Beach Fronts

Laguna Beach’s little cottages and bungalows are not unlike thousands scattered across Southern California, except for the extraordinary gardens in many frontyards.

Sheltered by steeply rising mountains on one side, fanned by ocean breezes from the other, the flower-friendly climate in Laguna Beach is enviable but not unique, and the soil on the ancient marine terrace where most of these cottages sit is plain awful, so why are there so many exceptional little gardens?

Perhaps their makers are challenged by constraint and have responded with exuberance, showing what one can do with a little bit of land.

Of course, being on the beach makes the homes valuable real estate, no matter how small they are, so their owners can feel confident investing in the cost of a garden.

And Laguna Beach is home to more than its fair share of garden designers and landscape architects.

But one suspects that Laguna Beach’s history as an art colony, dating to the 1910s, has somehow influenced the gardens. There’s a little bit of California Impressionism in the colorful but casual mix of plants in these gardens that seems to come right out of a plein air painting.

Packed together like Monopoly houses about to be exchanged for hotels, Laguna Beach’s cottages have little land for gardening. Most of the gardens are in frontyards, where every inch is cultivated because, often, there is even less room in back.

Some gardeners take the time-honored tack of corralling their front gardens within a picket fence. Others build low walls with brick or use the colorful, locally found Ortega stone, though one must look closely to see these walls because they are barely visible behind explosions of larkspur or red poppies or they are buried beneath roses, bougainvillea or other vines.

Some kind of enclosure is necessary, but here structure--the built garden--is not very important. Planting is everything, and it seems the more variety the merrier. Not surprisingly, this is a workable formula for a cottage garden.

Owners of similar small gardens, whether they live in Eagle Rock, Van Nuys, Venice or Tustin, can pick up lots of landscaping ideas just walking around these neighborhoods.

Most of the gardens are plainly visible from the sidewalk or street. Great gardens are on Cypress Drive, Linden and Catalina streets, Mountain Road and Lombardy Lane, among others.

There’s even a self-guided walking tour of historic houses that will take you right into these older neighborhoods; though it’s not intended to feature gardens, you’re going to see plenty.

The “Heritage Walking Companion” brochure is designed to go with the “Tour Laguna by Bus” map.

The walking companion divides Laguna Beach into the bungalows in the neighborhood north of downtown and the cottages on the south side of town.

The neighborhoods can be reached on two city-operated shuttle-bus lines. The Gray Line will take you into the north neighborhood and the Blue Line to the south cottages. Maps and brochures are available on the bus and at the visitor center at 252 Broadway (transit information: [949] 497-0746).

Monday though Saturday, buses run hourly from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., except during the lunch break from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. Rides cost 75 cents, which includes transfers. Take a bus to a neighborhood, walk or cycle around (buses can also carry bicycles) and catch another at a different stop.

Sounds like a good way to spend a hot August day at the beach.