He turned his weed-filled yard into a low-water jungle of fruit trees
LOS ANGELES -- Artist-teacher-gardener Jose Ramirez never considered a lawn for his Boyle Heights neighborhood home. Instead, he created a smorgasbord landscape of fruit.
This is no ordinary orchard, with trees carefully spaced in neat rows. In a densely built residential neighborhood, he's crowded more than 250 fruit trees along winding paths; multiple varieties of pluots, apricots, nectarines, apples, citrus and avocados are planted so close that their branches intertwine. Just a few steps out his back door, Ramirez and his family can pick fruit from 10 trees around a small deck — Bearss lime, papaya, cherimoya, mango, apple, guava, Meyer lemon, mandarin, nectarine and ... cinnamon?
"You use the bark, and I haven't taken much from that one yet," Ramirez said, a little apologetically. "It's still young and kind of an experiment."
Which pretty much sums up his entire orchard, a lush experiment with organically grown fruit trees stretching out behind the home he purchased in 2002 and into a narrow adjoining vacant lot he bought in 2012.
Ramirez loves to experiment with unusual varieties too. He has coffee beans growing on one tree — he snacks on them occasionally for a seedy but sweet pick-me-up. Nearby, the long prickly arms of his dragon fruit are draped over the branches of other trees, preparing to flower. He has mature mango trees he grew from seed and at least eight different pomegranate trees, all heavy with fruit, despite the limited water they've gotten
