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Lauren Smith, another ReadyMade challenge participant, turned her yard in Brooklyn into a kitschy urban campground. "We took the legs off our barbecue and built a campfire pit," said Ms. Smith, 28, the assistant to the fashion designer Todd Oldham. "We put down mulch and took a bunch of bandannas and stitched them together to create an awning."
Ms. Smith and her boyfriend, Derek Fagerstrom, 28, the editorial production director at Esquire magazine, have mapped out a border of annuals around the campground and recently planted a cherry tree in the yard. The appeal of gardening, Ms. Smith said, "is that your concerns are: `How will I stake my tomato plant? `How can I get these bugs to stop eating?' It's a total escape. You don't think about your e-mail or your job."
Many young gardeners say they are cultivating patience along with plants. "It's such an obvious antidote to multitasking, to sitting in front of a computer, to the complicatedness of our lives," said Amy Talkington, 32, a filmmaker who has planted a Japanese maple, lantana, verbena and jasmine outside the bungalow she rents in the Little Armenia section of Hollywood.
Kerry Tribe, 31, grew plants in window boxes in New York, where she lived briefly and worked as a bike messenger, among other things, before moving to Los Angeles. She began gardening obsessively during graduate school at the University of California campus there. Her inspiration was a project she devised, taking literally what she called the "hothouse" vibe of the master's program in fine arts "prowling collectors and dealers coming around to see what was new." Ms. Tribe transformed her studio into a hydroponic garden, growing plants solely for their names, like Celebrity Tomatoes and Early Wonder Beets.
"They were all qualities we were expected to cultivate in our art," she said. "People would say, `Where's your stuff?' and I'd say, `This is it maybe we can have a conversation about gardening or something.' "
Like Mr. Haeg, at the Art Center College of Design, Ms. Tribe sees a political side to gardening: "It's a private act, but also a public act of resistance to the sprawling L.A. wasteland and the toxins in the air."
A similar spirit motivates Alexis Rivera, 26, a music critic and club promoter, who gardens with native plants and a certain amount of attitude on a hillside next to his apartment in the rapidly gentrifying Echo Park section of Los Angeles. "I don't have much money, so I steal stuff," said Mr. Rivera, adding that he once took a large fern from a fancy Beverly Hills hotel.
Gardening at rental properties carries its own challenges, like negotiating with landlords and reconciling your own transience with the relative permanence of the trees you plant. Amra Brooks, 30, a writer who rents a house in Atwater Village, near the concrete channel of the Los Angeles River, said she has spent at least $500 on her garden. She planted native perennials to attract birds and butterflies and several fruit trees. She has a mission that extends beyond her lease.
"With all the native stuff, you feel like you're giving back to the environment," she said. "That feels cool. Whether I live here or not, hopefully that tree will always be here."
