Becky's Beautiful Garden:
A Year of Growth

Every month brings new and beautiful changes to the packed garden in Simi Valley where Becky Askin Stewart resides with her husband and two Jack Russell terriers, Penny and Sadie. These videos document this extraordinary garden made from a few plants ten years ago into over two hundred potted plants.

A member of the non-profit Busy Hands Garden Club of Simi Valley, Becky was able to trade cuttings and plants with the other club member resulting in a garden full of different types and species of plants. Twenty six roses bushes in the front yard, a California lilac bush, a large patch of freesias, scented geraniums, masses of alyssum, huge bushes full of mock orange flowers, eleven honeysuckle and potted gardenias produce perfumed scents at varying times of the year. Canna and Calla lilies tower over giant patches of Elephant Ears. Enormous Jades compete for the almost continual sunshine with huge spiked Agave plants. Aloe Vera grows wild all over the property and basil, mint, chives and a five and a half foot tall rosemary bush provide salad pickings. Every year, the deepest orange-red nasturtiums pop up in every bed producing masses of color and scent out by the curb.

Every year the four giant Queen Palms in the front planter produces countless seeds that root themselves under the gently swaying fronds. These baby Palms have been repotted and are doing well at all different heights.

One year, Becky found some ivy growing wild in one of her beds and trained it to grow up an old Martha Geranium stump. It is now Katrina, a four foot by five foot elephant who watches over her baby Claire resting under the birch beside her. Right now, and nearly every two months, Katrina and Claire need a haircut or they start to look like ivy again.

The birdbath in the front garden is visited daily by Crows, Mockingbirds, Song Sparrows and Juncos. Pretty purple Finches come back every year to a nest between the large round thermometer and the warm kitchen wall. There is always a battle happening between the fattened bushy-tailed ground squirrels and the flocks of migrating spring birds at the many birdfeeders. Hummingbirds abound with plenty of everything to sample at all times of the year.

Even the narrow space between the house and the fence has now become a garden. It began when Becky started throwing diseased plants in the back and they not only took but thrived. So she began training honeysuckle and potato vines up over the brick fence and now it is a haven under a thick overhang of Jasmine that erupts every May in tiny fragrant white flowers that permeate the whole neighborhood.

The gorgeous liquid amber tree (which is indeed that color in the fall), has produced at least five other trees which now grace other lawns in the neighborhood and stand stately tall in large pots around the property. Becky and Paul were married under this tree ten years ago when it was at least twenty feet shorter.

All of this and more are in the video series that Becky has started this year to document the growth of all the amazing and remarkable plants growing in this 340-day-per-year sunny garden. She narrates the development and origin of nearly every plant, including three pine and fir trees that she dug up from along the side of the road and a slew of flowering succulents each more unusual than the last. For a poignant and humorous trip into the mind of an devoted gardener and a peek into a garden packed with unusual and attractive plants and flowers, watch the sequence of growth in these videos.