{"id":72420,"date":"2016-05-03T11:47:11","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T15:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=72420"},"modified":"2016-05-03T11:47:11","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T15:47:11","slug":"a-garden-by-urbafloria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=72420","title":{"rendered":"a garden by Urbafloria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><big>It&#8217;s a rare opportunity for me to be able to provide before-after photos of a dramatic garden transformation<br \/>\nGarden designer Jacky Surber of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbafloria.com\">Urbafloria<\/a> sent me this &#8220;before&#8221; photo after touring this garden on the Greater Los Angeles <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apld.org\/\">APLD<\/a> Garden Tour 4\/17\/16.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/apldtourapril2016\/IMG_4018.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_4018.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With the kids grown and the backyard no longer needed for their activities, it lost its importance in the family universe and looked like this for a while.<br \/>\n(There&#8217;s a very nice desert tortoise that lives in that igloo against the fence.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/apldtourapril2016\/1-_MG_4360.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 1-_MG_4360.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And now, garden despair happily averted.<\/p>\n<p><\/center><br \/>\nThis tour impressed me on many levels, one of which was the amazing results possible when there is a strong bond of trust between designer and client.<br \/>\nLiving day in and out with this barren lunarscape, the owner still managed to dream big.  She asked the designer to transform it into a small piece of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arlingtongardeninpasadena.org\/what-is-arlington-garden\/\">Arlington Garden<\/a> in Pasadena, a strolling, dry garden of seasonal sights and sounds filled with California natives and mediterranean climate-appropriate plants.  And within that alchemical bond that can sometimes &#8212; not always &#8212; form between designer and client, Jacky grasped her longing and made manifest that vision.  The owner said she still walks her garden in wide-eyed wonder, in a &#8220;pinch me, I&#8217;m dreaming&#8221; state.<\/p>\n<p>I grabbed just this one photo before racing off to other gardens on the tour.  Several seating and napping areas are tucked in throughout the garden, and a small grove of the Catalina Ironwood, Lyonothamnus floribundus, are planted beyond the rose arch.  If I remember correctly, the rose is &#8216;Social Climber.&#8217;<br \/>\nRest assured, the desert tortoise is still there, a little bleary-eyed coming off of winter hibernation, but he tore into his first meal of lettuce with gusto.<\/p>\n<p>Notes on this garden from the tour:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>This backyard garden was inspired by the client&#8217;s love of the Arlington Garden in Pasadena.  The garden features numerous seating nooks, an informal decomposed granite bocce ball court, as well as a mix of natives and other climate-appropriate plants. The main design challenge was remediating a yard that flooded every time it rained.  The design solution was to create a large rain garden that is working fabulously!  Planted in late 2014, the garden is growing in nicely and a small front yard was also recently installed<\/em>.&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/big><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a rare opportunity for me to be able to provide before-after photos of a dramatic garden transformation Garden designer Jacky Surber of Urbafloria sent me this &#8220;before&#8221; photo after touring this garden on the Greater Los Angeles APLD Garden &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=72420\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[551],"tags":[4498,973,4499,503,1938,4500],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-iQ4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72420"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72420"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72481,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72420\/revisions\/72481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}