By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

  Why pretend you live in Tuscany, when you reside in coastal California?  That's something Costa Mesa garden designer Molly Wood can't understand.

"You live close to the beach, where most of the world would like to be," she says.  "Why not celebrate that?"

Wood certainly does.  Everything about her design style is "beachy." 

Take her fountains. Nearly every fountain she does, I noticed browsing Wood's website, incorporates sea shells. 

Not all of the fountains are as detailed as this one, which is on display at Wood's shop in Costa Mesa, but there is some use of shells and/or connection to the ocean in all of them.

The idea came from watching her son play with an abalone shell, says Wood.  "Seeing the water trickle through the holes gave me the idea to incorporate that same movement in a fountain," she says. 

After visiting her store and and spending a morning seeing some of her projects, though, I see how the beach connection permeates everything Wood does.  Her firepits, for instance, look like more formal versions of the ones you huddle around when you're at a beach party right on the sand.  And, if you look closely, you'll notice there are often tiny sea shells in the grouting between her paving stones.

Back at the shop, I notice how the beach motif infuses everything Wood touches, from the casual styling of the furniture she prefers -- honed concrete table tops that look beach-polished; to her succulent plant combinations -- they look like coral formations; to her choice of pots -- lots of shell shapes and shell textures, like the beauty shown below. (More about this line of pots tomorrow.)

My visit with Wood has me rethinking my backyard.  I'm not exactly channeling Tuscany back there, but I'm not embracing my proximity to the beach as much as I could either.  At a minimum, I'd love to incorporate her sea-shell encrusting grouting idea.