By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I love word play, and this is the best I've seen in awhile. Go to Reuben Munoz's Rancho Reubidoux blog to learn, step by step, how to create such a beautiful entry greeting.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photos by Roger Miller, Homescaper Garden Photography

Looking at Frances Barnes' garden in Portland, Oregon, I'm struck at the part hardscape plays in a garden's design. This hillside garden needed a lot of it, if only to terrace this formerly weed-covered hill.

The project actually started when Barnes planned a major addition behind her classic 80-year-old house. She realized that the resulting walls would make it impossible to get heavy equipment back there after construction, so all major landscape work had to be done before construction.

Designers Anne Marsh & Gary Fear (Marsh Fear Garden Solutions) went above and beyond what was required, installing a gorgeous water feature (below), patio (above), and terraces for edible and ornamental plants.

Outdoor furniture, trellises, fences, and gates complete the package.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photos by Buell Steelman, Mosaic Gardens

One of the most striking approaches I've seen this year is the classic floating walkway pictured above. Leading to the front door of R.J. Hoyman's home in Eugene, OR, it was designed, installed, and landscaped with a blend of native and Asian plants by Mosaic Gardens, also in Eugene. I especially like the way the deck encompasses the trunk of a large Oregon white oak. 

Below you see how it looks at ground level. Plants include western sword fern (Polystichum munitum) and fullmoon maples (Acer japonicum, including a few 'Aconitifolium' and one 'Vitifolium' by the door).  The bamboo is Fargesia rufa 'Green Panda.'

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photos by Janet Loughrey

On the early summer ANLD garden tour in Portland, I couldn't help but notice how much fun Courtney Downing (Green Artisans) had designing curves into one of her gardens. In the gravel walkway below, curves are exaggerated in a way that draw you down the garden path.

In the rear garden, Downing gives you a doubly curvaceous border of golden bamboo: the whole planting snakes along a gently curving border, while individual culms arch out over the lawn.

On the return walk down the other side of the garden, a lovely stone staircase swings you down into a lower patio. It's much more interesting that a right-angle staircase would have been.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

It's one thing to create a patio on bare earth, and another to build it over an existing concrete slab. Faced with the second prospect (which would also work on a rooftop), designers Rebecca Sams and Buell Steelman (Mosaic Gardens in Eugene, OR), decided to leave the concrete in place and install a new patio over it. Owners Ted and Nancy Dobson, also of Eugene, are delighted.

To kill the concrete look, Sams and Steelman covered it with river rock, floated a deck over it, and brought in big, plant-filled containers that tie the patio space in with the plants on the slope above it.

The patio extends down a sideyard (above) which, in its original, concrete iteration, had all the charm of a bowling alley. To give it a little mystery and a lot of character, they put in offset bamboo wing walls, more containerized plants, and a sinuous path of stepping stones that leads you through it.

At the sideyard's end, a big torii gate (below) marks the transition to one street-facing part of the garden. (Since this is a corner lot, the garden faces the street on two sides.)

I love the planting patterns here. Fine-textured plants contrast with big-leafed plants, and reds mix it up with greens and golds. There's even a water feature that adds sound and splash to this previously arid retreat.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Photos by Lori Brookes

When Dick and Shirley Johnson asked San Diego landscape designer Kendra Berger to revamp their Pacific Beach front yard they asked for a low-maintenance design, seating areas that would allow them to actually use the space, and a fence to keep young grandchildren safely corralled.  They got all that.

Plus something they didn't expect--people who might have driven by a hundred times before suddenly noticing the house for the first time.  "People are always stopping their cars to tell us how much they like the house, which is amusing because other than changing the trim color (Kendra's suggestion), we haven't altered a thing," says Shirley.  "We just finally have a landscape that compliments it."

I think it's the multi-level deck of Brazilian hardwood that does it.  (It's FSC Certified Mangaris Diamond with a UV finish to help preserve the rich color.)  Besides providing a primary seating area near the house and a lower level where you can bring in more chairs as needed, it's like an arrow directing your eye straight to the house.  And especially to that gorgeous rock wall.

All that beautiful wood plus the cabinetry-like detailing made me feel like I was stepping onto a well-crafted boat.  Nice sensation.

The boardwalk meandering away from the deck leads to a second seating area where Adirondack chairs nestle up to a small faux firepit.  Driftwood, mini sand-dunes, and sea pebbles add to the beachy illusion. (This must appeal immensely to their grandchildren.)

"We have coffee out here in the morning, talk to neighbors who stop and chat, and have a comfortable place for our grandkids to play," says Shirley.  "It's better than a room addition."

Another friendly front yard redesign by Kendra Berger

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Lawn was the perfect choice to surround the pool of this Trabuco Canyon backyard designed by Orange County landscape architect, Alison Terry. 

For one thing, though the homeowners wanted a pool for exercise, they wanted it to be as low-key as possible so that it would not detract from the natural beauty of their setting.  Terry's solution was a "jewel in the rough" approach.  The clean lines of the simple rectangular pool seem twice as elegant with the contrast of a shaggy green carpet coming right up to its edges.  "Lots of hardscape would have been overwhelming," says Terry.  "This looks much softer."  A blue pool finish (Bella Blue Pebble Fina) makes the water shimmer like aquamarine.

Secondly the grass is no thirsty fescue.  It is UC Verde buffalo grass which has extremely modest water requirements.  "The same as the California natives used in this garden," says Terry.  It can be mown like a regular lawn or left alone for a more meadowy look.  (For more about UC Verde and other no-mow lawn grasses, see this post.)

A final shot of the garden, just because I love it.  All the comforts of civilization but rustic enough to remind you nature is all around you.  It's like an elegant campground.  Can I come over for a swim right now?

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Photos by Lori Brookes

Does San Diego have more friendly neighborhoods than most towns?  Or does it just feel that way after scouting with Kendra Berger of Revive Landscape Design.  Seems like most of her projects have front yards that are designed to be sociable not just pretty.  Take this North Park project for example.

This Craftsman-era home belongs to Louise and Bjorn Steller and is located in the newly designated Dryden Historical District of North Park.  It is an area where homes are close together and neighbors are, too, says Louise. 

For that reason, one of the Stellers' requests when they approached Kendra Berger for a front yard re-do was creating a setting that "extended the stoop," as Louise put it.  They also wanted low-maintenance, low-water usage, a beachy mood that was compatible with the style of their home, and near indestructibility as they planned to get a large dog.  The Stellers were also on a tight budget.

Here's the result.

Berger kept the existing pressure-treated wood retaining walls but dressed them up with a fresh coat of paint.  And, to encourage neighborly impromptu stops to sit and chat she added wide ledges to the inner corners.

In place of grass Berger brought in lots of KC Rock `Palm Springs Gold' decomposed granite.  "It has an almost irridescent shimmer to it," she says.  "Very pretty and very much like beach sand."

She shaped it into gentle mounds and then planted lightly.  Ornamental grasses mainly plus a few ribbons of dymondia and clusters of succulents.  Leaving lots of open areas for the Steller's daughter to play in and a big dog to move around without trampling plants. 

Louise hoped for a setting where her daughter could imagine she was playing amidst waving grasses on the sand dunes.  I think she got it.

Much of the Stellers' renovation budget went into things you can't see -- lawn removal, drip irrigation, and weed barrier fabric.  But some of it went into small changes to the house itself that ending up making a big difference -- new blue trim at the base, a wood railing that adds finish plus support for trailing plants in pots, and, especially, a coat of deep burgundy paint on the generous sweep of stairs, making them the focal point of the garden.

Final touches:  a well-weathered beach chair--recycled from the backyard--and some low-maintenance/high-impact succulent pots.

Oh, and about that dog, the Stellers weren't kidding when they said they would be getting a big one.  Here is Sunshine, a very large girl indeed, looking wistfully at the garden.  And, as you can tell from the photos, it is surviving the mastiff's giant paws quite nicely.

Kendra has been on our blog before.  To see some of her other gardens, click here, here, and here.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

 
With the right design, even a small space can become a favorite spot for outdoor living. In Debbie & Gary Ahearn's garden, designers Rebecca Sams & Buell Steelman (Mosaic Gardens in Eugene, OR) paved a small unused garden area that lies between house and fence (behind the gate in the photograph at right) and surrounded it with a colorful, richly textured combination of perennials, small trees, and shrubs.

The paving was done with a California slate, while the powder-coated steel table and chairs (Mosaic's own design) were made by a local fabricator.

A glass door gives access to the patio from the house, and lets owners see the view pictured below from inside.

For such a small space, this patio garden contains a remarkable assortment of plants. Three garden-scale trees—a 'Trompenberg' Japanese maple arching over the gate, a 'Butterflies' yellow-flowering magnolia in the corner, and a glowing Aralia elata ‘Aureovariegata'—give the garden a sense of volume, and let enough light through to keep the plants beneath them happy.

The collection of plants beneath the trees includes Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'Aurea'),  a purple smoke tree (Cotinus coggygria), Rhododendron pachysanthum, Cryptomeria japonica 'Elegans Nana', Ophiopogon nigrescens, and Athyrium 'Ghost'.

That's brown Carex flagellifera betweeen patio and house 'Gold Cone' junipers, and Iris ensata 'Cry of Rejoice' and Picea pungens 'Glauca Prostrata' behind them.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

The lawnless front yard shown above and to the left caught my eye while reading the useful new book, Reimagining the California Lawn: Water-conserving Plants, Practices, and Designs by Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O'Brien.  (See our review of the book here.)  So I decided to call the Ventura landscape architect, Jack Kiesel of Kiesel Design, to find out more about it.

Looks like Kiesel had a pretty generous set-back to work with in these photos, doesn't it?

Not exactly, as it turns out. 

The front yard, as the below "before" shows, is actually tiny.  A more complex design than a mono-planting of turf just makes it seem bigger because it gives the eye more to study.

What the homeowner, David Van Hoy, who was also the architect who designed the house, requested was a design that was bold but also free-flowing and softly textured to contrast with the right angles and contemporary materials of the house.

Kiesel came up with a design that emulated a stream bed running through the property without using any actual water.  The rose-pink Echeveria `Afterglow' represent the deepest part of the river and blue-gray Festuca glauca the shallower edges.  Contouring the yard so this area is slightly deeper and using a green-toned gravel (Surfgreen) as mulch furthers the illusion.

The slightly taller dark green grass (Sesleria) represents the banks of the river--I've repeated the first image so you don't have to skim back up unless you want a closer look.  And the still taller blue oat grass and larger succulents (aeonium and agaves) stand in for sand bars or islands.

Kiesel also gave the homeowners a new outdoor seating area--a small patio that doubles as a foyer.  The slate pavers continue indoors.

The concrete pavers lead to the main entrance of the house. 

To make the driveway disappear into the landscape, Kiesel used the same pavers for that space with clumps of small bunch grass planted between them to make the whole space look continuous.  See below.

All in all, a lot more interesting than lawn, wouldn't you say?