Home turf
Professional landsape designers may work on big estates, but most come home to yards that look more like the real world. They may have small, tight lots and matching budgets, views of phone lines and neighbors’ roofs, and nowhere to go for peace and quiet. Like many of us, they might be renters, with little incentive to plant someone else’s ground. Here’s where ingenuity really counts, and where pros have the predictable advantage. Schooled in shaping space, they know how to make something out of nothing, cut costs and create illusions, whether the lot is big or small. On the following pages, three designers reveal their secrets for small-scale gardens.
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Secret Spaces
Ten years ago, Michael Kirchmann Jr., a landscape designer for L.A.-based Elysian Landscapes, rented a Hollywood bungalow built in the 1920s for actor Wallace Beery. A charming home with a small front porch, the house is screened from a busy street by hedges and shaded in back by citrus trees. Apart from these, and a lot of weedy volunteers, there was almost no garden when Kirchmann moved in. But being a tenant didn’t dampen his urge to plant. “If I’m going to stay awhile, I want to be happy,” he says, which means having places where he can read outside, enjoy fragrant plants and hear the music of water.
Kirchmann’s landlord gave him carte blanche to clear the overgrowth and design a landscape for the 50-by-100-foot lot. He deducted paving supplies from the rent, but bought his own plants and can take anything he wants when he moves out. In the front yard, where scrubby grass once grew, he laid a path to a “lounging” patio made with concrete pavers and edged with fragrant lavender and artemisia. Potted succulents provide accents, and thyme and sedum, creeping among the pavers, soften the walk. Behind the house, a similar path links the back porch to a slightly elevated patio used for napping or dining. Especially in summer, colors are hot, as red, orange and gold kangaroo paws flank the path and orange bougainvillea leads the eye diagonally across the lot. You can hear water, but you can’t see it at first, trickling from a concrete-bowl fountain in a sunken, secret clearing at the back of the lot. “Someday,” Kirchmann says, “I’d love an outdoor fireplace. Here I’ve had to keep it simple.”
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Divide and Conquer
Stefan Hammerschmidt’s Venice lot is even smaller--just 45 by 95 feet. Like Kirchmann, he has divided it, raising a tiny wood-floored “living room” in one corner, setting off a little “dining room” with potted orchids in another, and bisecting the rear garden with a pond that captures blooms in its reflection.
Hammerschmidt, an Austrian-born chef-turned-garden maker, bought his vintage cottage four years ago. Once he finished renovations, he began to craft a garden “journey” from the front gate to the back fence. Not only do the views change along the way--from the flower-framed entry lawn to a side garden full of potted plants to the mostly green backyard--but the groundcover changes as well, from a front lawn to a concrete terrace to colored gravel, stone steps and wood deck. “I kept my materials in a natural palette,” he says, “so that the shifts aren’t jarring--more like a subtle signal that you’re leaving one place for another.”
Wherever you look, there’s something to see--whether it’s the corokia in a pot beside the deck, a mirror hung from a fence (“like a window to another world”) or a collection of green glass. Such touches, he says, “speak of age and time. Like a garden itself, they tell a story.” His plants also tell the stories of friends who brought orchids to dinner, of a client who deeded him her ailing Japanese maple, and of his Austrian grandmother, an avid gardener who gave him aloe cuttings that have grown into robust specimens. “A small garden can be so personal,” he says. “But if you make gardens for a living, it can also be your experimental lab.”
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Pots Galore
Landscape designer Richard Hayden’s Los Angeles garden has a tropical Asian theme that took root when he planted bamboo five years ago to screen out nearby roofs. Except for one scrawny schefflera, the ‘20s duplex where he works and lives had been garden-free when he rented it, though a neighbor’s huge Brazilian pepper tree provided shade.
What Hayden needed from his outdoor space, which adjoins his office, was “a visual playground,” he says, as well as a place to read the morning paper and drink coffee. Measuring about 800 square feet, the garden was too small for serious entertaining. (“When I have parties, guests can drift out with drinks,” he says, “but dining happens indoors.”) Because of the tree, the ground was too shady for grass and too root-filled to be hospitable to most plants. He decided to grow them in pots, which allows him to change the garden’s configuration and to mix plants with different cultivation needs. He has created three main areas: a meditative fountain area near the back door, a tiny breakfast spot with a table, and a sheltered alcove with chairs and a lounge for relaxing. Ti plants, bromeliads and other tropicals thrive in this protected setting.
Because he hand-waters, Hayden was able to add the occasional wild card: silver agaves and dudleyas, lacy maidenhair ferns and Japanese maples. “The textural contrasts are what interest me--the fine leaves against the big rosettes,” he says. Using the same plants in different places unifies the composition, and glazed pots--orange, aqua and deep red--are shapely foils for foliage. Other embellishments include colored pebbles in the fountain bowl, magnified by the water. A mirror in a 6-foot-wide frame on Hayden’s reed fence captures the whole scene.
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Resource Guide
Michael Kirchmann Jr., Elysian Landscapes, Los Angeles, (323) 226-9588; Stefan Hammerschmidt, Hammerschmidt Landscape Design, Venice, (310) 578-5012; Richard Hayden, Hayden Landscape Design, Los Angeles, (323) 939-5737. Daybed available at Plain Air, Los Angeles, (323) 226-9588; wicker furniture available at Janus et Cie, West Hollywood, (310) 652-7090.
