Photos of the Garden Conservancy Los Angeles tour

“It’s a romantic garden, comfortable and not pompous,” Yust says. The classic look of the garden was created in 1921 by architect Francis Pierpont Davis, who also designed St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Los Angeles and the Villa d’Este apartments in West Hollywood. He wanted to complement his new home, an estate so quintessentially Italian that it’s believed he had craftsmen from the old country brought over to build it.  (Christina House / For The Times)

But by the time Yust and her husband, Larry, moved in -- in 1986, after first glimpsing the property as neighbors 19 years earlier -- the grounds were a mess. Machetes cleared away dense, overgrown ivy, which revealed the underlying structure of the garden, including a monumental gated arch, still intact. Restoration began with simple watering and pruning to revive what survived. Then, guided by Davis’ original vision, the Yusts gradually made the garden their own.  (Christina House / For The Times)

“You can be in blue jeans or a ball gown -- it doesn’t matter,” Yust says. “Like all Italian gardens, it’s a set of rooms for living outdoors.”  (Christina House / For The Times)

The backyard is divided into four distinct sections, the centerpiece of which is the formal courtyard of clipped myrtle. Traditional Italian gardens are known more for their year-round greenery than for flower power, but the couple couldn’t resist planting dozens of rose bushes. “It’s not what would have been here, but I love roses -- hybrid teas, floribundas and David Austins,” Yust says.  (Christina House / For The Times)

A statue in a corner of the courtyard. Beyond, a park-like bosco (Italian for woods) of eucalyptus, oaks and black acacias provide welcome summer shade in the gravel-paved clearings that the Yusts set aside for outdoor gatherings.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Old citrus trees supply fruit.  (Christina House / For The Times)

A lap pool designed by the Yusts’ architect daughter, Victoria, doubles as a reflecting pond.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Clara Yust’s favorite spot is a corner tucked off the living room, an intimate space that features a mossy fountain she fashioned from a Corinthian capital and a ceramic wall panel pieced back together from tile shards found strewn nearby.  (Christina House / For The Times)

The fountain, fashioned from a Corinthian capital.  (Christina House / For The Times)

The view from the house.  (Christina House / For The Times)

The Yust garden.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Garden No. 2: Landscape designer Cheryl Lerner’s welcoming landscape.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Neighbors were aghast 20 years ago when Lerner remodeled her frontyard by ripping out the lawn, parkway strips included. But she was determined to create a place to dig and plant, not just push a mower. And after a little trial and error, she wound up with an inviting California landscape that more than satisfies her need for green. Here in the front, Joseph’s Coat roses bloom out front.   (Christina House / For The Times)

The low-water plant palette includes potted agave. “I don’t need peonies or foxgloves or delphiniums,” Lerner says. “I embrace plants from the Mediterranean, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Frankly, it’s the only conscionable way to garden, given that we have water restrictions and live in this climate.”  (Christina House / For The Times)

Shortly after Lerner and her husband, Roger, bought their 1922 red-tile-roofed house, they set about remaking its beige exterior and lifeless lawn and roses into an exuberant retreat. The Windsor Square couple enlisted landscape architect Brian Tichenor to help design a front path and add a side courtyard with a pool. By the entry, a beautiful guava tree fans out. Lerner framed the front door with potted cypresses and placed senecio, kalanchoe, vegetables and leaf lettuces so they peek out from under a blue palo verde and an old olive.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Sprawling roses contrast with the formality of clipped shrubs.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Lerner laid out her dry garden parallel to the house, along the path of crushed granite and “stone carpets” that Tichenor devised to match the exterior’s new tomato and pumpkin color scheme. Made of recycled hardscape, the paving features Italian glass tiles that sparkle like pools of water.  (Christina House / For The Times)

The backyard, previously a dank slope, was leveled and paved with green slate and custom-colored concrete pavers. The stairway to a guest apartment above the garage curves past a lemon tree and Lerner’s cozy fireplace, then up along a wall quaintly decorated with vintage plant hangers.  (Christina House / For The Times)

The view from above.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Tichenor also helped to create an outdoor living room around a fireplace behind the house.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Unexpected combinations and color schemes run throughout the property.  (Christina House / For The Times)

A strawberry plant grows from a vintage pot.  (Christina House / For The Times)

“I’m not a frilly girl,” Lerner says. “You won’t find sweet peas here. I like plants that say, ‘Look at me!’ ”  (Christina House / For The Times)

More potted plants -- on tables, on walls, on the ground -- grace one of sitting areas.  (Christina House / For The Times)

The side-yard pool.  (Christina House / For The Times)

Dwarf sansevieria rise from vintage pots.  (Christina House / For The Times)

But it’s out front where Lerner indulges her passion for testing new plants, trying offbeat color combinations, figuring out what works and what doesn’t so she can share what she learns with clients -- and passersby. Here, vegetables sprout from a raised bed. “It’s amazing how many people I’ve met because I was gardening in my front yard,” she says. “I’ve made some very dear friends that way.”  (Christina House / For The Times)

Garden No. 3: Anna Clark at her Windsor Square retreat.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Some people keep journals of their travels. Clark designs garden rooms. Over 23 years, she has relandscaped her home as a reminder of her journeys crisscrossing every continent except Antarctica. As a result, the garden brims with a dazzling assortment of plants, particularly evergreen shrubs, perennials and succulents.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Looking at Clark’s backyard, you’d think she’s never met a plant -- or a terracotta container -- she didn’t like. Scores of them congregate on the back steps, circle the patio, edge the pool and flank the guest house. The result is a green haven -- densely packed and immaculately groomed.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Clark changed all that. With the help of her gardener of 30 years, Luis Zuniga, she removed a concrete basketball court and replaced it with a garden reminiscent of those she saw in England and Italy. She remodeled the pool deck and added a recirculating fountain. On the far side of the pool, she planted a ficus hedge and a row of Snow Queen oakleaf hydrangeas. Running short on space, she started putting boxwood in pots and sculpting the plants into tidy balls and cones.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Roses peek out from behind the pool fountain.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Easy Does It roses bloom in Clark’s garden.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Clark collected more than 100 pots, mostly Italian terracotta with rolled rims from Pottery Manufacturing in Gardena. Inspired by a purchase at a garden club sale and her travels in South Africa, she began displaying succulents.  (Katie Falkenberg ./ For The Times)

Echeverias, sedums, agaves, kalanchoes and aeoniums dot the patio like little jewels. “I don’t know all their names,” she says, “but they’re so weird and wonderful and so easy to grow.”  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Yucca leaves glow in the sunlight.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Raspberries with hand-tied willow supports fill Vietnamese oil jars by a side door.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

Sally Holmes roses grow alongside the driveway.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)

A fountain made from a terracotta jar sits in a quiet nook of the garden. Through the years, Clark says, her husband hasn’t minded giving up more lawn in exchange for more garden as long as he’s had a place to practice chipping golf balls. Now that Clark is eyeing the last remaining patch of grass, however, she may finally have a turf war on her hands.

The Yust, Lerner and Clark gardens are all part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour May 8. Participants can see as many as they wish from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Regular admission is $5 per garden; discounted tickets and maps will be available from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Getty House, the official residence of the mayor of Los Angeles, 605 S. Irving Blvd. Information: (888) 842-2442.

For more garden profiles, sustainable landscaping advice and notices about upcoming events, bookmark our home and garden blog. You also can follow headlines by joining our Facebook gardening page.  (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times)