Sparkling and serene, this is a tiny garden that oozes romance and mystique (design and photo, Laura Morton)

I believe that the paths we walk lead us to the people we need to know in our lives.

Case in point: A week or so after I insisted that my friend Shirley Bovshow, an LA garden media personality and talented designer, bunk with me for 2 nights at the Portland Garden Writers Association annual symposium, she invited me to join an Association of Professional Landscape Designers’ lunch meeting at her home in Woodland Hills. Since Shirley and I live relatively close to one another (by LA standards), I took her up on the invite. The other guests were fellow members with Shirley in APLD’s LA chapter. Plus, Shirley’s garden is a wonderland of plants and design ideas.

The Association of Professional Landscape Designers is an impressive organization. I have met, interviewed and written about APLD members (and their work) in many venues, including Seattle, Los Angeles and beyond.

The September gathering introduced me to several Southern California garden creators, including Shirley (Edenmaker), Jennifer Gilbert Asher of TerraSculpture (I’ve recently written about her work), and Laura Morton of Laura Morton Garden Design.

When Laura casually mentioned to me that one of her projects won the 2008 APLD “Gold Award” for residential landscape design, I went a little crazy. “Has it been published?” I quizzed her. “No,” she admitted.

No sooner than I heard this – and no sooner had Laura sent me several photographs and a little movie about her design for Mala Vasan’s Hollywood Hills backyard, than I was on the phone to LA Times HOME section editor Craig Nakano. As I suspected, he was very interested in seeing what Laura had to share.

Open air living: Designer Laura Morton changed a plain backyard at Mala Vasan’s home into an Indian-tinged outdoor living room with a reflecting pool, fire pit and garden (Laura Morton photograph)

The story about Mala’s garden, inspired by her own multicultural interests and designed by Laura Morton, appears in today’s LA Times Homes section. Here are the opening lines:

HER PASSAGE TO INDIA: A Hollywood Hills bungalow’s small backyard is transformed into an exotic, cozy retreat and social spot.

If you’re looking for a good excuse to invest in landscaping, Mala Vasan’s is hard to beat. She credits her dreamy mix of Indian and Moroccan inspiration for seducing her sweetheart.

“My garden brings out an inner magic,” says Vasan, a producer of TV commercials who was going out to eat with screenwriter Brian P. Regan when he saw the enchanting outdoor space and said, “Forget it. Let’s stay here and order Chinese food.”

With scented blossoms, dancing flames, the sound of spilling water and chaises large enough for two, the intimate setting is, indeed, full of romance. (“Our first dates were on those couches,” Vasan says.) The garden also is an artful antithesis of what it used to be: a driveway too small for a car and a 560-square-foot backyard dominated by a wobbly brick patio and views of a boxy air-conditioner hanging from the neighbor’s garage.

The transformation of this Hollywood Hills property earned its creator, Laura Morton of Laura Morton Design in West Hollywood, a gold medal last year from the Assn. of Professional Landscape Designers. For Vasan, the thoughtful design was proof that tiny details and a vivid imagination could turn a prosaic space into a pretty and practical retreat.

The Times’ online photo gallery features several before-and-after shots, including a darling photo of designer Laura Morton and client Mala Vasan, seated in the garden. You can see the gallery here.

Here are a few more photographs, courtesy of Laura Morton. Visit her web site to see many more of her projects – inspiring and alluring spaces that will get you thinking about turning your own backyard into an exotic oasis with plants, cushy textiles, the presence of water, candles to illuminate and other sensory pleasures.

A curtain of water spills over the reflecting pool’s tiled edge into a hidden channel behind the fire pit (Laura Morton photograph)

Romantic chaises, piled with textiles and cushions, create a luxurious outdoor living room (Laura Morton photograph)

In my interview with Laura, she described how a feeling of intimacy can be created in a garden:

“Enclosed spaces instill a sense of intimacy, and within that, your own sense of paradise is possible.”

This post aspires to nothing more than sharing with you my garden-gal outing two days ago to the Getty Center in LA. I had a lovely “New Year’s” lunch with garden designers Linda McKendry (of Linda McKendry Design) and Laura Morton (of Laura Morton Garden Design).

We toasted the New Year and talked about our goals, our wishes, our dreams, our *resolutions* and a bit of reality. After lunch, the three of us took an afternoon stroll through the Getty’s Robert Irwin-designed garden.

The light was beautiful. The plantings were surreal. Enjoy!

Here’s my January 2009 “In the Garden” column for 805 Living magazine, featuring artist and designer Jennifer Gilbert Asher and her beautiful sculpture.

 

GARDENS AS GALLERIES: Choose and place ornamentation with a thoughtful eye toward your garden’s overall design.

Why do artful objects – such as sculpture, salvaged architectural fragments or even a birdbath – make such an impression in the garden?

Like adding jewelry to a little black dress, or a few bright pillows to a tired sofa, artwork, sculpture and ornamentation can take any garden from ordinary to extraordinary. Well-placed art adds to, rather than detracts from, the overall composition. In the winter, when the garden is quieter, artwork often takes center stage.

“Even though sculpture is a four-season element in the landscape, it becomes the star of the show when everything else is going dormant,” says Jennifer Gilbert Asher, principal of Woodland Hills-based Chilmark Gardens. [see Jennifer, right, with “Curvas,” placed in her own garden.]

Precious objects, displayed side-by-side with foliage and flower – or partially hidden among the stems and branches of a favorite plant – give a garden its personality. They also communicate volumes about its owner’s taste and style.

“I place sculpture not just to complement the garden, but to transform it,” Asher says. “A captivating sculpture can spike curiosity and provoke thought. It can be playful or energetic; meditative or even sensual.”

Asher was inspired to design a collection of bold, modern pieces after she had trouble finding affordable artwork for her client’s landscapes. “I was shocked at the lack of accessible fine art for the garden. I heard the same thing from other designers, all over the country. You shouldn’t have to be a millionaire to transform your landscape into an outdoor art gallery,” she says.

She teamed up with Los Angeles entrepreneur Karen Neill Tarnowski last fall to launch TerraSculpture, an online art gallery and sculpture studio. Asher design and create abstract, graphic forms in stainless, weathered and powder-coated steel.  TerraSculpture uses durable, outdoor-friendly material such as 11-gauge steel; finishes vary from brushed stainless to eye-popping primary colors. [at left: “Leap”]

With names like “Embrace” and “Closer,” many of the pieces evoke human emotions. And unlike the type of sculpture you’d see in public parks or museums, which is far too large for the domestic landscape, TerraSculpture’s designs range from 4-1/2-feet-tall to 6-1/2-feet-tall. (For customers whose homeowner-association covenants restrict anything that appears above backyard fences or walls, these dimensions offer added benefits.)

READ MORE…

The subtitle to this post should be “Haste makes waste.”

But before I tell you my woeful tale of rushing a gardening project and living to regret it, I will tip you off to a wonderful product that helps non-carpenter types like me build raised beds for backyard vegetable gardening.

Gardener’s Supply has designed and fabricated a very cool piece of hardware – a corner bracket – that allows you to build a raised bed rather simply, with sections of lumber. Having previously built wobbly raised beds with L-shaped brackets screwed inside two 2-by-10s at a 90-degree angle, I think this Gardener’s Supply solution is far superior (see corner bracket, left).

All you need are four powder-coated, aluminum corner brackets. Slip the boards into the fitted sections of each bracket and secure them with Philips screws inserted in the pre-drilled holes.

There are also side brackets that allow you to extend the raised bed from 4-feet to 8-feet long.  And not to sound too Xenophobic, but – hurrah! – these brackets are made in Vermont by Gardener’s Supply. It really is nice to know that something is still manufactured in the U.S. of A. these days.

So, to create one 4-by-8 foot raised bed, you need the following:

• 4 pieces of 2-by-10 lumber measuring 8 feet long
• 3 pieces of 2-by-10 lumber measuring 4 feet long
• 4 corner brackets from Gardener’s Supply
• 2 side brackets from Gardener’s Supply

READ MORE…

If you’re following my ongoing Glossary of Garden Architecture, check out this just-added “definition” of a Ramada. [photo source: Arid Lands Newsletter, 1989]

Part arbor-trellis, part pavilion, the open-air structure protects and shelters its occupants from the high-noon sun and also invites breezes to cool and comfort.

According to Allwords.com, the word ramada appears in at least two citations of American literature – in 1909 (Vanished Arizona, by Martha Summerhayes) and 1992 (All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy).

1992: “They sat in the shade of the pole and brush ramada in front of the place and sipped their drinks and looked out at the desolate stillness of the little crossroads at noon. ” Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

1909: (footnote) “A sort of rude awning made of brush and supported by cottonwood poles.” Martha Summerhayes, Vanished Arizona

Read further to discover why it’s important to learn and understand regional influences and cultural origins of architectural terms like ramada.

An early morning scene outside the guest room window at Mary-Kate Mackey’s in Eugene

October in Oregon – you can’t beat it. Earlier this month, I traveled there to lecture to the Hardy Plant Group of Willamette Valley.

Returning to my beloved roots, in the Pacific Northwest, was such a treat, especially since it is still wickedly hot down here in LA and I am desperate for some moist, cool autumnal weather.

And oh, the gardens!

Mary-Kate Mackey, fellow garden writer and a gifted journalism educator, met me at the airport. It was fun to fly into this sleek, modern, small airport and arrive via Horizon Airlines (they serve complimentary Pacific Northwest ale on board and, oh, by the way, one of my articles appears in the October issue of Horizon/Alaska’s in-flight magazine, so I was able to grab lots of extra copies from the seat-pocket in front of me, etc.!).

Upon disembarking in Eugene, I was impressed by the changing autumn light and saturated foliage palette. Oh, it’s autumn in Oregon! It took away my breath and captured my heart.

The evening began with drinks at a nifty bistro with Mary-Kate, followed by dinner with my dear friend Jennifer (we were editors together at “Seattle Woman” magazine in the 80s).

On Tuesday, after a restful overnight in Jenny and her husband Tim’s comfortable home, I met up again with Mary-Kate.

Since I missed out on the one-day garden tour in Eugene that followed last month’s Garden Writers Association’s annual symposium, I had a special request for Mary-Kate: Can I have my own mini-tour of the best of the best Eugene has to offer? [Above: Mary-Kate inspects the craftsmanship of a stunning stone wall hand-built by Allen Bosworth (right) of Bosworth Landscaping.]

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Dare we call it a “Stone Shed”?

Does the idea of hanging moss, dripping water and a dark, quiet enclosure come to mind? Call it a cave, cavern or hollow and you’re getting close to both the ancient and modern-day descriptions of this sheltered stone destination in the cultivated or wild landscape.

If you’re following my ongoing Glossary of Garden Architecture, check out this just-added “definition” of a Grotto.

Our beloved Seattle bungalow, updated from its 1924 origins

My interest in garden design from the American Arts and Crafts era is connected with the affection we have for a 1924 Seattle Craftsman bungalow, which my husband and I bought in 1996.

The one-story house, about 1,100-square-feet in size, was painted light gray. With faded white trim, it was not much to look at, as it had been a rental house for so many years (seen at right). On our first visit, we ignored the sofa on the front porch (below, left) and instead gazed at the breathtaking views of Lake Washington, the Cascade Mountains, Seward Park and Mount Baker.

Thus began our love affair with Craftsman architecture. We wanted to expand the house while also preserving its character. My husband Bruce met Toby Taylor of Caledonia Bay Builders after previously seeing his work and tracking him down through a real estate agent

Toby (seen below, right) and Bruce hit it off immediately, an almost unheard of phenomenon between a builder and a potential client who is also a lawyer. Toby introduced us to Robin Abrahams, a Seattle architect who he described admiringly. We were impressed when Toby told us that Robin was “way cool.”

Miraculously, we went with our “gut” feelings and hired them both (this was highly rare for my lawyer-husband, who typically would have insisted on competitive bids from three candidates). We’d heard all the horror stories. Nearly everyone we knew who had restored, renovated or built a home was unenthusiastic about the process, or about their contractor, or about their architect.

But our little project was blessed. We adored Robin and her colleagues at Abrahams Architects. She is a bundle of creative energy, a thoughtful, very smart, incredibly gifted designer. We also loved Toby’s verve, his hard-working, can-do attitude, and his often amusing ski-bum vocabulary.

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A FURTHER INSTALLMENT OF THE SHED STYLE GLOSSARY. . .

Look far in the distance. What do you see? Is there a destination at the terminus of this path?

In September 2006, after living in Southern California for only three weeks, I had the fortunate experience of joining many of my Seattle friends on a Northwest Horticultural Society tour led by Gillian Mathews. It was an introduction to the awesome plants and landscape beauty of my new environs . . . an inspiring and encouraging few days, spent in the company of kindred (Seattle) spirits who kept telling me how fortunate I was to be living here amidst “paradise.”

One of our stops was to visit Casa del Herrero, a fantastic Spanish Hacienda-style estate, built in the 1920s in nearby Montecito. After touring the magnificent home, completely restored down to the furniture and artwork, we moved on to the garden. At a particular stop on the tour the vantage point shown above appeared. The decorative stucco-and-tile wall, at least 10-feet tall and 18-feet wide, stood nestled at the base of a gently-sloping ravine. Built-in benches on each side face the center.

“Oh, look,” said one of my friends, a landscape designer. “It’s an Exedra!”

A Spanish-inspired Exedra: Standing apart from the dwelling and lying widely open

To learn more about the classic “Exedra” as a landscape design element, visit my glossary, where I’m compiling photos and definitions of unique garden architcture.