01 · Canopy
Shade you can sit under
Fruitless olives, king palms and coral trees set the ceiling of the garden. Placed for afternoon shade on the terrace and to frame, never block, the view.
Chapter 02 / 04
Landscape
a garden for the coast.
Gardens, pools, terraces and lighting that feel like the tropics and live like the coast: lush all year, on a fraction of the water.
Our approach
We design the garden at the same table as the house, so every window has something to look at and every room has somewhere to step out to.
- 5
- Layers in every garden: canopy, structure, ground, water, light
- Drip
- Irrigation and rain capture in every planting bed
- Every bed
- Drawn on the planting, irrigation and lighting plans your builder works from
Planting plan · Illustrative demo garden, La Jolla
The plan
Every plant has a job.
We draw the garden like architecture: canopy for shade, structure for silhouette, drifts for texture, and light for the evening. Hover a layer to see where it lives.
The palette
Tropical in feeling, coastal in habit.
Plants that thrive in San Diego’s salt air and dry summers, chosen for form first and flowers second. Water need shown on a three-drop scale.
01
Strelitzia reginae
Bird of paradise
Tropical signature
02
Agave attenuata
Fox-tail agave
Soft sculpture
Olea europaea ‘Swan Hill’
Fruitless olive
Silver canopy
04
Bougainvillea ‘Barbara Karst’
Bougainvillea
Colour on white walls
Archontophoenix cunninghamiana
King palm
Height and shade
06
Agave americana ‘Variegata’
Variegated century plant
Gravel garden accent
07
Yucca & agave
Sculptural succulents
Silhouette against limewash
Five layers
A garden is built like a house.
01 / 05 · Canopy
02 · Structure
Silhouettes against the wall
Yucca, aloe and agave are the garden’s sculpture: bold shapes that read from inside the house and cast sharp shadows on limewashed walls.
03 · Ground
Gravel, stone and drifts
Decomposed granite paths, stone steps and drifts of low succulents. Permeable surfaces let winter rain soak in instead of running off.
04 · Water
Pools, runnels and reflection
Pools sited for the evening sun, quiet runnels by the door, and still water that doubles the sky. Every feature is recirculating and sized to its setting.
05 · Light
A second garden at night
Warm, low lighting picks out trunks, steps and water so the garden carries on after dark, without lighting up the sky.
Before & after
Drag to see the garden arrive.
Before on the left, after on the right. Drag the line to compare, or see every transformation on the before and after page.
After dark
The garden carries on after sunset: low, warm light on trunks, steps and water, never on the sky.
Next · Chapter 03
Visualization
see it before it is built.
Limited commissions each year
Let’s design
what comes next.
Begin with a private consultation, on your site or in the studio. We’ll walk the land, listen, and show you what’s possible.