Green Inches

Bamboo Lane

It is as much a part of his daily ritual as practicing the martial arts he teaches at the Aikido Center of Los Angeles. Every day at about 4 p.m. Kensho Furuya washes down the narrow loading dock of the 100-plus-year-old sugar warehouse that he has converted into his samurai dojo. He’s also transformed the dock itself with bamboo architectural elements, river rocks and lush foliage.

When his students arrive, he says, “the leaves and stones are wet and clean, creating a sense of calm--like walking in the mountains by a stream.” The garden is a physically and mentally refreshing transitional space “to welcome the guest from the outside world to the school.”

Furuya’s goal was to emulate Kyoto-style gardens “that bring you closer to nature.” At just 6 feet wide, the connection is inevitable. Emerald ferns, spider plants, azaleas and impatiens thrive in the shadow of nandina, towering bamboo, pomegranate and Ficus benjamina. Asian ceramics and black plastic nursery pots share space with redwood planters--”humble materials,” Furuya explains.

Visitors enter under a Japanese sign that announces Furuya’s dojo as the Retreat of the Untalented One. Posts, crossbeams and small ornamental gates define the space. Paving stones made of concrete and pebbles create a slender walkway, bordered by polished rocks “representing a stream” and leading to a circular stone that “stands for completion,” says Furuya. “It makes people more aware of their feet, and symbolizes that it is a narrow path to success.”

A Los Angeles native, Furuya was an early settler in the downtown Arts District. “In 1984 it was just dirt and asphalt, and when I added this greenery residents protested, saying it didn’t look downtown.” Now the area is filled with small gardens. “Occasionally I will come out to putter and find people standing in the garden,” Furuya says. “I wonder, ‘Who is that?’ Sometimes it’s a Japanese person who is homesick, sometimes it is a commuter from Orange County who just wants a moment of peace.”

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Garden in the Sky

For 15 years, the closest Titia Estes got to gardening in the post-World War II factory space she shared with her husband was watering her indoor plants. When the fifth-floor rooftop unit in their building became available, moving was a no-brainer. “I wanted to walk out of my cement box and grow something,” she says.

There was also the view: a magnificent close-up vista of the downtown L.A. skyline, aglow in the late-afternoon sunsets. Never mind that the rooftop resembled a junkyard filled with scrap metal, wood and tile. Estes was determined to create her own urban Eden.

Using planter boxes just 12 inches deep, Estes has raised a low-maintenance, water-conserving crop of Mexican fan palms and stands of jade plants, brightened by vibrant purple-flowering ice plants and drilled bamboo poles stuffed with echeveria and aeonium. A tub, left in the loft by previous tenants, became an outdoor water feature surrounded by bits of broken marble found on the roof. Machine shop tables and benches keep the reclaimed rooftop true to its industrial roots.

For color, Estes planted sod flats with clumps of sunshine-colored gazania as well as potted perennial geraniums and lavender. Banana, ficus, bougainvillea, mandevilla and flowering bower vines crawl out of containers and over metal railings that surround a teak dining table. “I wouldn’t exactly call myself a self-taught gardener,” she says. “I consult the Sunset garden manual, but otherwise I just go for it and see what grows.”

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Alley Craft

Lonnie C. Blanchard III doesn’t judge things by first appearances. When the art-collecting attorney and real estate investor bought a seen-better-days building on a Chinatown side street in 2002, he transformed it into a law office that looks more like a contemporary gallery.

Matching his stylish loft conversion with an equally cool garden would, however, require vision. Five businesses and a parking spot formed the boundaries of Blanchard’s backyard--a 500-square-foot area he recalls as “a dirty, old nasty alley with limited light and space.”

Blanchard took a bougainvillea leaf to Home Depot to blend color-matched paint. With his neighbors’ blessings, he painted the two-story courtyard walls “this happy green that instantly made the space feel brighter and cooler,” he says. So did a minimalist rectangular goldfish pond with a fountain that Blanchard designed and painted green.

When it came to plants, Blanchard opted for those with presence and fragrance. Oversized terra-cotta pots hold giant birds of paradise for height, “classically California” bougainvillea for its wild shape and color, and honeysuckle “for its sweet, gardenia-like fragrance and because I love the way vines look covering industrial surfaces.”

Though the garden could work easily for meetings, Blanchard and his colleagues tend to use it for their own Zen moments. “I’ve worked in traditional office buildings all my life,” he explains. “To be able to go outside for air, shut my eyes and feel sunshine on my face is a great way to live and work.”