A grand ascent

WHEN Gloria Werner looks out her front door, she sees a symphony in shades of green, an architectural assemblage of trees and shrubs growing freely or clipped into huge round mounds and ramrod-straight hedges -- an ascent from the street that includes a grand staircase and two terraces, all graced with the sound of splashing water, the scents of lavender, rosemary and citrus.

“None of this was here before,” Werner says, referring to the work of Mayita Dinos, whose garden design evokes the approach to a Tuscan villa. “Mayita transformed the whole front of our house.”

Dinos recalls the first time she looked out Werner’s front door. “It was high above the street. I felt on top of the world, soaring over it, catching the breeze and watching the tops of rustling trees.” Trouble was, nothing beyond the front door echoed that rapturous feeling.

The house, perched on a promontory, was fronted by a vast downhill slope of boring grass. Worse yet, there was no path through the grass from street to house. No walkway, steppingstones or steps. Not even any plantings to break the visual monotony. “It was just a rolling green hill,” Werner says. “To get to our front door, we had to walk up the steep driveway at the side, then turn onto a narrow path leading to steps up to it.”

Dinos’ task: To reconfigure the lawn and unflattering approach to this 1924 Windsor Square house into a more welcoming entry and a low-maintenance garden.

“The Werners loved the Mediterranean region, especially Italy, where they’d traveled together,” Dinos says of Gloria and her husband, Newton. “They’d noticed that many homes there resembled their own: simple, symmetric and substantial. And they loved the Mediterranean gardens that embraced these homes.

“I thought their idea was perfect,” Dinos recalled on a recent day, standing outside the terra cotta color house to explain what led to her design. “The keystones around the door, the capstones at the corners, the terra cotta tile roof, the dark teal shutters -- it’s all very Mediterranean-Italian,” she says. “I wanted to bring out the Italian-ness of the house and extend it into the garden.”

Plants from the Mediterranean area that thrive in L.A.’s climate, Dinos says, “are not exceptionally floriferous; they don’t bloom exuberantly like English gardens do.” They tend to be more subdued and all about different shades of green: silver-green, blue-green, gray-green.

And they’re about different leaf textures in interesting juxtapositions. “Most Mediterranean plants have small leaves or needles, adaptations that conserve moisture,” she says. And the gardens are abundantly aromatic. “So you get a lot of herbs, like rosemary. And lavenders. And there is always citrus. On a very hot day, all the resinous compounds are released. They create a sense of place based on scent. It’s a kind of aromatherapy, a sensory experience that’s typical of Mediterranean gardens.”

Many of these plants estivate or “rest” during summer, she says. “It’s kind of like hibernation. They come to life in cooler weather. That’s why we also use evergreens as foundation and structure plants, so that even when the garden is in a state of rest, it still has really good bones.”

Terracing also characterizes many classic Mediterranean gardens, according to horticulturist and author Jan Smithen, who in her book, “Sun Drenched Gardens: The Mediterranean Style,” cites the 15th century Villa Medici in Fiesole, Italy, as one of the earliest and most beautiful examples.

Dinos designed the hardscape in the Werner garden, starting with a grand stairway that directs the eyes up from the street to the two levels of terraces built as outdoor rooms that precede arrival at the entry. The lower terrace, with its splashing fountain -- a tiled spigot that pours into a glazed Gladding, McBean ceramic pot -- has a floor of pebbles. Scissor stairs lead to the upper, more formal terrace, with its floor of pavers cut into the same diamond pattern that starts at the street level and repeats on all the landings.

Starting at the sidewalk, Westringia ‘Wynyabbie Gem’ -- an Australian shrub clipped into massive round balls -- lines the sides of the stairs that lead to the lower terrace. An aromatic hedge of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Blue Spire’) edges that terrace from which Euphorbia characias wulfenii can be seen, along with Meyer lemon trees under-planted with alstroemeria.

Palm trees, which existed before work began, were slated for removal until an arborist pronounced them to be a rare Mediterranean species, Dinos says. They stayed, and one group is also under-planted with euphorbia. Some of the lawn stayed too, because Werner said she had seen a lot of grass in Mediterranean gardens in Italy. “Second, it is an awfully steep hill and it never occurred to me that we should do anything different.”

Another key to Mediterranean gardens, Dinos says, is that plants and shrubs are used as architectural features, clipped into “walls” of hedges, or into balls or conical shapes that lend structure and definition to the design.

A bevy of white iceberg roses (not yet in bloom) cluster on either side of the upper terrace, where potted kumquats and potted Meyer lemons lend color and scent.

Dinos’ goal was to create a visual and sensual journey from street to house, a vertical axis that leads eyes up to the dwelling, with delightful rest stops along the way. The sound of water, the aromas of citrus and herbs, and the shapes of shrubs clipped to emphasize the journey all play a vital part, although the specifics are so subtle they might escape notice at first.

“We were thrilled with what she did. It’s just fabulous,” says Werner, whose husband died after the garden was completed. Their house used to look like all the others on the street, Werner says. “Now it definitely has a presence.” The terraces are especially useful for large parties, or just for sitting in the sun with morning coffee and the paper, she says.

Dinos says she was concerned about neighborhood reaction when the concrete was first being poured. “This man who lived down the street kept walking by, muttering words like ‘terrible’ and ‘disgusting.’ I think he was afraid we’d create a monster.” When work was nearly complete, the designer says, several neighbors stopped to say they liked it. “The best sign of all occurred when the Werners’ next door neighbor sort of appropriated our idea and built something similar himself.”

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bettijane.levine@latimes.com