Marilee Kuhlmann owes her life long fascination with plants to a Slip ‘n Slide. “We laid it across the grass and it made all the Dichondra seeds pile to the edge. About six weeks later we had two strips going through the lawn and the center part was dead. It was the same size as the Slip ‘n Slide. From then on I always found myself in the garden.”
As a young adult, Marilee’s love of nature took a back seat to raising a family and working in the nascent computer industry. Off and on for 25 years she moved from programming to customer support then computer outsourcing.
But it was during a five-year hiatus when she and her family moved to a farm in Oregon that Marilee was reminded of her deeper calling. “It was the first time I’d ever lived outside of the Valley. The woman who preceded me (on the farm) put in the most amazing perennial garden. I did stupid things like take out fifteen-year-old vines because I thought they were dead. Then my dogs decided to dig on the side of the house. Then the ground froze - I’d never seen that happen before. When spring rolled around there were piles of bulbs on one side and none where the dogs had dug. Then they bloomed and I knew: Oh, my gosh, those are bulbs! I was overwhelmed by how much I didn’t know.”
After Marilee returned to her old job in the computer industry, she’d hit the local nurseries on weekends. “I would take the little tabs that were in the plant and sit down and read about the plant and leave the tabs in the book. I couldn’t ever look anything up by ‘Poppy’ – I had to look in the index, find the botanical name – I couldn’t understand why they were sorting so ridiculously – but that was a ritual – I’d go buy things, plant them then read about them. I think I spent more money on plants than most women spend on shoes.”
Some years later, Marilee’s company was sold and she moved from Simi Valley into Los Angeles. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do so I would garden and I’d tell myself well, I’m just going to garden today then I’ll figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”
After a trip to the Chelsea Flower Show she signed up for the horticulture program at UCLA. “I couldn’t take enough classes. One teacher would say one thing and another teacher would counteract that and I realized that, like computers, it was a very complicated subject. I like complicated subjects. I don’t get bored quickly because there’s so much to learn.”

Before long, Marilee was designing gardens but it was a bout with a rare form of cancer, brought on by herbicides and pesticides that caused her to take a deeper look at her chosen profession. “When I was going through my cancer treatment I was very ill and I couldn’t garden and a lot of friends came over and gardened for me and I was watching and feeling very much like a pest might feel that had just been poisoned with some kind of herbicide and I would think about people poisoning creatures regardless of what kind of pest they were – so I decided I wanted to learn how to garden more appropriately.”

After cancer, Marilee invited three garden design buddies to meet once a month to explore sustainable practices and principles. And Marilee wanted to see sustainable gardens for herself so she founded a green gardens tour and asked a local non-profit, the Virginia Avenue Project, to be the beneficiary. Marilee’s garden buddies formed the basis of the first Green Gardens Committee. In the last four years, the Green Gardens Tour and the committee have grown substantially. There is now talk of expanding the tour to include educational components. “We have a lot of people coming to us and saying they want to learn more about sustainability and it just helps – the more of us that are doing it – the more we change the look of the City – the more people will call and say: Oh, my god, I have to change my garden, too.”
Marilee changes her own garden on a regular basis to stay abreast of advances in green practices so, in addition to walking the walk, she can better advise her clients. “I collaborate with them to give them sustainable options that meet their requirements esthetically, functionally and financially. My company, Comfort Zones Garden Design, provides sustainable garden design, horticulture and sustainable consulting as well as teaching services so my clients and I learn a lot from each other during our collaboration. My goal is to create a space where they can find the best in themselves – a space that holds them – that feel special, vibrant, full of life.”
In her own very vibrant yard, Marilee experiments with unusual species to better understand their growing habits. She has reduced excessive water usage; bought a composter so “no green waste leaves the property” and added a worm bin to recycle kitchen waste, generate worm castings and worm tea – a natural fertilizer. Three years ago, Marilee stopped watering her front lawn and this year she tore it out and installed a vegetable garden. She works on the pesticide problem by planting plants that draw good insects that, in turn, manage the not-so-good insects. “It’s amazing to sit in the garden and watch the wildlife. We now have kids looking for butterfly chrysalises and staring at cantaloupe hanging off the fence. Our front yard has brought our whole neighborhood together.” All that’s missing is the Slip ‘n Slide.
To find out more about the Green Gardens Tour click here

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Leigh Curran - Ecoist
Leigh Curran is the Founder/Artistic Director of The Virginia Avenue Project, a 15 year-old non-profit using long term, one-on-one arts mentoring to help children growing up under difficult circumstances think creatively and critically about what they want to do with their lives. The Virginia Avenue Project’s spring fundraiser is the very happening Green Gardens Tour designed to teach children and adults of all ages how to turn their gardens into sustainable, eco-friendly landscapes that team with the natural order of things. Leigh is a published author of three plays, various poems and a novel, and an actress with many stage and TV/Film credits.