Sjoerd Oostrik
Sjoerd’s formal education is in documentary filmmaking. And while it’s a completely different profession, it does inform his approach to landscaping: deep observation of a place’s characteristics, a lot of patience, and working with the site’s given circumstances.
He started gardening in the Netherlands’ rainy river delta, where his small rental unit had a yard the size of a stamp, and for half the year the plants looked wet, brown, and drab. In his first years in LA, he was so seduced by the year-round Californian sun that he planted an orchard of tropical fruit trees and gave away the harvest to passersby. But as he continued gardening, his interest turned to more sustainable practices. He obtained his California Native Plant Landscaper Certification from the Theodore Payne Foundation and his Permaculture Design Certification at the Permaculture Academy. The more roots he grew in the Los Angeles soil, the harder it became to resist the call of California nature, and he made the pivot from filmmaking to landscaping.
When he is not working at FNA, he is building community gardens with the Union de Vecinos in his neighborhood of Boyle Heights, or gardening with his partner and two children.
