Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Bautista
Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started gardening during COVID as a way to relieve some stress and get my mind off of everything. That consisted of mowing my front and backyard with a push mower, and I quickly tired of how much work it took, and how bad it looked regardless of how much I watered or fertilized or weeded. There was nowhere to sit and enjoy being outdoors, there was no shade, it was just flat and dull and hot and there was nothing to do in either the front or backyard. I realized the square footage of the front and back exceeded our house, that we were paying more in our mortgage for the desolate wasteland that was our front and backyard then we were for the walls that we lived in.
So I got to work; I would go outside and dig and demolish and build and plant whenever my job as a VFX Editor allowed me a sliver of time away from the keyboard. I started getting into what plants would thrive with the least amount of water and stumbled my way into California Native Plants, which are beautiful, drought tolerant, fight climate change, provide habitat for endangered species, all while looking good and requiring less work than pushing a mower once a week. I finished my backyard, moved onto the front. Then I did my Sister-in-Law’s yard. Then I started on my neighbor’s, and so on and so on.
Once the Writer’s Strike hit, it shutdown Hollywood and my VFX job has yet to come back. The only thing I could do to keep the lights on was work as a Landscape Designer and that was the birth of the business.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Working as a Landscape Designer has been smoother than working as an Assistant Editor, and then a VFX Editor. Hollywood makes you work a brutal set of hours and I’ve had tendonitis and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in both hands, to the point where I needed surgery. I’ve worked on Harvey Weinstein films. I’ve worked 70 hours consecutively to get films out the door.
Landscape Design in comparison is far, far, far more healthy and sustainable. Originally it was a big challenge to walk away from VFX, which paid pretty well. I’ve started to look at it through the lens that my old job was so unbearably unhealthy, mentally and physically that it doesn’t matter how much I was paid. There’s no use to money if you have trouble opening the front door to your house because you can’t feel the doorknob since your hands are numb and you didn’t realize you dropped your keys on the ground since you have no sensation in your fingers.
So really the big challenge is just adjusting my mindset– I’ve worked so hard for so long in a different industry, it seems weird to stop at 6 PM and say “I’ve done enough for today, I should eat dinner with my wife and enjoy my time with her”. All the other challenges, whether it’s trying to keep the lights on, or difficult clients, or permitting issues, is a cake walk.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I am a Landscape Designer who specializes in sustainable, native landscapes for any size yard, for any place in Los Angeles. I make sure to craft my designs so that every piece of a homeowner’s yard is more than just ornamental.
Well-designed yards can look great, but do they capture rainwater? Do they give homeowners privacy? Are they optimized for the pollinator wildlife in your area? Do they feed you? Do they have a place for you to rest after a long day? Do they reduce fire risk in your area? Do they provide food for the birds that you love to see? These are the yards that I try to specialize in and design for. This is what I think separates me from a lot of other landscape design companies; most companies will simply design for the humans, which, is of course, absolutely necessary, but I try to design for everyone and everything.
My yards are designed for the plants that have evolved here for millions of years and the pollinators that co-evolved with them. They are designed to regenerate the soil so they can sequester carbon from the atmosphere. They are designed so every time you get a bit of rainwater on your roof, it ends up stored in the soil for the plants, rather than as a waste product that runs to the ocean. They do all this while giving the homeowner a green space that costs them less to water and maintain, gives them a sense of place, and checks all the boxes that a typical homeowner wants, mainly aesthetics.
I want people to know that there is way, way more out there than just a lawn, a hedge of Pittosporum, a Palm tree and a couple of Rose bushes. We just have to step outside our walled urban gardens purchased from Home Depot and ask ourselves what was here before us, and what would gladly live here alongside us if we just gave it a chance to grow. Once you do that, you’ll never look back.
What matters most to you?
Honestly, climate change matters the most to me. The heat domes, the floods, the extinctions, the poor air quality, they all matter to me because I used to live with this anxiety that there was absolutely nothing I could do about Climate Change. That I, as a person who owns a single-family home, contribute to climate change just by being alive and there’s no way I can try and mitigate that.
Putting in my own California Native Garden let me realize that I can try and put a dent in my own carbon emissions and fix some of the things that I contribute to as a homeowner– and I can do that actively. I can actively fight climate change by conscientiously changing landscapes from thirsty lawns to native ones. I can point at the at the 32 Monarch caterpillars that were in my yard last year and say “There were 32 more endangered butterflies on this earth today than there were last year, because I did this.” I can point at my swale and say “there was no rain runoff from my property this year which prevented over 20,000 gallons of rainwater from going into the Santa Monica Bay.” I can point at the nest of baby birds that’s in the rafters of my house and say “My yard feeds those baby birds caterpillars since there are more larval host plants for caterpillars and moths in my yard than in my entire block combined”.
These are all measurable, real things, whereas things like saving for solar panels or an EV Car or voting “environmentally” often feel ephemeral and intangible. Designing and installing a native garden is like going on offense against Climate Change.
All my designs fight climate change in their own way while simultaneously meeting what the homeowner wants. That is the single most critical thing that matters to me.
Pricing:
- My minimum price for a yard design is $1750.00.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.helloyarrow.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hello_yarrow/
Image Credits
Brian Bautista
