GARDENING FOR THE LANDLESS\With little soil, lots of sunlight, gardens take root and thrive\in a variety of small spaces.

Byline: Elizabeth M. Cosin Daily News Staff Writer

Green-thumbed apartment dwellers often look upon homeowners with green eyes. After all, they have property.

And land, lots of land, is a prerequisite for growing successful, bountiful vegetable and flower gardens. Or is it?

Landless, take heart. Even here in the urbanized concrete desert we call Southern California, you can grow almost anything - all you need to start is sunlight. And as we all know very well, that isn't too hard to find around here.

Many plants and vegetables can and do survive and thrive in small swatches of land in back, front and side yards, indoors with artificial light, and on balconies, patios and rooftops all over the Valley.

"Don't be afraid to create gardens in small spaces," says Joshua Siskin, a landscaping instructor at West Valley Occupational Center and UCLA Extension who also writes a column on gardening for the Daily News. "As long as you have a place to put containers and some sunlight, you can pretty much grow anything from flowers to vegetables."

Peggy Zeldes of Westlake Village has gardened for years, creating new ones each time she and her family moved to a new house. At one time, they had built two homes adjacent to each other where she had plenty of room to tend to her flowery landscapes. But when she moved to her townhome in Westlake, she found space severely limited.

"I had never worked in such a small space," she says. "I had to be a little bit more creative."

What Peggy did was design a patio and garden that wound around her home in the small spaces in the back and along a narrow walkway on one side. The result is a sprawling, lush garden of irises and cactuses, a lemon tree and various climbing plants.

"All my friends say I should call Architectural Digest," she says. "I just like to sit in the back and enjoy it."

Along the way, Peggy says, she had to make adjustments as problems cropped up she wasn't prepared for, and in the process she learned a few things. With the help of her landscaper she found baby's tears, a dense, tiny-leafed ground covering, to be the perfect transition between the slate patio and the surrounding plant life.

Siskin and other experts say this is one of the great appeals of gardening, that it is a fairly simple, yet constantly evolving discipline. This is even more true for apartment gardeners because space limitations require even more creativity.

Not to fear, says Rani Jacobs of Urban Organic, who has made a specialty out of teaching the finer points of gardening in small spaces. A little hard work and lots of love and attention and you, too, can have fresh flowers and vegetables galore.

"It's not hard," says Jacobs, who sells plants and supplies and teaches classes at her demonstration garden and nursery in the Palms district of Los Angeles. "It's not as complicated as it seems to be. All you need to do is know the basics."

That means first becoming familiar with the specifics of the area where you want to garden. For high-rise occupants, balconies and rooftops work well, but make sure you know how much weight they will be able to hold.

Jacobs recommends using larger five- or 10-gallon containers that are deep enough to give vegetable roots room to grow. Those big, round oak barrels are ideal, if you can find them (if you can't, call Jacobs at 310-280-0875 and she will tell you how to get them), but clay, terra cotta or even plastic works well, as long as there are drainage holes at the bottom.

"I use five-gallon tree pots," says Jacobs who maintains her own apartment garden at home. "I wouldn't go any smaller than that, and they need to be about 3 feet deep. Shallower pots kill the plants (or) cause them to be stressed, and that's what you are trying to avoid."

Siskin agrees that the main thing to avoid when deciding when and where and what you Aare going to plant in, that you make sure you don't overtax your plants.

"Spacing can be important," he says. "And also not to put competing plants too close to each other. Don't plant too much at first, but also don't limit yourself on what you want to grow. You can pretty much try anything."

Once you decide where you want to start, you should concentrate on the soil. Jacobs recommends avoiding the commercial soils and mulches that you get at the local garden supply center, opting instead for a more natural product.

Mulch, she says, is the most important factor in creating a self-sustaining eco-system of sorts, either in the ground or in each of your pots. She recommends buying worms to help foster a healthy soil, then mulching by laying a layer of leaves or dried-out grass clippings over the topsoil - products she reminded can be obtained on the cheap by reusing the waste from your neighbors' weekend yardwork.

"Mulching does four important things," she says. "It conserves water, provides a thermal blanket that prevents the plants from getting too hot or too cold ... it provides food for the worms and it responsibly recycles yard waste. ... So everybody wins, and at the same time, you might even get to know your neighbors."

Jacobs, who started growing urban gardens when she lived in San Francisco, likes the growing conditions in Southern California, which has fairly temperate weather throughout the year. She advocates the idea of creating gardens that feed themselves, an organic process she believes produces healthier food and flowers.

The point is not to let space and other limitations deter potential gardeners from growing things.

"There have been stories about plants that were discovered growing in people's basements," says Siskin. "Give plants water and air to circulate and some sunlight, and you can grow something. Even if all you have is a patio or a balcony or even a window sill, you have enough space. You just have to do it."

Peggy Zeldes knows tAhis - she has coffee every morning among the fruits of her labor.

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Photo (1--color) Rani Jacobs waters edible landscaping that utilizes the three-tiered concept at her Westside nursery. (2--color) Jacobs demonstrates how a 4-square-foot area can be used to grow a lot in a small space at Urban Organic, her demonstration garden and nursery in the Palms district of Los Angeles. (3--color) Jacobs cleans leaves on a grapefruit plant at Urban Organic. Phil McCarten/Daily News (4--color) Peggy Zeldes of Westlake Village designed a patio and garden that wound around her home in the small spaces in the back and along a narrow walkway on one side. (5--color) "I had to be a little bit more creative," says Zeldes of her landscaping. John McCoy/Daily News (6--Cover--color) Ground zero Don't let a lack of space stop you from planting a garden of your own Myung J. Chun / Daily News