Bringing New Structure and More Color to a Rambling Seaside Property
More than 20 years ago, on a rugged bluff in carpinteria, architect Robert Garland designed a redwood house with views of the sea and fragrant cypress and eucalyptus groves. The landscape was wild and rambling. Native shrubs--toyon, lemonade berry, ceanothus--sprouted under the trees and poured down into a ravine that cut through the property. Self-seeding vinca and nasturtiums appeared in spring, and the effect was of nature carrying on blithely in spite of human intrusion.
Over time, the owners added a lawn with a dramatic deck for ocean-gazing and wide paths with boulder steps to link the house to the lawn below and the lawn to a hilltop tennis court. But it wasn’t till the early ‘90s, when local modernist architectural designer Paul Tuttle remodeled the house, that the owners decided to connect the building more firmly with its setting. They commissioned Tuttle, largely known for creating bold, understated furniture, to do a master plan for their seven acres, and hired landscape architect Isabelle Greene of Santa Barbara to collaborate. “We’d meet around a table and have philosophical talks,” says Greene, a former painter recognized for her plantsmanship and vibrant naturalistic style.
Out of those talks about the spirit of the place came a palette for Tuttle’s entry court--with its graphic curving walls, path and stair railings--and for Greene’s courtyard planting scheme, which was tightly structured and equally flowing. Taking her color cues from Tuttle’s chalky blue, terra-cotta, yellow-beige and crimson details, she installed swaths of blue Senecio serpens, mauve-and-gray gazanias and red verbena, and draped a fiery red bougainvillea over the front wall. Against the blue wall to one side, she massed blue-blooming agapanthus and, closer to the house, where Tuttle had carved a round porthole in his terra-cotta wall, she placed rusty-hued kangaroo paws and a wash of rocks gathered from the nearby shore.
Elsewhere, Greene instinctively loosened her plantings and gave nature full play. She pruned cypress and eucalyptus branches and dropped an existing fence below the sight line to open up ocean vistas. At the property’s farther reaches, she weeded out hundreds of volunteer saplings that were obscuring specimen trees. In the process, she discovered an allee of ancient deodar cedars that had vanished in the overgrowth. Away from the house, her strategy was to enhance and simplify the existing native carpet with a predominance of ceanothus. “It was such a beautiful spot,” says Greene, “and there was so much excitement waiting to express itself.”
Adds Tuttle: “The quality of light alone there is extraordinary. The design of the garden is simple and it should be. All that was wanting was a bit more color and joy.”
