Okay, I admit I’m chasing the goal of 10,000 steps a day. Chasing it all over my hometown. And it’s amazing how familiar streets by car can turn up all sorts of unfamiliar scenes by foot. So this is technically a walkby, not a driveby, or possibly a hybrid of the two — I might have initially caught that searing blur of kangaroo paws when doing errands by car then went back to investigate on foot. My old standby, a form of pale yellow Anigozanthos flavidus, is blooming as strong as ever in my garden, but the rusty oranges and egg-yolk yellow forms have died out as the back garden grows shadier. This is one of the strongest, most vibrant displays I’ve seen locally.
See that snippet of low white picket fence? That’s a clue to how this front garden accomplishes depth and scope beyond its actual footprint — because whether by design or serendipity, it’s borrowing the view from the front garden next-door that belongs to that grey, black-trimmed house with the enviable casement windows.
From this view, the garden is luxuriously deep, building up mounding textures and spikes, backed by tall kangaroo paws and leonotis blooming like solar flares against that cool blue haze of a sprawling eucalyptus — a borrowed but nonetheless spectacular backdrop. In actuality, the gum tree takes up most of that neighbor’s front garden, as seen below.
limbed up to show that warm red trunk as is often done with manzanitas — this is what can happen when you whole-heartedly commit to a tree. You work around it. I should know. Half of my own front garden is taken up by a similarly sprawling Acacia podalyrifolia where agaves and succulents used to grow. And then there’s the issue of my back garden becoming too shady for kangaroo paws…what first appeared from the car to be a cut-leaf acacia, it’s more likely a eucalyptus sporting juvenile growth from extensive pruning. (Might be Eucalyptus pulverulenta.) The kangaroo paws and leonotis bloom in both gardens. Cooperation or competition? Just another example of how plantings often go viral in a neighborhood.both houses really know how to cover the ground, keeping shapes in scale. Little blue flowers from Convolvulus sabatius, the Ground Morning Gloryback to the shared view — salvias, lantana, golden coleonema, kangaroo paws, leonotis and agavesque yuccas
Two gardens, two houses, but I only took photos of this house because I love how it sits in the landscape, snugged into the view from the neighbor’s garden. (And privacy reasons too — the owner of the house belonging to the foreground garden was puttering outside.)
Mitch’s note to me: These are the images from Kelly’s house call — she’s such a delight — thank you for producing this! I was super early and drove by her place on my way to Market Hall for coffee just to see the angle of the sun and there she was out front in the yard deadheading and prepping and I was hit by a pang of guilt that she had taken time from Sunday with her family to create a photo-friendly fantasy for me, but then I saw her dog and her husband right behind her and remembered that we are visual people and that there’s nothing better than separating delight from chaos in your own space. I hope she wasn’t exhausted! Anyway, she threw me into her contractor truck and we drove across Oakland to see her projects and it was such a blast. She has more and larger scale work in Atherton and Hillsborough on the peninsula that we made plans to see next time I’m shooting in the Bay — so much fun — best, M
Kelly in her converted attic workshop
I’ve met Kelly a couple times on garden tours and blogger meetups, including the one she helped organize in San Francisco a few years ago, but to shoot her an email asking if she could give Mitch a tour of some gardens to photograph with just three days’ notice was a bit presumptuous, to say the least. That she said yes, after a busy workweek, says everything about Kelly’s generosity and steadfast support of garden culture. I don’t want to think about what exploiting that generosity says about me other than being mad about plants and gardens can make one appear just a tad pushy from time to time — which Kelly graciously chose to ignore because she completely understands. She is just the best.
I love that she allowed Mitch access to her work space as well, which is the converted attic of her home in the Broadway Terrace neighborhood of Oakland, California, that she shares with her husband Jay, their son Parker, and a kinetic bundle of black and white patches named Bessie.
the sometimes breezy attic necessitates a a collection of objects for paperweights to anchor design planstalismanic paperweights ready for duty
But let’s step outside to check out the kind of detailed planting that’s she’s known for, in sun or shade, for spaces large or small.
Kelly and a neighbor cooperate with borrowed views/walkways
At her own home, Kelly has cleverly persuaded a neighbor to pool their adjoining narrow side yards, ending up with a multi-interest space that is much more than the sum of its parts. In this particular instance, that maxim about good fences making good neighbors would only result in two rather forlorn narrow strips instead of these warm and welcoming shared walkways filled with ceramics and striking plants.
Bessie chose not to sit for her portrait, she had way too much to do welcoming visitors
And about these striking plants. Somehow, despite a busy design practice and an overflowing household, Kelly has managed to steadily inch forward to becoming a landscape architect and is now very near completion. Judging by her immaculate workspace and home garden — remember the minimal to no prep time for this visit? — this is one organized woman. I think it’s fairly well established that landscape architects do not routinely begin their training with an emphasis on plants first. Kelly’s design practice is built on a bedrock of a deep knowledge of plants and a love for ferreting out the most gorgeous yet site-appropriate choices for her projects. Her background includes a stint at the beloved Bay Area nursery for all that’s rare and wonderful in the plant world, Annie’s Annuals in Richmond.
a cussonia peeks around the corner
Even though the space available at home to garden is minimal, this is not a case of the cobbler’s children having no shoes. Kelly has exploited and polished every inch of available space. If you happen to be garden poor as far as physical space, it helps that your designer has dealt with these same issues as well and transcended them beautifully.
Kelly says they can pass cocktails through the open window
These narrow strips surrounding homes often get short shrift, design-wise, or are at best neatly hardscaped. Here Kelly methodically builds up layers with plants — ground covers, perennials, shrubs and even small trees. The cooling effects of plants and their ability to capture carbon make prioritizing their inclusion essential in even the smallest of urban gardens. And this kind of layered planting is incredibly bird friendly, as I often observe in my own garden, offering gradations of cover and shelter. That rocky pool of water at the base of the tree is a wonderful touch as a round, reflective surface in the design as well as a source of water for small creatures.
aspidistra, ozothamnus against the fence — a narrow side yard thoughtfully planted. And even the smallest spaces need trees for cooling as well as wildlife habitat — “Carefully positioned trees can save up to 25% of the energy a typical household uses.” U.S. Dept. of Energy
Great style paired with an encyclopedic knowledge of plants makes for very sexy gardens, and that is a hallmark of Kelly’s designs.
possibly the bromeliad Quesnelia ‘Tim Plowman’Fuchsia bolivianaYucca ‘Blue Boy’
Even on such short notice, Kelly was able to arrange to show Mitch a client’s garden in her neighborhood and tour if not photograph some of her other work. The nearby garden designed by Kelly was a crisp, cleanly organized space to relax and dine outdoors filled with beautiful plants — for screening, shading, for forgetting everything else while being utterly absorbed in their shadows, movement, patterns and forms.
And, again, the cooling effects of plant-centric gardens are often a secondary consideration to aesthetics for the general public, but such effects are very real and becoming increasingly more important as cities grow warmer. Kelly has skillfully layered in here dry garden-appropriate succulents and shrubs that will also be low care for the client.
Tetrapanax papyrifer ‘Steroidal Giant’Soft, textural, almost cuddly, the coastal woolybush, Adenanthos sericeus, near the bottom of the stairs is a jewel of a shrub for the dry garden
Kelly, thank you so much for letting us drop in on you! We had a wonderful visit and can’t wait to see more of your stunning garden designs.
I had a little moment with this smoke bush and eremurus in the Carol & Randall Shinn garden on the recent bloggers’ tour of Colorado gardens. Hitting notes bright and deep, still in that incipient sparkle stage, buds concentrated and full of promise, not yet dissipated. Newborn fresh tints of blue-green, pale yellow, deep burgundy. Luminous spires against soft dark mounds of leaves with a flash of gold glitter from the still-hard buds that will soon transform into puffs of this tree’s eponymous smoke.
I have even less impulse control when plant shopping now because…summer. Of the four seasons, summer seems to be the one that we’re constantly admonished to savor to its fullest or risk being filled with inconsolable regret. And you won’t get any argument from me. It can be hot, dry, and miserable, but since about 5 years of age the season has become baked into us as inseparable from adventures, vacations, vagabonding, daydreaming, and overall freedom from boring routines. Liberación! You can’t fight that kind of hardwiring.
So when I sensed a need for a few more Sesleria ‘Campo Azul,’ because a few more of this grass are always needed, off I went to the local nursery, where I ran smack into Agapanthus ‘Indigo Frost’ and its seven swaying bloom stalks. It was definitely playing the summer card. Shamelessly playing it.
I see agapanthus all over town in summer and have never particularly desired to possess it for my garden. I’ve tried some dark, dark blues and some golden-leaved variegates as occasional novelties. But this ‘Indigo Frost’ number seemed to be a purpose-built messenger for summer: Psst, you know this summer will never come again, right? Sure, I’m a little OTT, but it’s summer! Subtlety is for losers! So what are you waiting for!?
There’s the Sesleria ‘Campo Azul’ in the foreground. A Salvia ‘Love and Wishes’ filled that pot winter and spring and needed a cutback for rebloom. But gardening is a fluid thing. A light cutback inexplicably turns into yanking the entire plant out of the pot and instantly deciding to move on to something else. Hmmm, what could it be? Oh, yes, the bromeliad just brought home from Ray’s plant sale. I’ll drop that in the pot, shove the pot a few feet this way, plant the base of it up with more sesleria, make a quick dash to the nursery to purchase said sesleria — oh, and a bicolor agapanthus too. As I say, it’s a fluid process.
And as far as losing Salvia ‘Love and Wishes,’ a great salvia btw, I’ve got a much stronger bond with the willowy, smaller-flowered Salvia chiapensis. Comparing the leaves of the two, I’ll always prefer chiapensis.
I’ve been regularly deep watering the eastern boundary cypresses, the indispensable privacy workhorses of the garden, but apparently not so much the rest of the garden other than containers. This area under the tetrapanax’s canopy was spitless dry, not easy conditions to dig a hole for a 3-gallon agapanthus. (The dry conditions and increasing shade were no doubt to blame for the poor show this year of the big clump of kangaroo paws, Anigozanthos ‘Tequila Sunrise’ nearby, which was also dug up.) After planting I must have stood watering the area in for a solid half hour. Slow hand watering — another of summer’s pleasures.
Agapanthus ‘Indigo Frost’ came bearing the Sunset Western Garden tag:
Feature: Multiple spikes of large, bicolor, white and blue flowers
USDA Zones: Hardy to 10°F – 20°F USDA Zones 8-10
Sunset Zones: 4-9, 12-21 (I’m technically in zone 24)
Special Features: Attracts Pollinators, Clumping Habit, Cut Flowers, Disease / Pest Resistance, Heat Tolerance, Upright Habit
Since returning on Monday, I haven’t been able to shake Colorado from my mind. It’s a landscape that leaves you with a visual hangover, so this post will be hair of the dog, blog style, while the visit is still fresh and even my case of chapped lips lingers from the thin Rocky Mountain air.
I have quite a history with commercial greenhouses. There was a large, abandoned greenhouse at the end of my cul-de-sac’d street, the mesh netting detached in places from the rickety structure and flapping in the breeze. Through the gap in the mesh is how my nosy, grade-school self found a way in. Once inside, clearly trespassing, I was mesmerized by the sights, the smells, the few plants remaining, the absolute quiet, and the tracery of the structure itself, which despite its frailty seemed capable of holding light and shadow captive. And then there’s the fact that I was trespassing and getting away with it, always a bonus with a Catholic school kid. Childhood lays down a roadmap that’s carelessly tossed under the front seat as you drive away. (Growing up in Los Angeles, the metaphor will be cars.) Which is just as well, since it’s mostly illegible, offers no clear way forward, and is only able to confirm a destination once you’ve already arrived. But because of that roadmap, I brake for greenhouses.
I asked if the bare-root euphorbia and cactus were for sale — nope.
With that fading roadmap rustling under the seat, I continue to be mesmerized by its roadside attractions — growth, light, shadow, stepping into strange, transformative places. Which is why I have hundreds of photos of the greenhouses at Rancho Soledad Nursery from a visit last month.
In early April, as I was leaving a garden on the Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden tour, I noted a hand-lettered “plant sale” sign in the neighborhood and swung around to have a look.
I posted a photo of the garden attached to the plant sale to Instagram, to which garden designer Ivette Soler exclaimed “RAY VALENTINE!” I had been given a business card on the day of the plant sale but hadn’t checked the name yet. Indeed, it was the garden of Raymond Valentine, owner of Maintaining Mother Earth, “a full service landscape and maintenance company, owned and operated by Ray Valentine, License #818049-C27.”
Documenting my enthusiasm for gardens seen on foot or driving through Los Angeles neighborhoods has migrated to Instagram, which seems more suited to a quick visual blast without background information on how such landscapes came to be. But I’m making an exception for these two beauties, which happen to be directly across the street from each other in the Hancock Park neighborhood. The intelligent interplay of house and garden, the crisp outlines and massing of plants alternating with negative space, strong verticals, all done with an aim of limited supplemental irrigation, not to mention the amazing stonework in one and tilework in the other — I was so smitten I had to go back and get some photos for the blog. And do you think I got enough photos of that multi-trunked Yucca rostrata? Enjoy!
White Point Nature Preserve in San Pedro, CA is a remarkable gift of public open space nestled into 100 acres of bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It’s a landscape that visibly bears the marks of tumultuous human endeavors spanning at least the last two centuries, including the concrete and *rusting defenses built to prevent military invasion. Walking its paths, the landscape provokes insistent questions impossible to ignore like: How in heck did all this prime coastal Southern Californian real estate with a front-seat view of Catalina Island escape developers’ interest to become set aside for hiking trails and rebuilding native plant and wildlife communities?
Not a few miles up the coast there are swanky resorts and a famously branded golf course, but here at WPNP it’s been granted permission to slowly find its way back to coastal bluff scrub. How did this happen? I’ll tell you what I know. My credentials? I’m an old Pedro girl myself (btw “Pedro” is pronounced by the locals with a long “e”), and my brothers and cousins regularly surfed Royal Palms just across the road from WPNP. And when Marty told me the story of the wreck of the Dominator off nearby Rocky Point, sailing us in as close as safety and the tides allowed to inspect its *rusting hulk, is probably when I knew I’d marry him. And I have a thing for disturbed places whose very existence poses thought-provoking questions about land use. (*And apparently I’m also drawn to stories with lots of rust.)
“The 102-acre White Point property was transferred to the City of Los Angeles in 1978, by means of a quit claim deed from the Secretary of the Interior for ‘perpetual use as and for public park and recreation purposes.'” Master Plan for the White Point Nature Preserve
“The White Point site holds significant cultural resources mirroring California’s rich history. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo first encountered the indigenous inhabitants, the Gabrielinos, in 1542. Spanish colonization of the area began in 1769, and in 1827, the Sepulveda family was given White Point as part of the vast Rancho de Los Palos Verdes land grant. The Sepulvedas used the land for grazing cattle. In 1899, Japanese immigrants leased the land and established an abalone fishery, a beachfront resort and later, farmed the area. During WWII, White Point was taken by the Federal government and incorporated into the Coastal Defense system of Fort MacArthur.” — Master Plan for the White Point Nature Preserve, Pages 63-64
WPNP was included in the Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour in 2018, a very exciting piece of news that I frustratingly couldn’t act on at the time since an AGO pop-up event was planned for the same day. But it seemed so fitting and gratifying to me that the site of this former military installation overlooking the Pacific Ocean was still furthering worthwhile, non-military, post-Cold War era pursuits, and I couldn’t wait to visit this latest worthy iteration involving native plants. Our young family had benefited immeasurably from this site when one of the former barracks was transformed into a Montessori preschool with a sleepy rural ambience that Mitch attended half days from 1986-88 when I worked from home.
Mitch still takes his friends to visit White Point– photo by MB Maher
San Pedro has its own rough, land’s end feel to it, and White Point pushes that to a Bronte-esque apotheosis. That it appeared to be semi-forgotten only added to its allure. Artists’ studios and a hostel also found a home here, but at the time it felt like we had the mostly deserted fort to ourselves — just us, some chickens and rabbits, about a dozen free-range preschoolers, and row after row of empty barracks. In my burnished memory, the rickety playground fence draped in passionflower vines seemed to be continually enveloped in clouds of butterflies.
“White Point is a highly disturbed parcel of land comprised of large open field areas with limited road access to several buildings, foundations and underground structures. All vegetation habitats have been exposed to varying degrees of anthropogenic disturbances. Prior to these man-made alterations to the area, the land was most likely composed of coastal sage scrub (CSS), coastal bluff scrub and native grassland plant communities. At present, the native habitat has been replaced almost completely by annual non-native grassland and disturbed ruderal vegetation with planted ornamental trees scattered throughout the site. Remnants of coastal sage scrub vegetation can be found on the site in the form of small patches of sage scrub shrubs and individual CSS plants. ” Master Plan for the White Point Nature Preserve
Even though we left San Pedro in 1989 (buying a house here was out of our price range), this particular area had been such a beloved feature of our daily lives that I didn’t even check for an address when I raced up to visit the nature preserve the first chance I got — and then couldn’t find it. After that mortifying experience of driving around and around a very familiar area and not being able to locate a large green building with red trim and clear signage, I didn’t try again for a year.
Last week I resolved to give it another go and, humbled, this time checked for an address: 1600 W Paseo Del Mar, San Pedro, CA 90731. In 2018 I had entered the “upper reservation” from Gaffey Street, just as I always did five days a week so many years ago. I later learned that recent landslides in 2011 stemming from an unknown source of groundwater cut off WPNP from that access. (Groundwater issues aside, this is a notorious geologically active area due to the Palos Verdes Fault. The road along the coast seems to have new hollows and twists every time we go, turning into an especially rollicking rollercoaster near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wayfarers Chapel, and that newish golf course had some trouble with its greens falling down the cliffs into the ocean too.)
The Master Plan for the White Point Nature Preserve, published in August 2001, which I’m freely quoting from for this post, answered a lot of my questions. Because I know this area a bit, I had some theories as to its current status, but after we left San Pedro in 1989 I lost track of the chain of custody of the land. Roughly, it goes like this: Home to the Gabrielino Indians, grabbed by the Spanish who leased it to Japanese fisherman, who lost the lease when they were sent to WWII internment camps and the military took over the land, later deeded by the Secretary of the Interior to the City of Los Angeles in 1978, which stipulated the area “be used for coastal open space retention, habitat restoration, passive recreation and historical preservation” in 2000. Managed in partnership with the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, landscape restoration plantings commenced around 2001.
“The proposed project is also consistent with the Natural Community Conservation Program (NCCP). The NCCP was initiated by the California Department of Fish and Game in order to streamline and coordinate development and preservation of habitat, especially coastal sage scrub and related plant communities. The program is established by the Natural Conservation Planning Act of 1991 (Fish and Game Code Section 2800.) The intent of this program is to encourage cooperation among landowners and developers, conservationists and regulatory agencies to protect long-term viable populations of California’s native plants and animals in their natural habitats and in landscape units which are large enough to ensure their continued existence. The NCCP Planning Agreement identifies six target species for the Rancho Palos Verdes planning area: California gnatcatcher, cactus wren, San Diego horned lizard, Palos Verdes blue butterfly, El Segundo blue butterfly and a plant, the bright-green dudleya or live forever.”
exotic plants mingle with natives like Salvia leucophylla and dudleyarusted hatch to underground military infrastructure overgrown with mustard, Brassica nigra
Further out from the education center the remnants of former military operations become more prominent, and aging hardscape covers some of the ground.
non-native garland daisy (Chrysanthemum coronarium)“Among the most invasive non-native herbs of White Point are fennel, garland daisy, mustards, giant reed and ice plant.” Catalina Island in the distancephoto by MB Maher of nearby military fortifications
If you like roaming through “anthropogenically disturbed” landscapes that visibly spill their layers of historical secrets, a landscape interrupted but not beaten, White Point has your number too. Dogs on leash are welcome. A native vervain I discovered in bloom on my hike, Verbena lasiostachys, was available at their plant sale I happened to luck into, which is held the second Saturday of every month.
