Green grows the arroyo
Along a 22-mile stretch from Mount Wilson to the Los Angeles River, the Arroyo Seco provides a lush setting for some of Pasadena’s oldest and most luxurious estates. Given the glamour of the homes themselves, it might be easy to overlook the gardens. But, as a tour on Sunday will show, that would be a mistake.
Ranging from a small vegetable plot to a grand bougainvillea-draped villa, the tour’s five private gardens all feature elegant, often extravagant details that deserve closer inspection.
“The homes are so distinctive around the arroyo,” said Jacquie Pergola, coordinator of the tour, which is sponsored by the nonprofit Creative Arts Group of Sierra Madre. “The gardens are generally larger and more elaborate -- very representative of Pasadena. We wanted the public to view some of these gardens that they normally would not have the right to see.”
Two in particular -- one at a rambling Spanish Colonial revival, the other at a flagstone-clad Tudor -- stand out as the tour’s centerpieces. Both are distinguished by balustrade walls, stacked terraces, fountains, patios and border gardens packed with roses, herbs and colorful annuals. Each follows a formal line of design and has a plant palette that borrows heavily from European traditions -- especially those of Italy and England. And each has undergone extensive renovation in recent years.
The largest garden, a one-acre Mediterranean-style refuge, rises above the western edge of the Arroyo Seco along tony San Rafael Avenue. Rows of lavender, rosemary and jasmine are set amid a backdrop of oak trees and the arroyo chaparral that surrounds the Spanish Colonial revival home, designed in 1924 by architect Joseph Kucera.
When Amnon and Frances Yariv were debating whether to make an offer on the house in 2000, the yard was a mishmash of plants.
“It was really nothing at all,” Frances Yariv said. “It didn’t fit with the house.”
The Yarivs’ daughter, Gabriela, who recently graduated with a degree from Cornell University’s landscape architecture department, urged her parents to buy the property -- for the challenge of remaking the spacious yard.
“We wanted her to be able to show her skills and her work, and as long as she wanted to, why not?” Frances Yariv said.
Gabriela Yariv looked for inspiration to the villas of Tuscany and the early 20th century Montecito designs of Nicole de Vesian, Lockwood de Forest and Florence Yoch, as well as to the Huntington Gardens in renovating and redesigning the garden for her parents.
The task was not easy. To create a dramatic entrance to the garden, she replaced a water-guzzling strip of lawn with an eye-catching display of cactuses, succulents and other water-thrifty plants. She returned the main lawn, which had been repeatedly altered over the decades, to its original axial shape to restore the garden’s classic elegance.
Large olive and cypress trees were brought in with cranes. Hundreds of pots of clipped boxwoods were planted along the flowerbeds, adding symmetry and a touch of formality.
The main lawn culminates in a raised, semicircular grass terrace. Pat McNamara, who designed the interior of the Yarivs’ residence (and planted an all-white garden at her own Pasadena home), suggested the placement of boxed navel orange trees surrounded by jasmine and lavender.
A few steps away, a formal rose garden overlooks the arroyo. From there, a path leads to an enclosed swimming pool, surrounded by succulent plants and olive trees.
“The garden is a beautiful thing,” Amnon Yariv said. “This tour is a way of sharing it with other people.”
A few houses up the block, Kent and Nicole Sokolow have created a traditional English garden to match their unique English Country Tudor Revival-style house, designed by architect David Ogilvie in 1927 for oil baron Kenyon Reynolds and his wife, Patricia.
The Reynoldses had commissioned the three-story house and three-story carriage house after spending weeks in England on an “information-gathering” trip, taking photographs and making sketches and drawings of Tudor-style homes and lush English gardens.
Kenyon Reynolds -- who later became a Benedictine monk, Father Bede Reynolds, and wrote the autobiographical “Rebel From Riches” -- was the president of the Pasadena Flower Club and the local Daffodil Club and the founder of the Pasadena Floral Show.
Featured in the November 1929 issue of Architectural Digest, the property was originally four acres and included several neighboring homes. Although it’s not revealed from the front of the house, the rear garden area is shaped like a large bowl, dipping 50 feet below street level.
In the late 1920s, landscape architect Katherine Bashford directed 85,000 hours of labor and the installation of more than 700 tons of Santa Susana sandstone to form the numerous terraced rock gardens, ponds and fountains. When the Sokolows bought the property in 2000, they extensively restored the estate to its original splendor using old photos and drawings.
They brought in an additional 20 tons of sandstone to rebuild patio areas, terrace walls and the lower creek and pond area, and they used old bricks to restore and rebuild the many paths, walkways, stairs and walls. With some assistance from Gabriela Yariv and landscape contractor Froylan Ortiz, the entire property was replanted to complement the original oak trees, redwoods, citrus trees, mature camellias and roses to reflect a 1920s Western European style.
Nicole Sokolow and her husband also traveled extensively in England to come up with ideas. “It inspired us to stay with the theme,” she said.
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The tour
The Creative Arts Group, a nonprofit that holds arts workshops for adults and children in Sierra Madre, is sponsoring a tour of five Arroyo Seco gardens in Pasadena on Sunday.
Tickets for the tour cost $25 per person in advance and $30 the day of the event. The tour, which is self-guided, starts at 10:30 a.m. and ends at 4:30 p.m. For more Information, call the Creative Arts Group at (626) 355-8350.
In addition to the Yariv and Sokolow gardens featured here, other properties open for viewing include:
The Alanis Garden, which surrounds a Mediterranean-style hillside home designed by architect Wallace Neff. The present owners have added new walls and gates, as well as two new hillside pavilions that flank a grand staircase leading to a blue-tiled pool.
The Bennett-De Beixedon Garden, situated at a newly built Northern European-style cottage. The small garden includes a two-level slate patio area with river rock walls and a vegetable plot.
The Shaw Garden, a small corner lot garden at a recently renovated home near Prospect Park. The backyard is organized as a series of rooms, packed with hydrangeas, roses, boxwoods and camellias.
-- Tina Daunt
