STYLE : GARDENS : Inner Space

Despite cramped quarters, a lot of gardening goes on in this Mar Vista back yard. An old pool and a new studio for artist Lavi Daniel and his wife, textile dealer Diane Dixon, took up much of the space. But good planning by landscape designer Barry Campion turned the remainder into a remarkable garden with a stunning palette of uncommon plants.

“The plantings are all-important because they blur the boundaries of the property and soften the new building,” Campion says. Climbing roses cling to the studio walls, and variegated Algerian ivy covers an old fence. Elsewhere, there are billowy shrubs and small flowering trees. Campion eased the transition from the tall 1927 house to the much lower garden with a new patio and broad steps. Even the concrete deck around the pool was broken up, and now thyme and isotoma grow in the cracks.

Daniel and Dixon “wanted so many kinds of plants that the trick became one of organization,” Campion says. So the garden is divided into many little canvases, each its own perfectly composed picture. By the steps, for example, a great ball of gray Calocephalus brownii is surrounded by an echium, the brilliant purple Geranium incanum , a rockrose and a striking aloe (all are drought-tolerant). “It’s amazing how well it all holds together,” Campion says. “Lavi and Diane are always working in the garden, and it’s always changing. It gets better and better.” Not too surprising, considering the artists involved in this piece of environmental art-in-progress.