A few weeks ago I had a phone date with Stephen Orr, the guy who has held all the jobs I’d love to have: Garden Editor for House & Garden magazine; Garden Editor for Domino magazine . . . and now, garden editorial director for Martha Stewart Living magazine.

He is one of the friendliest and most genuine individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet in the magazine world. It was a treat for me to interview Stephen about the publication of Tomorrow’s Garden, his first book. I’ve met Stephen in person a few times, both in Los Angeles at a Garden Conservancy symposium, and in San Francisco when I spoke at Flora Grubb Nursery after Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways, my own book, was published. We garden writers really do live in a small world!

Thanks to Craig Nakano, my editor at the Los Angeles Times HOME section, for agreeing to feature my Q&A with Stephen.

You can click here for the full story. And click here for a web gallery of Stephen’s photography that accompanies his book. Here is an excerpt of my interview with Stephen:

“People don’t think much about where gravel comes from as a resource,” Orr said, yet gravel gardens are becoming increasingly popular. His book features gravel landscapes from Venice and Ojai to Austin, Texas, to Nantucket, Mass. We asked him to discuss gravel as a sustainable design material:

What appeals to you about the use of gravel?

It is such a great base for many styles, from traditional to modern. There are plenty of people in Los Angeles and San Francisco who have jumped on the bandwagon wanting to make low-water gardens, but I’m happy to see it catching on in other parts of the country. The California lifestyle is so amazing, with outdoor rooms, and they can be “floored” differently. One room could be floored with grass, another with stone pavers or gravel.

Designers praise gravel gardens as permeable and an alternative to lawns. How has your view of the material changed?

I was visiting nursery owner Flora Grubb in San Francisco, and she told me she often recommends gravel to customers. And then the question “Where does it come from?” came up. Our conversation opened my eyes to begin viewing gravel as a finite resource.

Where does it come from?

As with so many environmental choices, the decisions we make trying to do the right thing are complex and often somewhat overwhelming. In many cases, gravel does indeed come from local quarries. The Austin gardens in my book used local gravel. Those gardeners like how it matches the colors of the natural geology around them. But in other areas, its origin is a big question mark. Even after a lot of research, I found I still have a lot of questions about how responsibly gravel is mined. The EPA monitors gravel production, which is a huge industry mainly for construction and highway building. In comparison, gravel for gardening use is minor, but it’s still something to be conscious of.

What questions should homeowners be asking about the gravel they buy?

I suggest you approach it like having a local consciousness of food. Don’t buy bags of gravel if you don’t know where it comes from. It may be shipped longer distances than is environmentally responsible. Try instead to source the material close to home.

What type of gravel do you recommend?

There is a difference between “crushed stone,” which has sharper edges, and “pea gravel,” which is rounded. Some people prefer walking on the rounded pea gravel, but consider the environmental impact it takes to extract it from ancient stream-beds formed by alluvial processes over millennia. Pea gravel isn’t a manufactured product. It’s not even a renewable resource. Many forward-thinking designers are switching to more jagged, crushed limestone or granite instead.

Any tips on how gravel should be installed?

One major thing I learned is that the depth of gravel is important. If it’s laid too deep, it’s like trudging through deep snow. Most of the designers I interviewed recommend you first put down a layer of “road base,” bigger pieces of crushed stone — an inch or two in length. Lay it very flat with a compactor and then place just a few inches of crushed gravel or pea gravel on top. This approach makes a very stable surface.

What are some of the interesting ways people use gravel?

I love the modern look of some of the gardens in my book. But I also really love gravel gardens with a more traditional influence where plants are encouraged to self-sow. I’m a plant nut. I come at gardening because I love plants. So to me, the space that contains the plant — the garden — is a frame to show them off. I love seeing volunteers like verbena or a spire of silver verbascum in the gravel. Or, I like to see gravel as the flooring for a spare space containing just a water feature.

Do you see gravel as the anti-lawn?

I like to see gravel and lawn used in combination. Just as a lot of us live without wall-to-wall carpet and instead have rugs with wood floors, I encourage people to think of their lawn as an area rug. Think about using it with an element of crushed rock, such as a flat area under a tree or where you need better drainage.

This just in: the tally of the Los Angeles Times’ HOME section’s most highly viewed stories and galleries of the year. And – wow – 4 of the top 12 are stories that I was fortunate to discover and write for the newspaper.

Here they are – enjoy the inspiration:

1. In Beverly Hills, a Hollywood Regency re-do created by TV personality Lara Spencer and her husband David Haffenreffer.

2. The historic midcentury Daily House in Glendale, lovingly revived by attorney Chris Burusco.

3. The growing green Venice house owned by Paul and Cicek Bricault, complete with succulent walls on the exterior of their master bedroom addition. PS, this story also logged in as one of the paper’s most-read Home & Garden pieces of 2010.

4. The charming, modern Chartreuse House, also in Venice, designed by Lisa Little of LayerLA and Victoria Yust/Ian McIlvaine of Tierra Sol y Mar. Gardens by Stephanie Bartron of SB Garden Design.

Even though I have relocated to Seattle, I continue to report on home design, interiors and architecture for the Los Angeles Times. I’m looking forward to 2011 – can’t wait to discover the great design the New Year brings.

Here’s a story that ran in the Los Angeles Times last month. It’s about a few of Stephanie Bartron’s projects to remake her clients’ ugly concrete patios into more attractive – and sustainable – backyard features. The best part of the story is learning how easy it is to turn this technique into a DIY project of your own. The LA Times also features an awesome in this photo gallery. Read on . . .

If landscape designer Stephanie Bartron has her way, California’s sea of patio concrete is going to start shrinking.

When the Los Angeles landscape designer eyed her clients’ slab behind a 1940s Atwater Village bungalow, she knew the concrete had to go. New hardscape and plants would have done the trick, sure, but digging out all that paving was costly and, the the waste would just end up in the landfill.

So, Bartron took a different approach. She hired a professional industrial saw operator to slice up the 20-by-20 foot patio into a grid of 18-inch squares.

The result is a new focal point for the garden, resembling evenly-spaced pavers divided by 4-inch bands of grass. When it rains, the storm water percolates into the ground rather than streaming down the driveway and into the street. Little material was thrown away. But the biggest effect was aesthetic. The repurposed patio no longer resembles a basketball court, nor does it dominate the tiny lot.

“By cutting it up, I changed the scale of the concrete from a big slab into an attractive backyard feature,” the designer says.

While his two children play nearby, owner Caleb Dewart, a television producer, likes to lounge beneath the mature orange tree that Bartron saved.

“We’re really happy we didn’t have to tear this up and start over,” he says of the patio. “And we like using what we have rather than being wasteful.”

Bartron’s approach solves myriad design challenges, and the designer has artfully sliced up several ugly patios and driveways for clients. Environmentally conscious homeowners like reducing the waste associated with redesigning a landscape. Budget-conscious clients like getting a lot of bang for their buck.

According to Kenny Grimm, sales manager for Oxnard-based Independent Concrete Cutting Inc., this kind of project requires an experienced operator to cut concrete with a diamond blade, 37-horsepower saw. Cost: $140 per hour, plus travel charges.

“We’re seeing more people re-use their existing material because recycling your paving is an affordable alternative to hauling it away,” he says. “You can get a lot of cutting done for around $1,000.”

For yoga instructor Lucy Bivins and cinematographer Eric Schmidt, Bartron recycled front-yard concrete into useful elements, including garden benches and a prominent water feature.

The couple inherited a gray slab when they purchased a Mt. Washington house designed by architect Barbara Bestor. The concrete had been installed by a previous owner as part of a carport, Bivins says. “It was very bleak and unattractive,” she says. “A real eyesore.”

At Bestor’s suggestion, she and Schmidt contacted Bartron for design help.

“We asked for shade trees, an outdoor gas fireplace and some type of fountain,” Schmidt says. “Stephanie turned the unused space into our outdoor living room, which in just a few years has been filled by a canopy of shade trees. It’s a favorite place to sit with our newborn son, Hugo, listen to the fountain and watch the trees move in the wind. It calms him down every night before bedtime.”

Used to working with old, cracked paving, Bartron was fascinated with the newer concrete. Four-inches thick and embedded with rebar, it covered 400 square feet between the street and her clients’ front door.

Coming up with a savvy design that created little waste was “like solving a big jigsaw puzzle,” the designer says. “This material was in great shape, but we wanted to turn one giant slab into many smaller elements for a bold and inviting garden space.”

Bartron chose a rectilinear motif to echo the architecture’s lines, slicing the patio into 1-1/2-by-4-foot sections. She layered the cut-out concrete in the form of an L-shaped seating area, the bench backed by a new, horizontal-plank fence. Narrower slices of concrete stacked four levels high form the edges of a contemporary fountain and koi pond. Cross sections reveal aggregate-like detailing when sanded smooth.

Bartron left some of the concrete in place but carved away planting strips to accommodate low-growing, drought-tolerant dymondia, a silver groundcover. She also removed enough patio to create two large beds for Eastern redbud trees (Cercis canadensis), carex and fescue grasses, and New Zealand flax. Evenly-spaced concrete bands serve as a walkway from the front door and adjacent bubbling fountain to the L-shaped seating, which has a gas-piped steel fire bowl designed by New York artist Elena Colombo .

“It’s a very sexy entertaining space,” Bivins says. “Whenever we have people over, we end up around the fire bowl. There can be 10 of us here and it still feels intimate.”

She praises Bartron for coming up with a money-saving design that also enhances the architecture.

“It was very crafty of her,” she says. “She took our lemon and made lemonade.”

Cutting up the patio

Want to slice up your patio? Landscape designer Stephanie Bartron says it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s possible to make small cuts using a power hand saw with a diamond blade, but you should take safety precautions such as wearing safety goggles and heavy gloves. Large-scale projects, such as the ones shown here, are best left to professional contractors.

Draw a map of your patio and think about where you want to place furniture. Table and chair legs need to be placed on an even surface, not in the spaces between concrete.

Dig along your patio to determine the concrete’s depth and the edge type (uniform or jagged). Newer concrete may be even, but old patios tend to be rough-edged. The type of edge may determine if or how the cut pieces may be repurposed.

While marking your pattern with chalk, note of any cracks, chips or score lines. If possible, tweak your design to eliminate these blemishes.

If the concrete is prone to cracking, Bartron suggests cutting it so the remaining pads are standard paver sizes (18- or 20-inch squares). “That way you can pull out a cracked section and install a replacement paver,” she says.

. . . in an intimate, domestic setting illuminated by flames, candles and carnival lights.

Thanks to ample layout space and the 4-color gods, today’s Los Angeles Times HOME section devotes a whole lotta real estate to my feature story about the indoor and outdoor kitchens of hot documentary filmmaker R.J. Cutler.  If his name doesn’t ring a bell, I refer you to the The September Issue, the documentary feature film that opened last weekend in New York and opens in Los Angeles and the rest of the world on Friday. The film follows the legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour and her creative team as they put together the fashion magazine’s most important issue of the year – in this case, the September 2007 issue. The expanded online photo gallery is here.

During the editing process, I received a message from the Garden Design fact-checker saying that Lory would love to show me one of her outdoor projects. We connected by phone and arranged to meet at R.J.’s Hollywood Hills property this past February. It takes a lot of time to scout gardens. It’s kind of like buying futures on the commodities market. You have to spend a few hours on the freeway, usually in crummy traffic, on the off-chance that the architecture, interiors or landscape you’re scheduled to visit will be a worthy candidate for publication. For some reason, after speaking with Lory, I had a hunch the trip to R.J.’s wouldn’t be a waste of my time.

The property is just stunning, high in the hills above Beachwood Canyon and literally under the HOLLYWOOD sign we’ve all seen in a million movies and TV shows. It’s a circa 1924 Spanish Colonial Revival home, which R.J. acquired in 2005 and has subsequently restored with Lory’s brilliant design skills. Big but not imposing, the house sits on three-quarters of an acre. There is a beautiful garden with a swimming pool, strolling paths, a lawn for croquet and square-dancing, a secret garden and other intimate spaces. You can’t see that now, though, because photographs of the garden are under wraps until Garden Design’s March 2010 issue (photographed by the very talented Jack Coyier). That’s right. First the Los Angeles Times. Then Garden Design. See how lucky I was connecting with Lory?

At the outdoor pizza party featured in today’s LA Times, freelance photographer Ringo Chiu, who shoots frequently for the newspaper, captured the festivities through his lens. I tried to stay out of the way while also surreptitiously “art directing.” Anyone who has worked with a newspaper photographer over the years (this comment is for you Melanie Munk) knows how impossible it is to get them to do what you want. And even more impossible to style a shot as you would for a magazine or book. However tough that “dance” can be, Ringo at least humored my few suggestions (ie, shouldn’t we light the fireplace? how about the candles? let’s move that dead potted rosemary!). He did a great job and it was fun for me to snap a few shots of him at work, shown here.

You can draw a lot of inspiration from this story for your own garden. The best tip from Lory is to go bold with color. She designed the entire outdoor kitchen, benches, fireplace and privacy wall with a white stucco finish, like R.J.’s house. But when it was finished, Lory says she stood at the opposite end of the garden and looked across the pool to the too-white scene. “It looked like Greece instead of Los Angeles,” she lamented. Lory knew color would lend heightened drama, especially in the outdoor setting.

The day before R.J. was planning to host his first big al fresco pizza party, she couldn’t stand it. Lory went out and ordered gallons of paint – rich, deep, paprika-terra cotta red – and got the crew started painting. When R.J. came home and saw what was going on, she promised him that if he didn’t like the result, she would pay to repaint everything white again. (Can you imagine how many coats of white paint it would take to cover dark red?).

Let’s just say Lory’s gamble paid off. You have to read my story to see what R.J. says of the decision to keep it.

After researching and reporting this story, I have two new items on my own garden wish list. Number one: I need to buy a 100-foot string of carnival lights to suspend around my own garden. Number two: I desperately want my own wood-burning pizza oven. But only if I can have Chef Alberto come over to cook for me!

Here are more of my candid party photographs:

Here’s a sneak peek at a story that I’ll be reporting for an upcoming issue of Organic Gardening magazine.

I stopped by Pat Marfisi’s house in the Hollywood Hills last evening to tour his unusual “no-dig” veggie patch and to say hello to Pat and my colleague Jack Coyier, who’s photographing Pat’s prolific garden for my piece.

I arrived around 5:30 p.m. The late afternoon light was beautiful and warm. Pat’s dog “VaBene” (Italian for “it’s going well”) came down the street to greet me, followed by his owner: A grinning face under a broad-brimmed straw hat; strong gardener’s arms, emerging from a soft green T-shirt; functional jeans and black sneakers. He was in his element with vegetables, soil, and a harmonic convergence of pollinating native bees darting around to their heart’s content.

 

With apologies to Jack, who with his camera was preoccupied with artistic portraits of young squashes and pole beans, I launched into “interview mode” with Pat. Every word that emerged from his mouth was inspiring – practically prophetic. This was just a meet-and-greet visit. It wasn’t supposed to be an interview. I grabbed my notebook and pen and started scribbling furiously to capture our conversation. 

 

Pat was profiled last summer in an article by Lisa Boone for the Los Angeles Times Home section. Willi Galloway, west coast editor for Organic Gardening, saw the piece and tracked Pat down to learn more about his unusual method of layering newspapers, alfalfa, straw and compost – with a bit of blood meal and bone meal stirred in – to grow edibles above ground. He plants straight into this towering medium, which is a good alternative to tilling up poor soil or back-breaking “double-dig” methods. As I was trying to understand the process, I jotted this explanation down on the page: He creates rich soil while at the same time grows food in it.  

 

When Willi asked me to interview Pat and write the article for Organic Gardening, I was thrilled! I remember reading Lisa’s piece when it came out and learning that this practice of sandwiching organic materials (some also call this the “lasagna” technique) was decades old. Pat picked it up during an early retirement trip to Australia and New Zealand, where he volunteered on organic farms. He’s refined the scheme in his own LA garden and now teaches it to schools and community groups. He’s a modern day vegetable gardening Pied Piper.

As I’ve mentioned here before, some people learn by reading or doing, but I tend to learn by writing about something. I fall in love with each tree or flower I find myself writing about. I become fascinated with a style, a material, a project as I craft the narrative piece that will be published and read by others. 

I suspect it will be the same when I learn more about Pat’s process of growing food with abundance – in a very small area with few resources, natural or physical. I can’t wait to actually write this story (after returning to spend more time with Pat), and to see how it turns out in print with Jack’s photos.

 

Until then, the photos you see here are some of my snapshots to illustrate what Pat’s up to in his few hundred square feet of level land on an otherwise very steep 1/5^th-acre urban lot.

Today – May 2nd – is the 16th annual Venice Garden and Home Tour, which is a hip, happenin’ kind of tour serving up no fewer than 30 properties. For $70-per-ticket, that averages about $2.50 per garden, so when you look at it that way, it’s well priced. Plus, who can argue with the deserving beneficiaries? Children! The tour raises funds for the Neighborhood Youth Association of Venice, which operates Las Doradas Children’s Center, a licensed childcare facility that serves working families.

Along with tour producer Barbara Baumann and co-chair Adri Butler, I previewed several of the properties a few weeks ago and wrote about four of them for today’s Los Angeles Times.  Due to s-p-a-c-e limitations (surprise!), there is only room for one mini-feature in the print edition. You have to go to the online gallery to get a peek at how the staff photographers captured the three other gardens.

Here are the four gardens we profiled, complete with my original story about each. Take a virtual tour and enjoy a slice of one of the most eclectic spots in Los Angeles.

Get the Venice vibe and borrow these easy design ideas for your interior and exterior spaces

A colorful compound on one of Venice's unusual canal streets

By Debra Prinzing

For all the glossy magazine articles and garden-makeover shows we consume, there’s nothing like a day of garden sight-seeing to inspire the inner-landscaper in all of us.

Featuring nearly 30 properties, today’s legendary Venice Garden & Home Tour is sure to ignite your imagination – and dish up dozens of adaptable ideas for your own yard.

Don’t go empty-handed, though. Bring a camera to capture a cool architectural detail or alluring bloom, a notebook and pencil for jotting down plant names or design resources, and plenty of curiosity. In many of the gardens, owners and designers will be on hand to answer questions and share tips. Consider it affordable design research. Plus, nothing’s more fun than cruising along the canals, walks and side streets of one of L.A.’s most iconic neighborhoods.

We previewed several of the tour’s vintage cottages and sleek cubes (and the gardens, decks and balconies that surround them). Here’s a look at four favorites, including design tips from each.

 Accessorize your garden with salvaged signage

A generous and genial host, Orson Bean

Orson Bean, a veteran actor and longtime resident of Venice’s canal district, has a thing for Americana, especially signage “folk art.” “It’s really just pop culture,” he says. “Advertising has always been part show biz.”

Oversized and retro, Bean’s restaurant and retail signs are well suited for the endless scale of blue sky and sunshine overhead. Their very presence in his garden brings out the storyteller in Bean.

There’s the tale of the neon billboard that’s mounted against a ficus-covered fence in the garden he shares with his wife, actress Alley Mills.

“It’s from the ‘Simple Simon’ rhyme, but it was also the logo for Howard Johnson’s restaurants,” Bean points out. “That sign was as identified as the McDonald’s arches.” Rendered in carnival-colored neon tubes, the once-ubiquitous image of a baker, a boy and his dog promised coffee and a slice of pie to drivers along the Jersey Turnpike.

Orson and Alley's vintage Howard Johnson's sign embellishes a corner of their Venice garden

The neon Ho-Jo is one of several pieces Bean has collected as garden art. He likes the way they personalize the shallow-but-wide landscape, which was created by combining three adjacent cottages and their yards over the years, beginning when he spent $113,000 for the first one in the early 1970s.

Another sign promises “Cash for Cars” and it, too lights up at night. Tucked next to a camellia shrub, a third, its faded paint beginning to chip, advertises a sheet metal shop in the hands of a cartoonish man.

There is a down side to having neon tubes so close to the lawn, where Bean’s seven grandchildren often play ball. Fortunately, he has been able to replace or repair occasional damage. “Only the chef’s hat is original,” Bean says.

Infuse the sound of bubbling water in a few square feet

Barbara Balaban's tiny fountain with broken pottery mosaic trim

There’s not a lot of room in her 20-by-20 foot front yard but Barbara Balaban has maximized every square inch. Instead of a space-gobbling fountain, she created a tiny one, wedged between the walkway and the front steps. The 18-inch water feature uses a re-circulating pump bought at a home center. “I filled the top with river rocks and surrounded the fountain with a border of broken pottery,” says the interior designer and contractor. “I just wanted the sound of water here.”

Balaban moved to her canal cottage after fleeing a traditional Sherman Oaks house destroyed by the 1994 earthquake. Her Venice garden incorporates mosaics of broken pottery salvaged from that disaster: the fountain, a freestanding barbecue-cooking counter and a “welcome mat” at the front gate. “I reconstituted my grandmothers’ and mother’s dishes – and it gives me a big smile to see each piece,” Balaban says.

Tiny and efficient, Barbara's U-shaped eating nook seats six

During a home renovation, she retained the original footprint rather than expanding. “I kept the depth of the property the same because I wanted the garden,” she says. Studio City designers Carol Plotkin and Janet Hoskins helped Balaban rethink the miniscule landscape and incorporate a slim border filled with succulents, Mediterranean plants and whimsical art.

There’s a large glass table (on wheels) that accommodates the parties Balaban and her partner, artist Yaacov Aloni frequently throw. But when they want a quiet Sunday morning brunch, the couple lounges in a U-shaped eating nook installed in a corner of the front porch. “It’s like having a little sofa outdoors,” Balaban says. “We can sit here and be a little secluded from passersby.”

Pave the indoor and outdoor spaces with the same flooring material

Lenny Steinberg's tiled, open-air terrace overlooks the Pacific Ocean

A floor covered in sultry blue-green stone leads your eyes through the soaring, loft-like space, through a 17-foot opening in a retractable glass wall and beyond the outdoor terrace, until they rest on the endless seascape.

“The stones reflect the constant color of the ocean,” say owner Lenny Steinberg of her North Carolina bluestone floor. “Although that seems to change according to the light.”

When Steinberg, a furniture and architectural designer, renovated the former duplex into a single, über-contemporary home on Ocean Front Walk, she wanted to bring the ocean indoors. She inherited a palette of irregular-shaped bluestone after a friend’s patio project fell through.

Lenny designed her chaises with distressed wood and modern lines - perfect for the rooftop garden

“It was the perfect solution for my floor, although I ended up calling all over North Carolina to get more of it,” Steinberg says. Even though the material, a hard slate, is usually installed randomly, the designer spent hours choosing the position of each stone to create a subtle pattern. “I like to think of it as a river running out to the sea,” she says.

The sea metaphor (and the bluestone) continues on the floor of the small, angled terrace that Steinberg designed to cantilever beyond the glass wall. The space serves as the intimate outdoor living room, with views of the palm trees, walkway and pier. The dark teal stone has endured intense sun and saltwater beautifully, says its owner. “If it has any nicks, I just take a little steel wool to it,” Steinberg says. “I wish everything else was as durable.”

 Practice sustainable design by recycling found objects and allowing the garden to evolve over time (rushing is not allowed here)

Tim Rudnick rings his hanging cymbal-as-doorbell

Stepping through the opening in the ivy-clad fence surrounding Tim and Robin Rudnick’s home and garden, it’s possible to lose all track of time. In fact, it seems as if Tim Rudnick, an architectural designer and artist, has turned back the clock to an earlier Venice. “I like the old, tattered hippy cottage that we lived in and raised our kids – where everyone hung out on the old porch,” he says.

Circa 1913, the summer bungalow originally faced Venice’s Aldebaran Canal (now Market Street). The Rudnicks purchased it in 1984, subsequently modernizing the interior and adding an L-shaped Arts-and-Crafts style addition. The old and new portions of the family compound now embrace an intentionally tangled and untamed landscape, also of Rudnick’s design.

“I had this beautiful photograph of a Buddhist garden in Japan and I imagined our yard by looking at it,” Rudnick says. “I loved the idea that like a Japanese garden, you feel like you’re entering another world when you go through the gate.”

Lush and semi-wild, the Venice garden of Tim and Robin Rudnick

A naturalistic pond, measuring about 25-feet across, occupies the center of the garden. Rudnick used the excavated dirt to build a mounded knoll between the pond and a wraparound deck. He landscaped the water’s edge with heirloom irises once grown by his mother, native Pacific coast irises and ferns.

Several mature trees, planted as seedlings nearly 40 years ago, now tower above the rooftops: a coral tree, an olive, and four eucalyptuses. “The leafy trees give us the feeling of real separation,” he says.

Visitors announce their arrival by striking a mallet on two bronze disks, suspended from the twining branches of the coral tree. Rudnick made one from the base of a salvaged clothing store fixture; the other is a recycled cymbal. He prefers their music to a regular doorbell: “One has a very resonant sound and it goes on for 15 minutes; the other makes a beautiful, contrasting sound.”

 

 

Last week, I toured the 3/4-acre landscape owned by Cheryl Bode and Robin Colman, a lavish garden developed over the past 10 years in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Tomorrow, April 26th, they are generously sharing their lush and serene property as one of six private, residential landscapes on the Altadena Garden Conservancy Tour.

My story, “Botanical bounty in Altadena,” about Cheryl and Robin’s abundant landscape, appears in today’s edition of the Los Angeles Times.

Since we had to cut the original piece due to space, I have included the full story below.

 

Take a virtual tour through this web gallery of photos from my visit:

Here is my original story. Enjoy a peek into the lives of two who are passionate about the place they possess:

By Debra Prinzing

Ten years ago, Cheryl Bode and Robin Colman discovered the house and garden they soon called Casa dos Mujeres (House of Two Women).

Prompted by the desire for more space as they combined their individual households, the two Pasadena residents considered buying in nearby Altadena, a village in unincorporated Los Angeles County wedged between Pasadena and the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

“Cheryl went to Altadena on a lark with our real estate agent,” Robin recalls. “This house was in terrible shape, but part of it really captivated her.” Later, when Cheryl returned with her partner in tow, she couldn’t help jumping up and down with happiness when Robin pronounced: “I could live here.”

READ MORE…

“A Retro Future,” my feature article in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times HOME section features a breathtakingly perfect re-do of a one-story California ranch house in La Canada-Flintridge.

It is owned by Oscar-nominated Disney producer Don Hahn, an infectiously-friendly Renaissance man, and his equally talented wife Denise Hahn.

That the two are artists explains in large part why their renovation was so successful (Don and Denise are plein air  Western landscape painters and collectors).

To transform the vintage ranch house, they collaborated with architect Georgie Kajer and interior designer Jamie Bush, creating a dream-team of like-minded talents.

The secret to this project’s success is the clever editing of the original spaces. There was no reason to tear this house down and erect a McMansion; no reason to add a second story. The Hahns wanted to honor the architecture, as Denise explains: “I guess we’re on track with baby boomers who want to live in the houses they grew up in.”

The re-design removed some interior walls to create an open floor plan. As a result, the central space feels open, welcoming and loft-like. Look up and the once scary “cottage cheese” dropped ceiling has been reincarnated with awesome vaulted lines, clad in Douglas fir. Look down and the new amber-toned terrazzo floor unifies the entire house (Don loves that its composition includes broken beer glass and bits of mother-of-pearl). The palette of golds, greens and reds further unifies the spaces; the colors are enhanced or subdued depending on the room, but each room speaks to the adjacent one – creating an overall mellowness that I found appealing.

I learned so much reporting and writing this piece, thanks to the generosity of the homeowners and the designers. The home’s architecture has its roots in classic California ranch house design (no surprise to learn that Don, Denise, Jamie and Georgie all mentioned Cliff May’s iconic modern ranch houses of the 1950s). It is a truly modern residence that functions as a perfect environment for the Hahn family, including a teenage daughter and two active dogs.

A final note: Of course, I was drawn to the outdoor spaces, including the vintage cabana, pool-side (seen above). It is a stylish shelter in the garden. Rather than demo it and start over, Jamie recommended updating it with   persimmon accents, wide-striped draperies that enclose the space as an outdoor dressing room, and sculptural, modern furniture. It’s hip, and it’s inviting.

And thanks, of course, goes to my editor Craig Nakano, for the assignment. The final product was a joy to see in print (and online).

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.”