Who We Are
At Garden Companion, we love working with nature and finding sustainable strategies to make life easier in the garden, season after season. We created Garden Companion as a place for us to organize and share what we’ve learned about backyard organic gardening — from decades of hands-on experience, thousands of books and videos, and countless fellow gardeners — in hopes that it might help others.
Our Garden Companion
We grow in San Diego County, California, which is classified as USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 8, 9, and 10 (we reside in Zone 10). With zero days of frost, we grow plants from an array of climates — from Mediterranean to subtropical, desert, semi-arid, and drylands. We love to grow year-round!
Use this map to find your USDA Plant Hardiness Zone.
Our Passion and Focus
At Garden Companion, our mantra is Produce. Conserve. Thrive.
Produce
Low-Maintenance Sustainable Organic Gardening
We are dedicated to creating and maintaining low-maintenance gardens and orchards through sustainable organic gardening strategies and techniques. We want to discover and share ways to plan and achieve a backyard ecosystem that’s balanced and resilient by harnessing the power of biodiversity — rather than relying on shortsighted chemical interventions.
Companion Plants
Whether it’s planting marigolds to help ward off pests, or the classic “three sisters” of corn, beans, and squash, we are strong believers in companion planting — the practice of growing specific varieties with symbiotic relationships in close proximity to one another.
Successive Planting & Ripening
Do you find yourself with an overflowing backyard harvest for a few glorious months each year, followed by long months of next to nothing? Successive ripening can help change that, so you can enjoy fresh produce from your garden over a much longer period.
Soil Building
A great home garden begins with great soil. But great soil is almost always cultivated, rather than inherited, over an extended period of time. When we first moved into our home, we found a backyard that was completely barren clay soil. We knew there had to be a way to repair the soil and transform it into a thriving fertile ecosystem that could support life across every square inch.
Conserve
Water Efficiency
Water is only going to become more and more important in the coming years as we face the consequences of climate change. We share information and advice about how to minimize water usage and maximize conservation and catchment to help you start saving what would otherwise be wasted.
Natural Resilience
We believe selecting plants based on their durability can go a long way in making life easier for the gardener. Some plants have built-in disease and pest resistance, and some are considered hardy plants for their will to live in the face of neglect and poor conditions.
Thrive
Biological Diversity
The world is beautiful for its diversity in all forms, and this is especially true in the garden. We love new varieties and love trying new rare plants. We love seeing new residents in the yard as well from insects, to birds and bunnies. Everything balances itself in nature with time. Too many aphids? The ladybugs and praying mantis will move in and eat those up! Certain flowers can attract hummingbirds, butterflies, birds, bees, bunnies and so much more.
Innovative Landscaping Design
Thinking Water-First
Permaculture Design
An amazing way of growing and designing landscapes to not only permanently sustain, but also regenerate them making them better than they were before. We love learning more about this topic and applying the principles in our garden.