A Place in the Sun

With its fragrant lavendar and roses, its iron gates and olive trees, Elana Donovan’s garden recalls the landscapes of southern France, with bits of Normandy and Tuscany thrown in. Such transports aren’t surprising, considering how for years, while she raised her seven children, she gardened mostly in her mind. Since she lived on Little Balboa Island in Orange County, she had no space for much more than a few azaleas and camellias. But when she traveled, she toured European gardens, and in her spare time she studied design at the Decorative Arts Study Center, founded by antiquarian Gep Durenburger.

It was there, in San Juan Capistrano during the late 1980s, that she heard a talk by Dr. James Yoch, nephew of the late garden legend Florence Yoch, and Donovan hired him to design the garden of her dreams.

Part California, part Italy, part Provence, the walled landscape he laid out--and that Donovan has tinkered with ever since--covers a third of an acre in the heart of Newport Beach. The lot had never been built on, Donovan says. “We bought it for its location on the edge of a park, so we could ‘borrow’ views of sycamores and pines.”

To take advantage of those views while leaving space for an ample garden, Donovan and her husband, Bill, built their house in the middle of the lot. Torrance architect Edward Carson Beall and Orange-based architect Ade Collie designed the atmospheric dwelling, which recalls an old French country house, wrapped in rose vines and Boston ivy.

To make the garden feel just as timeless, Yoch and Donovan planted its entry with several peach trees, which suggest the remnants of an orchard. Donovan copied the entry from a French estateNright down to the 18th century doors, double staircase and half-moon pond. But the landscape’s most inspired element, she says, came from Yoch: a perimeter path that circumnavigates the house. “Though it’s a small garden, I wanted places to walk with different experiences and things to look at on the way,” she recalls.

Accordingly, the scenery shifts along the path from potted roses to an herb-and-vegetable potager, a lemon allee, a hydrangea glade and swaths of lavender and rosemary. Indeed, like many novice gardeners, Donovan says she had to learn to control her impulse to cram every plant she loved into her garden. With Yoch’s help, she trimmed her list, focusing on the Mediterraneans that complement her house and choosing blooms in terra-cotta, lavender and apricot tones.

For outdoor furnishings, Donovan (who co-owns Demeter Productions, a company that makes garden videos) has shopped at French antique auctions, flea markets and garden stores. “When you’ve got the bug,” she says, “you’re always on the hunt.” Not to mention the many chairs you need when your seven children and their families visit. The garden receives them with open arms, says Donovan. Recently, one of her daughters was married al fresco, near the rose hedge that borders the park. “Overnight, in a stroke of magic, the hedge bloomed!”