Harmony in the Garden

For many, the idea of domestic agrarian life sounds sexy. In fact, just the thought of it conjures up temptation. Picking lipstick-red ripe tomatoes from the vine in a backyard raised bed, harvesting dark green, dew-glistened dinosaur kale from a grow bag, gathering fresh spotted chicken eggs, or even keeping bees in a hobby colony surrounded by native plants is something clean food fans dream of.

It’s precisely these visions, a love for food, and a lifetime of curiosity culled from books, films, websites, and a host of other sources, that led gardener Horace Cameron to pursue a passion around plants. The 33-year-old remembers an added tipping point as he fondly speaks of meeting his partner and celebrity florist Yasmine Khatib around the time he was mixing cocktails at Los Angeles’ Edendale, a bar and restaurant housed in an old brick fire station from 1924. “Within a few years of us falling in love, we were living together and I was growing plants in pots and containers on the roof of our apartment building,” he tells The Rooted Journal.

Sometimes life throws out some odd curveballs, and Cameron reflects on a romantic time that was also punctuated by the dichotomy of some personal changes that brought his purpose more into focus. “I needed to get things in order within myself and I needed to find a way to be outside as much as possible, to be physical and engage with something bigger than myself to help me process,” he remembers. “Gardening seemed like the best thing. I grew up with [a garden] with my mom. They’re so romantic, so beautiful, so magical.”

The draw was hard to ignore, especially compounded with late nights at the bar and a strong need for a healthier lifestyle. However, to fully pivot and trade pouring tequila for a trowel, he would have to monetize. That didn’t take long. “I would start propositioning people I knew had big yards and tell them I wanted to cultivate my craft,” he says, adding that he knew he wanted to be self-taught like many master gardeners before him. There’s a nuance to the practice, and, much like a craftsman knows his tools, a gardener needs to know his soil, compost, microclimate, water, and even where the sun rises and sets.

Humans are also a part of that equation, and with something as personal as their property, it’s important to understand that someone with skills isn’t just a hired hand. There’s a relationship to consider, a symbiosis for someone like Cameron who will want to ensure that errant produce stickers don’t end up in the compost or to watch out for rogue neighbors spraying pesticides. Through a series of trials and errors, he was well on his way to attracting the perfect partners.

a chance purchase of a beautiful bouquet from Khatib in 2019 led to a handshake with Grammy Award-winner Tobias Jesso Jr. and the three immediately hit it off. High atop the Silver Lake artist neighborhood in Los Angeles, Jesso had purchased a three-story home with an old hunting cabin from 1905 in the back and plenty of land to cultivate. “I knew what I wanted but I wasn’t patient enough to
be a gardener,” Jesso Jr. exclaims with a bright smile. The musician is known for his magnetic personality and long list of collaborations with music icons such as Dua Lipa, Adele, Orville Peck, Justin Bieber, and Harry Styles, earning him a Grammy for songwriter of the year, the first award of its kind.

Cameron and Jesso Jr. reminisce about the space when they met, which, back in 2020, was an arid patch of dirt and home to a lone peach tree that Jesso Jr. planted with grander ambitions. Cameron laughs that it’s remarkable the tree even survived, while simultaneously giving credit to the fertile ground that exists in these hills thanks to the tall deer grass that sprouts every spring. If you look close enough, California black walnut and oak trees are native to the area, filling the soil with carbon and a variety of nutrients each time they shed their leaves, creating more organic matter. Plants in the raised beds they built at the start already had enough to dine on, but Cameron sourced food scraps from a number of restaurants to build a layer of compost and healthy topsoil to fix nitrogen. Quickly, novel crops like bitter melons, Queen of Malinalco tomatillos, and red currant tomatoes were thriving there.

Often, the best results come from the most authentic relationships. Naturally, Jesso Jr. draws the connection to music. “Horace was just playing different notes and I said, ‘Dude, follow that!’ Because I know that feeling in other areas,” he says of the freedom Cameron was experiencing with what he was growing. A natural curiosity for all things new and unique saw Horace ordering from seed stores like the Missouri-based Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which is committed to genetic preservation by empowering everyone from hobbyists to regenerative farm stands to save and trade seeds. “I would get [Baker Creek’s] catalog in the mail and think, ‘What is this weird melon from India? What is this Swiss chard from Italy?’ I’m just obsessed with things from all over the world,” Cameron says, also mentioning the things he grows from conflict areas like Syrian peppers or limes from Gaza. The act of cultivating this produce is a sort of gentle activism as these varieties become harder to find in the U.S.

It isn’t uncommon to find produce like this at Cameron and Jesso Jr.’s garden parties that have attracted a colorful cast of friends in the food and music scenes. “On my side of things it’s more industry people and the artists, producers or songwriters,” the musician says of the gatherings. “On Horace’s side, he’s so tapped into the agricultural and foodie world, we’ll have incredible bakers, private chefs, cocktail makers, and other masters of their craft.”

Now five years old, Jesso Jr.’s garden isn’t just a place for parties — it’s filled with dense foliage and rare plants framed by flamboyant flowers that Cameron grows for his partner’s arrangements.

The neighborhood community has also come to appreciate everything happening outside of Jesso Jr.’s garden fence, since it’s located along a popular walking path and, thanks to Cameron, is now packed with dozens of colorful native plants sourced from local specialty nurseries like Los Angeles’ famed Plant Material. On any given day, bees and other pollinators dance around desert globemallow, borage, Palmer’s mallow, and Matilija poppies, flitting back to the small apiary where Cameron has successfully kept bees the last two springs. The property zooms in on the potential of larger regenerative ventures and it’s easy to see the symbiosis between life feeding off life as a healthy compost pile filled with earthworms nourishes the plants that then are pollinated by insects. All of this is with the absence of animals, though there are hopes to add chickens in the future — another feather in the cap of a thriving project.

Outside of Jesso Jr.’s property, Cameron now has enough clients to sustain his passion, and he reflects on the term “master gardener” when pressed for hopes for the future. “I feel like you never really master it,” he says of gardening, despite his success. “Every season is different, and I’m always surprised. It’s a never-ending educational process.”

What Jesso Jr. and Cameron have is truly special, and the land they’ve worked on together is a microcosm of a larger awareness around a healing and growing environment. “I like to say having a good gardener is kind of the full package,” Jesso Jr. says. “He’s like a little bit of a therapist. It’s as healthy as buying a sauna. There’s a lot of perks for the quality of food and knowledge about food — and it’s way cheaper than [the cost of paying for] all of those put together.” While the idea of everyone cultivating their own land might seem far away, Jesso Jr. and Cameron show how that goal could be closer than we might think. It starts by just getting your hands a little dirty.