, “but I hate measurements and trying to figure out hardscape. I’m not a math person. The instructor wanted us to use a compass and draw a scale drawing of the whole lawn, and I thought, ‘I can’t do this.’” Feeling paralyzed, she thought about hiring someone to help her, even though she didn’t want to spend the money on a landscape designer. But when Lee shared her frustrations with her graduate school adviser, noted author and avid gardener Jamaica Kincaid, she got the encouragement she needed. “She told me to do it myself,” Lee says, “as she designed her own gardens herself, and they are idiosyncratic just like she is.”
With encouragement from Kincaid, Lee, 49, began by planting small sages that would grow quickly and help prevent erosion, since water, mulch and rain often ran down the hillside to the sidewalk. She also spread Theodore Payne’s Rainbow Mix wildflower seeds throughout the landscape, including California poppies, Arroyo lupine, Desert Bluebells and Clarkia. In the spring, the yard was full of colorful wildflowers, but for the rest of the year, it stayed dormant. “People loved it because it was like a wildflower meadow in the middle of the city,” she says. Walking through Lee’s garden, as birds, bees and butterflies zoom around the yard’s bright flowers, it’s obvious she loves colour. With help from her friend Ben Liou, who replaced his lawn with native plants, Lee filled the space with a lively mix of sages and flowering perennials, including yellow Bladderpod, pink Palmer’s Penstemon, blue California lilac and poppies. Also, in the mix, there are California poppies, Channel Islands Tree poppies and tall Matilija poppies that look like fried eggs.
She was surprised to find that working in her garden helped her connect with her neighbours in unexpected ways. “I was worried the neighbours would complain,” she says. “But I’ve met so many people because I’m out here every day. Other gardeners are curious and often ask me, ‘What’s that interesting yellow plant? Oh, Palmer’s Indian Mallow?’ I even know all the dogs’ names now.” When she and her gardener sheet-mulched the front yard with cardboard Amazon boxes she had collected from her neighbours in October, one neighbor joked that it looked ready for Halloween. “She told me it looks like a graveyard,” Lee says, laughing.
Not all the plants survived, partly because half the garden is shaded by a large magnolia tree on the parking strip. Lee estimates she lost about 70% of her plants in the first year because she didn’t water enough. “The very first year you’re supposed to water regularly, and I did not hand-water enough, so everything basically died. The water bill went down dramatically, though.” Three years later, after losing so many plants, she decided to add an irrigation system. Liou and her gardener helped Lee install it and build a bioswale to catch rainwater, using stones from Valley Builders Supply and some larger rocks from Bourget Bros. “We installed it in one day,” she says. “It was my birthday present to myself.” At first, she was nervous about adding something so different from the other traditional lawns on her street. “There weren’t any other houses that had anything like that,” she says. “But now I like it because it breaks up the front lawn into separate planting sections.” She can also walk down the bioswale to work in the garden. “I find garden maintenance so relaxing,” she adds. “It’s meditative.”
Lee says plants help her connect with people. One neighbor who knew the home’s previous owner gave her succulents. Another brought her some aromatic California sagebrush, also called Cowboy Cologne. “I really like the fact that I can point to certain things and remember who gave them to me,” she says. “That’s really nice.” She hopes the golden yarrow will spread, and she’s especially proud of the large white sage she grew from seeds that a friend gave her. “It’s so happy over there,” she says, clearly excited by its growth. “Look at how big it is. I am so proud of it.”
Not all the plants in the unamended soil are California natives or even drought-tolerant. Lee kept some plants that have been growing in the yard for decades, like the jasmine climbing around the front of the house as well as the white roses. “I really don’t like lantana,” she says, “but I hate killing things.” Someday she hopes to set up a free seed library, and she’s excited to see bluebird hatchlings in the bluebird house that Venice beekeeper Ian Kimbrey installed in her tree. “I just need to be patient,” Lee says about the bluebird box, which is still empty.
Tribune News Service