Your patch of dirt has garden potential

Landscape artist Lily Kwong's plant-parenting advice.

I could listen to landscape artist Lily Kwong talk about plants for hours. When I first met Lily in 2022, while visiting her new sensory garden, she described green spaces as “our apothecaries, our medicine cabinets, our beauty cabinets” and herbs as “objects of meditation.” For Lily, landscaping is about so much more than curb appeal. Plants are our path to interconnectedness—with each other and with nature. Beautiful, right?

Lily calls her latest project, Gardens of Renewal, “ecological art.” In the middle of New York City’s Madison Square Park, you’ll find two installations: a meandering meditation spiral and a series of kid-friendly structures that encourage learning through play. Native flora is at the core of everything Lily does—all of Gardens of Renewal’s plants are local to the city—so naturally it’s how things kick off in today’s Home Front, too. Read on for her top native landscaping tips, plus the details of her recent bedroom refresh. —Lindsey Mather, digital director

Current Mood

What I’m loving: I’ll say it again and again: native plants! For my California people especially, this is the only way forward. After the devastating L.A. fires, indigenous plants to the region are the only species that have co-evolved with fire for millennia. Many California native plants have adapted to survive wildfires, and some even require elements like heat, smoke or charred wood in order to germinate.

My elevator pitch: Embracing our native ecosystem offers us the opportunity to connect with the land, wildlife, and communities in our own backyards. Gathering in nature is an act of resistance and source of joy. At my Gardens of Renewal project this summer, we will have workshops from cyanotyping and seed-saving to meditation and a comedian storytime for children.

Photography by Rashmi Bhatt

Real-life ways to try it:

• Got a patch of dirt? Throw out a native seed mix and just see what happens! I have learned the most in my garden from experimentation. Don’t focus on perfection, focus on building an authentic and engaged relationship to your land.

• Mound up the earth in narrow planting beds, just like we did in Madison Square Park (above). The slight undulation is easy to build and adds visual interest and a sculptural quality to your garden.

• Try growing your own medicinal garden in pots: lemon balm, lavender, rosemary, and mint are beautiful ways to begin.

Photography by Nik Massey; Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles

1. You can start growing a habitat for Monarch butterflies and beyond with this seed packet from my favorite California native plant resource, Theodore Payne.

2. My piece “Subterrestrial” at Night Gallery takes inspiration from Hügelkultur, a permaculture technique that creates sustainable, self-irrigating garden beds using mounds of organic materials. The hügel, or mound, spans 18 feet in diameter and rises nearly six feet high. I seeded this living sculpture with Theodore’s Superbloom mix, and the piece evolved with the seasons.