"Two Bedrooms, Full Kitchen... and All the Figs You Can Eat."

My son's Lafayette home is surrounded by edible trees and shrubs. Avocado, apricot and fig trees are right outside his door. Silvery olive trees and shrubby pineapple guavas line the driveway. Lemon and orange trees scent the air beside the pool. Walk around and you'll encounter loquat, pomegranate and plum trees. Maybe this wouldn't be unusual in a creative home garden. My son, however, lives in an apartment.

The owner of Acalanes Apartments has an obvious affection for edible plants. Manager Shelley Digiovanna tells me that the owner started landscaping with edibles when the apartments were built. Some of the trees have been there long enough to be succumbing to old age. The challenge of maintaining such a landscape in a tightly shared space is to keep it fruitful yet within the bounds set by the large amount of hardscape. For the last few years, landscape workers have been shearing any foliage they come across into topiaries. In doing so, they ended up removing most of the flowers that would eventually turn into fruit. The owner now wants to abandon the sheared look in favor of a looser, more naturalistic structure. Such de-hedging is laborious and sometimes messy but a plant that admits light into its interior will be healthier and ultimately more fruitful. 

What happens when all that fruit ripens? Tenants harvest what they can reach. Then the managers gather the higher-hanging fruit and put it in a basket for tenants to help themselves. 

There was an even more remarkable development recently when the owner decided to turn the area behind their entry sign into a community garden. It's a modest space but surprisingly productive. It's been terraced and surrounded by a deer fence and irrigation lines have been brought in. Anyone who volunteers to help in the garden can harvest from it. This is a working model I'd like to see adopted by multi-housing complexes everywhere. All it takes is a little space and an owner and manager with vision.

May Garden Checklist 

Warm weather and longer days have returned and the soil is drying out. And when the wind is blowing, plants are stuck in a convection oven. Several inches below the surface the soil may still feel wet but most plants will have a hard time extracting any moisture there. Keep the topsoil irrigated. Once clay soil dries out, it's difficult to re-wet it evenly. 

If you haven't started your vegetable garden yet, it's time. The nurseries are full of transplants and, if you get your tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons and eggplants in the ground now, you should be harvesting by August. That is, if this summer is “normal” and not a cool, cloudy one such as we had last year. 

Once your spring-blooming perennials such as rhododendrons, camellias and azaleas have finished their show, you can prune and fertilize them. 

If you have a drip system, check it carefully. Emitters clog, lines separate, dogs and gophers chew holes in poly tubing. 

Weed like mad. Eliminate herbaceous pests before they go to seed. 

Dazzle yourself. Plant zinnias. They're not at all fussy, look great in harsh summer light, make exuberant cut flowers and come in myriad forms and colors.

Update 

A reader recently asked me what soil amendments to use in the spring garden. I recommended compost, especially any with the U.S. Composting Council seal of approval, something I'd learned about in the Bay Friendly Landscaping classes. The uproar over the use of sewage sludge in Kellogg Amend, a product that nearly made its way into school organic gardens in Los Angeles, has revealed that the USCC considers sewage sludge (also called biosolids) to be acceptable in compost. I take back my recommendation. I don't want any of the industrial-waste products that end up in the sewer to end up in my garden. What products can you trust? Maybe only those that say “OMRI listed” on the label. Here's the list, be sure to check it before buying. Some products are listed with restrictions.