COURTS OF APPEAL

Each of the various courtyards at the offices of landscape architects Raymond Hansen & Associates has its own source of water. And each sparkles in the sun--when the sun happens to shine in Santa Monica--and muffles the sound of traffic just outside the stuccoed walls. There is precisely enough timber overhead to suggest enclosure, and--instead of trees--vines clamber up above, providing a sense of height and highlights of bright green against the sky. When the bougainvilleas flower, their falling petals are as pretty underfoot as they are blooming atop the trellises.

The “peeler logs,” as they are called in lumberyards, support a fascinating collection of airborne plants, including great draperies of Tillandsia usneoi- des , better know as Spanish moss. Several moss-lined hanging baskets hold other brome- liads, the gray-green succulent donkey tail ( Sedum morganianum ), impatiens and ivy geraniums. Almost everything in the courtyards grows in containers.

The fountains fit in some tight spots, but since they’re above ground--about waist-high, so that their walls are barely tall enough to perch on--nobody is likely to fall in. Most trickle with enough volume to keep them from sounding like leaking faucets but not enough to be a bother. Aquatic plants--papyrus and an azure pickerel with arrowhead leaves are visible--are green “statuary” in the pools.