Happily Ever After : A Steep Hillside Is Transformed Into a ‘Fairyland’ Garden
ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS a steep back yard that was choked with ivy and weeds. It was too steep for just about any kind of landscaping, even a path. But this hillside- garden story has a fairy-tale ending--and not all such stories do, as anyone who has tried to garden on a slope can tell you.
Brentwood resident Josefina Keen was determined not to let her back-yard chasm get the better of her. And what she had in mind when she commissioned the garden designers at Sassafras Nursery and Landscaping in Topanga to select the plantings was a “fairyland garden.” First, though, palisades were built from castoff railroad ties to create several civilized levels down the slope. The uppermost level was designated for use by grown-ups and includes a small lawn and several beds for flowers. For dining and enjoying the view, Keen and her husband, Robert, had built a romantic, lily-white gazebo at the edge of the top palisade. Across from the gazebo is an arbor festooned with the graceful vine Solanum jasminoides , which marks the beginning of a curving path that leads to the bottom of the hill. The steps are made of railroad ties with narrow strips of grass planted along the width to cushion the journey. The path is not long, but it passes through a delightful garden full of tulips, daffodils, ranunculus, primroses, calendulas and the small but rambunctious Chrysanthemum paludosum . The bright-gray foliage of dusty miller lightens patches of the garden like shafts of sunlight.
Growing alongside the path are more flowers to cut or sniff--winter-flowering jasmine and stock, calla lilies and iris. These are tucked between and behind stones that seem to cascade down the path--and that help hold back the soil.
At the bottom of the hill is another arbor and a bench, and beyond that the fairy-tale ending--a storybook house where the Keen daughters, Victoria and Alexandra, sometimes live if they have been good and have not complained too much about their piano lessons. They entertain friends here, too, but none who is taller than 5 1/2 feet. And they often look out their window at the lovely fairyland garden, so full of flowers.
