GARDENS : Pool on the Hill

In canyon-filled Los Angeles, gardeners sometimes carve beds out of cliffs and then pray that the earth holds till something starts to grow. If the result turns out beautiful, it can seem like a minor miracle, especially to someone like Mickey Howard of Laughlin Park in Los Feliz, who had battled his barren back-yard slope for 10 years. While Howard and his wife, Edith, would have been happy just to keep the hillside out of their swimming pool, landscape architect Mia Lehrer gave them lush, stepped gardens, a classical water wall and an Italian fountain. The fountain spills into a koi pond, hidden from below but reachable via a stairway cut into the hill.

Taking her cue from an existing broken-concrete wall, she created terraces to expand the planting space and retained the hill with additional walls. The top of one doubles as a path that makes the slope’s upper reaches more accessible for maintenance. But the most striking features are the interplay of graceful curves and strong horizontal lines, and the music of water, which masks the traffic from a nearby street. Explosive planting--agapanthus, star jasmine and daylilies--softens the edges of walls and adds a relaxed note to the classical forms.

Best of all for the Howards, Lehrer’s creation has turned their uphill battleground into a mountain of peace.