By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

That's the situation Robin Rouse faced in her beachside house in Cayucos on the Central California Coast.  All of Rouse's primary living quarters are on the second floor.  There is a large deck up there, too, with an even better view of the ocean than from the patio below.  So there really wasn't that much reason to descend.  Still you looked down on it every day.  So it needed a focus.

Baywood Park landscape architect Jeffrey Gordon Smith gave it a dramatic one.  The Nautilus shell was his inspiration.  He laid down a spiral-patterned patio constructed out of flagstone pieces interplanted with Dymondia. And he ran a ribbon of tumbled blue glass -- reminiscent of beach glass -- through it.  At the center he installed a small gas-fired fire pit housed in a Corten steel bowl.  There are strands of 110 volt rope lighting underneath the glass ribbon which create enough glow you can see the patio's motif even after dark.

Smith added curved retaining walls wide enough to double as seating walls around the perimeter of the patio -- suspecting Rouse might be more tempted to use the space once he was finished.  And he painted the sea wall behind them the color of beach sand so it would virtually disappear.

Rouse says with this pretty pattern to look at her second story view is better than ever.  The fire pit even puts out enough warmth to heat her top deck, she says.  Still she spends less time there.  "I find myself being drawn down to the garden now," says Rouse.  "I love this little space."

All photos by Chris Leschinsky