The Personal Touch

Here’s some advice to take outside this year: Go simple. Here’s some more: Go crazy. Are the two irreconcilable? It’s a conundrum gardeners constantly face, but each spring, the debate gets heated. To yank or not to yank that woody lavender? To try another clematis after killing three? To deep-six the lawn for a collage of succulents? Could you possibly sacrifice orange passionflowers or bloody-hearted bromeliads in an effort to streamline your borders?

While we can’t make the cuts for you, we can help divide the winners from the losers by consulting experts from the L.A. garden world. Besides giving us the word on a new grass nursery, an edgy patio chair or the best hammered-tin fountains, they have a lot to say about the overall state of the yard. First, that garden trends are more leisurely than fashion trends, so avoid snap decisions. Second, that once again, says Venice designer Barry Campion, it’s a “hybrid” garden moment. Though the pared-down mid-century house with its graphic plantings is still chic, forget strict takes on English, Italian or even minimalist style and go for catchy combinations. Get personal with your landscape. Leave forgotten toys on the terrace and let the poppies rip between the hedges. Sprinkle your blue-glass collection among your pots, and plant flowers from your childhood. As Polly Furr, a Venice landscape architect, explains it, “We’re all looking for ways to be at home on the earth.”

Which means, she and others say, treading lightly on its surface, recycling and reusing elements such as paving, cutting down on thirsty greens and using less water more potently--in fountains that wash away traffic noise, in lily ponds instead of swimming pools, or in smaller pools that, when no one’s in them, double as reflecting ponds.

Happily, drought-adapted plants, an entrenched part of the local landscape, keep proliferating. Ranking high on the hot list are new succulents and flax, more salvias and thistles. Cooling slightly are moisture-mad tropicals, except for drama queens such as red bananas and black taro--planted en masse, of course, or what’s the point? Garden color itself just grows richer and more complex, with maroon, bronze and chartreuse adding fresh notes while showy flowers play second fiddle. More important than their visual splash (with a few passionate exceptions), we crave their scent, especially at night, when we’re finally not working, when a sudden whiff of angel’s trumpet can be more dizzying than love.

As for trees, they should shimmer (olives), or give us shade (sycamores), sculpture (Draecena draco) or fruit (any citrus). In fact, for gardens right now it’s not enough to be beautiful. We want to have herbs to snip, and unsprayed lettuce. So wherever possible, plant edibles--in vegetable plots, pots or amid the ornamental border crowd. And the urge to grow organic goes beyond food. Many gardeners are cutting back on garden chemicals. “We should all be making soil amendments,” says L.A. landscape designer Mark Tessier. “Broccoli stems, carrot peels and leaf litter can be miraculously turned into humus, right in our own backyards.”

In a similar vein, he and his colleagues seem less inclined to smother the ground with hard paving, choosing instead softer decomposed granite or porous gravel, or combining these with dry-laid stone or concrete and creeping plants. And because of where and how we live, designers emphasize the need for outdoor shade and shelter, which can be understated or elaborate--from canvas umbrellas to vine-linked columns to full-blown architectural pavilions. The list of materials for garden shelters keeps expanding, to include bamboo, steel tubing and inexpensive shade cloth.

The details, our experts say, make all the difference, and they don’t have to match. In furnishing, as in planting, start simple. Tuck a ‘50s bench beside a turn in a path; add a farmhouse table under the grapes and a potted agave amid the roses. What you’ll wind up with, suggests Mark Bartos, a South Pasadena designer, could be “a small step toward world peace.” Or at least closure for the moment on the question of which plant deserves the bed.

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Plant News

THE GOOD

Dake: Onions, artichokes, globe thistles.

Kenton and Silva: Alpine strawberries as ground cover, bay laurel as hedges, thyme and chamomile between paving stones, vegetables with flowers.

Furr: Succulents combined with flax and ornamental grasses.

Effron: Anything a bit odd.

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THE BAD

Bartos: Roses as a symbol of conspicuous consumption.

Dake: Ornamental grasses that are badly maintained or miscast in a composition (too floppy, for example, or too upright).

Effron: Gardeners who overplant because they can’t wait for small plants to get big.

* THE BRILLIANT

Furr: Seasonal change. A thicket of twiggy cottonwood branches, naked in the setting sun.

Bartos: The year-round beauty of shrubs like purple hop bush, variegated Italian buckthorn and thorny elaeagnus.

Glascock: Blue moor grass (Sesleria caerulea). It’s evergreen!

Effron: Edible bananas, blue Agave attenuata ‘Nova,’ epidendrums (all colors).

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CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT

Tessier: Westringia. Fine gray-green

foliage, white flowers, dependable. A great contrast to darker greens.

Bartos: Roses.

Dake: Flax (Phormium) of all stripes.

Campion and Walker: Brugmansia ‘Charles Grimaldi’ (a cultivar of angel’s trumpet), ‘Mutabilis’ roses.

Violich: Olive trees.

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CAN’T WAIT TO TRY

Campion and Walker: The new dwarf euryops, Euryops virgineus.

Tessier: Pedilanthus tithymaloides, a Mexican succulent that grows 5 feet tall with grayish stalks and small leaves flushed pink when new.

Glascock: ‘Baby Love’ rose: a 3-foot shrub with small, neat green leaves and clear yellow flowers--very cheerful and perky.

Secrets and Sources

WHERE TO GO Dake * Bird Rock Tropicals in Carlsbad for dramatic bromeliads (760-438-9393); Malibu Masonry, a more accessible stoneyard where you can really see the stone (310-456-9444); a company called California Vermiculture, which produces Wormgold for worm castings (760-942-6086); “The Floracle” at Windowbox.com, for great garden advice. Glascock * Brookfield Farms, a new ornamental grass nursery in Thousand Oaks (by appointment only, 805-379-8708); Pusaka Collection, a West Hollywood source for Asian stone carvings and large pots for water features (323-650-2952); Casa Mexicana, a North Hollywood source for hammered tin fountains, ironwork and Mexican pots (818-763-3115). Furr * Wallace Soil Laboratories for soil testing (310-615-0116); Ewing Irrigation Supply for irrigation products and information (online at ewing1.com); Serra Gardens for succulents (online at cacti.com). Bartos * Hortus has everything! (626-792-8255, in Pasadena; 714-532- 5434, in Orange); Desert to Jungle Nursery in Montebello (323-722-3976); California Cactus Center in Pasadena (626-795-2788). Kenton and Silva * Sperling Nursery in Calabasas for expert advice on new plants and plant availability (818-591-9111); Home Depot for unexpected treasures (various locations); Santa Monica and Hollywood farmers markets for potted herbs and interesting plants.

INSPIRING READS Bartos * “The Modern Garden,” by Jane Brown; “The Minimalist Garden,” by Christopher Bradley-Hole. Furr * “A Collaboration with Nature,” “Time” and “Stone,” by Andy Goldsworthy. Glascock * “Gardens for the

Future: Gestures Against the Wild,” by Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor; “A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction,” by Christopher Alexander, et. al. Effron * “California Gardens,” by Winifred Starr Dobyns. Dake * “Outdoor Rooms,” by Julie D. Taylor; “Plant Life in the World’s Mediterranean Climates,” by Peter R. Dallman. Kenton and Silva * “Garden Mania,” by Philip de Bay and James Bolton.

CHAIRS, POTS, ORNAMENTIA

Kenton and Silva Restoration Hardware’s reproduction of the 1920s “Maple Street” garden chair is a great deal: $59.

Tessier Outdoor spaces should be furnished like any other room, with a collection of furniture and accents. Build in benches and beds, add tile tables and use powder-coated metal. Teak isn’t necessarily the way to go.

Furr I’m always trying to add the kinesthetic pleasure and while-away-the-hours feel of a porch swing or glider. And recently I found the “Toy Chair,” a comfortable, stylish, stackable plastic chair by Philippe Starck ($119 at Linea, 310-273-5425).

Effron With pots, bigger is usually better. Get them off the patio and into the garden beds. Put an old formal urn filled with flax and spilling succulents into a field of stipa grass.

Campion and Walker What’s interesting and attention-getting is the contrast and tension between furnishings or ornaments of different styles. For example, try a great Balinese fountain in an essentially English-flavored garden.

Details, Details

COOL POOLS

Violich: A fountain embedded in a wall with underwater uplights from the pool below creates dancing patterns on adjoining surfaces.

Furr: I prefer subtle rather than big: a small spout for sound, a beautiful vessel to celebrate catchment and dispersal, a reflecting pond.

Campion and Walker: Bog gardens that act as water-filtration systems make water elements more self-sufficient and low-maintenance.

Dake: One of my recent enthusiasms is a solar-powered fountain that turns off when clouds pass. It fascinates kids!

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PRIME PAVING

Glascock: Dry-laid stone or pre-cast concrete with pebbles or tiny ground covers in the seams. A lawn carpet dotted with concrete squares in a Klee-like pattern.

Kenton and Silva: Decomposed granite, plants and ground covers in lieu of “paving” is our preference.

Campion and Walker: We’re eager to try something called “Poly Pavement,” a polymeric compound that, when applied to soil or DG [decomposed granite], binds it and makes it durable, but the result looks natural.

Tessier: I never tire of large pieces of random stone or broken concrete for those difficult-to-solve geometries.