Water-hungry lawns are symbols of Los Angeles’ past. In this series, we spotlight yards with alternative, low-water landscaping built for the future.
When Phoebe Novack and Brian Aggrey married in 2023, they eschewed a traditional registry for household luxuries or a modern honeymoon fund. Instead, they requested plants — dozens and dozens of them.
They invited their friends and family to sponsor the native perennials they had been preparing to plant since they bought their Del Rey home in 2021. Because they drained their savings buying and fixing up the house, they needed the cash infusions to fund the flora. They also thought the registry could be a cute way to spark interest in the plants. That hunch has proved correct.
“People remember,” Novack said. “They’ll come over and they’ll be like, ‘I see the oak tree’s doing well.’ ”
1. Phoebe Novack and Brian Aggrey call their home Chateau Chaparral. The added a native plants to their redesigned backyard. 2. Red buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) grows in the couple’s backyard. 3. A European honey bee on coyote mint (Monardella villosa).
Garden installation began in pieces in 2022 and in earnest in early 2023. Three years on, Novack and Aggrey’s garden has become an aromatic, restful ode to Southern California’s coastal chaparral plant community. There are many manzanitas and one sizable coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia). There is a seasonal meadow of two dozen native wildflowers, and a year-round spectacle of sandaster (Corethrogyne filaginifolia) commandeers much of the front yard.
But the unexpected, undeniable centerpiece is their backyard’s strikingly lush, drought-tolerant native lawn that invites people and pets alike to unwind.
In each of the last two springs, the Theodore Payne Foundation’s annual native garden tour has featured the home Novack and Aggrey have christened Chateau Chaparral. Tour guests have come from all over Southern California to see the lawn for themselves.
“People love this,” Novack said as she stood in the garden last month. “I would say this is the No. 1 thing that people like the best.”
The lawn, which they irrigate twice weekly, is a blend of three locally native fescues: Idahoensis fescue (Festuca idahoensis), Molate fescue (Festuca rubra), and Western Mokelumne fescue (Festuca occidentalis). Soils Solutions, based in Camarillo, creates the mix for what the company calls “a flowing native California meadow aesthetic.” It’s sold as a sod available to landscape professionals and homeowners.
Brian Aggrey touches native mow-free fescue blend of Idahoensis fescue (Festuca idahoensis), Molate fescue (Festuca rubra) and Western Mokelumne fescue (Festuca occidentalis) that grows in the backyard.
Novack and Aggrey, who are both 35, installed the sod in February 2023 with the help of landscapers Carlos Díaz and Miguel Garcia. They were under strict instructions from Soils Solutions to avoid trampling the new lawn for six months.
That meant an August 2023 wedding celebration held at their home was the first time anyone stepped foot on the fescue. It was quite a way to formally introduce their new garden.
Before it earned the moniker Chateau Chaparral, the property featured mostly concrete, invasive grasses and succulents. They invited the neighbors to dig up the succulents and take them home. They hired a crew to jackhammer away much of the concrete and replace it with crushed black lava rock from C&M Topsoil. And they set out to replace the invasive grasses with natives, all procured from the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley. Together, the changes yielded a larger transformation than they imagined.
“When we moved in and everything was concrete, it was really loud because the sound would bounce off the wall and the floor, and our garage would flood all the time,” Novack said. “When we changed it to permeable material, it absorbed the sound and made everything a lot quieter and a lot cooler too.”
They said the total cost to tear out and redo their front and back yards was $20,000, excluding house and structure upgrades. They recouped just over half of the cost, $11,000, from their native plant wedding registry.
Phoebe Novack and Brian Aggrey in the backyard of their home.
Novack grew up nearby, where gardening, albeit with nonnative plants like gladiolus, had been an essential part of her childhood. At her and Aggrey’s last rental home, she had experimented with growing plants in their tiny yard. She also began volunteering with TreePeople and attending classes at the Theodore Payne Foundation, including a three-part garden design course taught by director of horticulture Tim Becker. Her inspiration to create Chateau Chaparral started there.
As they enjoyed their garden last month, Aggrey reminded Novack that he wasn’t particularly enthused about the whole native plants idea when she first broached it. He was more familiar with nonnative L.A. classics like bougainvillea and palm trees.
“When you started talking about it,” Aggrey told Novack, “I was like, ‘What are these plants? I don’t know if I believe any of this.’ ”
She nodded as he spoke. It wasn’t just him.
“People were really against it,” Novack said. “They were like, ‘It’s not gonna be easy. It’s all gonna die.’ ”
The front yard of Phoebe Novack and Brian Aggrey’s home.
Some plants have perished. They’re not afraid to admit that. On occasion, they’ve even had to share that unwelcome news with friends who sponsored the plants’ purchases.
“Sometimes, people will ask us, ‘Oh, how are my apricot mallows [Sphaeralcea ambigua] doing?’” Novack said. “We’ve gotta be like, ‘They all died!’ ”
But many more have thrived. Before planting began, Novack took careful measurements across the 3,022 square feet of garden, spanning the front and side yards and backyard. She calculated for the mature size of each plant they installed.
1. Prior to renovation of their lawn, the backyard was more conventional with grass and concrete. (Phoebe Novack and Brian Aggrey)
Even so, some have already outgrown those computations. In the front yard, one beautiful Coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis) has seized much of the visual space. They plan to prune it soon.
“There’s definitely ones where they’re growing bigger than expected,” Novack said.
The backyard features the native lawn and many local native favorites, including six species of manzanita (Arctostaphylos), multiple monkeyflowers (Diplacus aurantiacus, Diplacus ‘Jelly Bean Gold’), and a vibrant Catalina currant (Ribes viburnifolium). But the front yard is the more influential space, as neighbors increasingly stop by with queries.
Phoebe Novack and Brian Aggrey touch Elegant clarkia (Clarkia unguiculata) that grows in their front yard.
In their parkway, too, Novack and Aggrey have sprinkled seeds from about two dozen native wildflowers. Once their spring blooms are complete, Aggrey meticulously collects the seed pods from the clarkias, gilias and phacelias, processes the seeds and packages them for gifting before the subsequent spring.
“It’s my favorite present to give people,” Aggrey said. “This is a piece of my garden here.”
The couple have fallen in love with different parts of their garden. Novack is all about the smells and the birds and insects the plants have recruited to visit the garden. Aggrey cherishes the manzanitas. They planted three at first and then three more after what Aggrey described as a clamorous campaign.
“I’m hoping that one day they grow into giant old twisted trunks,” he said.
The couple’s redesigned backyard was turned into a native plant sanctuary.
On their native-plant journey, Novack and Aggrey have converted many of their family and friends to the movement. One key holdout still remains: Novack’s mother, the old-school gardener.
While they figure out their next attempt, they have more plans for their space.
They envision adding plants that can handle a soaking to the bioswales they built in both the front and back. They plan to put plants into the built-in containers above their backyard cisterns. And they haven’t given up hope on finding a place for an apricot mallow to thrive.
