A tapestry of colors for a front yard

Low-growing plants create a tapestry of color, punctuated by bold agaves, backed by taller shrubs and trees. It’s a great place for hummingbirds and pollinators, too. This garden has been growing for several years now, and has moved into the phase where maintenance centers on keeping the plants in bound as opposed to letting weedsContinue reading “A tapestry of colors for a front yard”

It’s all about the views!

A series of superimposed view paths cross the back yard in two directions: fire, water, landscape, entry. Fire from the master bedroom to the fire pit, water from the house to the golf course pond, passing over the pool and spa, landscape from a sitting place under a tree to a formal citrus orchard. BeContinue reading “It’s all about the views!”

Grow your own sculpture!

Learning to sculpt beautiful things from base materials is hard. It takes a long time to learn, you play with sharp tools and can easily hurt yourself. Or worse, you might create something really boring and be stuck with it basically forever (you would never throw out your first sculpture, would you?) Agave salmiana TheseContinue reading “Grow your own sculpture!”

Resilient landscaping for Southern California

This didn’t start out as a laboratory for resilient landscape design. It was just a low-maintenance garden for aging people to enjoy. Then one person was no more. The other lost mobility. Parts of the garden received no irrigation. Pruning back and weeding likewise disappeared. Yet the garden survived, mostly intact.