Alex Hall in garden

How does your garden grow?

Professor Alex Hall’s work with native plants is in full bloom, with a weekend tour and podcast

Long shot of Alex Hall standing with arms crossed in his garden

Jonathan Van Dyke
Alex Hall in the garden of his Los Angeles home.

Jonathan Van Dyke | April 13, 2023

The home garden of UCLA climate scientist Alex Hall will be featured as part of the Theodore Payne Foundation’s 20th anniversary Native Garden Tour this Saturday, April 15. Hall, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and interim director of the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, has been developing his sustainability demonstration garden for about eight years. It incorporates large spaces devoted to native plants.

The nonprofit foundation, named for the late English horticulturist and landscape designer, is dedicated to promoting and preserving California native plants.

In addition to the tour, there will be a five-episode podcast featuring a conversation between Hall and Evan Meyer, executive director of the Theodore Payne Foundation, around the topics of building of a garden, water conservation and habitat restoration in urban Los Angeles.

Below are a few selections from Hall’s garden.

California poppies with cat in background

Jonathan Van Dyke
California poppies give a burst of color among dense native plants — and also provide refuge for a feline friend.

Twisty red and purple flowers

Jonathan Van Dyke
Hall has taken care to work native and drought-friendly plants into his yard, including lemonade berry (bush on left), globe gilia (blue flowers) and apricot mallow (red and orange flowers on the right).

Tidy tips and globe gilia

Jonathan Van Dyke
A few tidy tips (yellow) and globe gilia (blue and purple) find their way to the surface in Hall’s front yard.

This article originally appeared at UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.