Before & After - a Carmel Valley garden - Brief Article

Sunset, Sept, 2001 by Kathleen N. Brenzel

Beauty and the beast

This Carmel Valley garden cloaked a tough slope with color

* Color is everywhere you look in Penny Wood's garden in Carmel Valley, California. Red wicker chairs and a brilliant cobalt blue birdbath add punch to the tangle of bright perennials that edges the back of her house. Lemon yellow chairs with blue cushions add cheerful notes on the deck. And throughout the garden, clusters of beautiful blooms come and go with the seasons--irises, lilacs, and peonies in spring, roses and hydrangeas in summer, and a host of perennials in fall. The effect is joyous and casual, and just what Wood wanted. "I love color, chaos, and commotion," she says.

But creating this garden on a beast of a slope took vision. Wood describes the area as "1 acre plunging straight downhill"--it is also sunny, west-facing, and buffeted by winds.

For help, Wood called on landscape designers Elaine and Mark Schlegel, who built a 10-foot-tall retaining wall about 30 feet downhill from the house and another one not far from the back of the house. Behind the walls, they installed a system of drainpipes and a layer of crushed rock to enhance drainage. Then they backfilled with layered soil (half native soil, half a quality topsoil mix). On the sides of the house, they used railroad ties to create planting beds.

"The slope is a tapestry of shades and textures," says Mark Schlegel. Plants chosen for drought tolerance as well as color thrive here, including catmint (Nepeta 'Blue Wonder'), ceanothus, lychnis, penstemon, purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), rockrose (Cistus), rosemary, and star jasmine. And it's always evolving, as Wood continues to plant fresh finds. She doesn't plan by color schemes. "I wing it," she says. "It all falls into place."

Lessons in color

INDULGE THE SENSES. Let tough plants carry the show, but leave room near the house for treasured plants that may need more water or care. "I wanted things I'd grown up with--hollyhocks, irises, lilacs, peonies," says Wood, who now grows some 14 lilac bushes and lots of roses for fragrance. Workhorses like Mexican bush sage and Australian tea tree (Leptospermum laevigatum)--"a superb privacy screen," says Mark Schlegel--grow near the garden's periphery.

BRIDGE THE COLOR GAP WITH ACCESSORIES. "When I began, the garden was so minimal that color was scarce," Wood recalls. The chairs and other accessories added bursts of color until the flowers grew and filled in around them.