We are doing a lot of gazing out the window these days. A guy named Greg Rubin lifted up our house this summer and plunked it down in the middle of the most amazing desert garden. He and his crew finished their work two weeks ago, but still we gaze, and try to understand. I could have sworn there was an ancient, cracked, concrete patio out there, and hideous, stamped pavers – some of them scalloped! – set on their edges and used as a low retaining wall, and below the french doors a wide step I made myself, out of concrete brick and two-by-twelves of which any trailer park landlord would be proud.
Now, from the living room couch, I swear we see a curvy design of pale flagstone terrace and walkways, gravel areas, mulch beds, tiny (for the moment) native plants, and dry-stacked stone walls, a landscape such as tourists might encounter when renting premium villas in Palm Springs and Scottsdale. For a few days, Gulliver would have none of it. He would creep gingerly halfway down the new stone walk meandering through mulch beds along the side of the house, then make a decision: “This is not where I live.” And retire to the indoors, which he still recognized.
Actually we wish his confusion had carried on a little longer. Now he feels quite regal in his new environment and never returns to the house within bringing in a few strands of mulch clinging to his Sheltie feathers, which mulch, it turns out, loves.
The terrace tableau carries around the corner to the glider porch, with space expanding several new feet out from the porch to the lip of a retaining wall that gives a crisp frame to the view. Beyond the front door, with its new flagstone stoop, the flagstone transitions to the meandering stone walk and a long slope of mulch studded with a variety of native plants. The walk passes a new garden setting on the left, at the back of the house, and on the right, a bubbling fountain at the point where wide stone steps cascade down to the garage and street. The transition from the old back to the new back is even more startling than the change around on the patio side.
The term, “native plant” refers to plants that are native to the deserts, both high and low, that are so typical of Southern California and much of the Southwest. Our house is 13 miles from the Pacific Ocean, which we can see – when we remember to look, these days – from the new terrace. Yet we are lucky to get 12 inches of rain a year. Someday the water SoCal imports from the north and east will run out, but for now there is enough to support all types of lush, grassy landscaping, but many Californians dote on the native plant option. In fact there is a “Native Plant Society.”
Native plants love our natural semi-arid circumstances, and once they take hold, they grow into a palette of sizes, shapes, textures, and flowery color. Around our house, Greg, the owner of CalOwn, and his crew set in 16 varieties of native plants, and a couple of types of trees. We are already seeing tiny flowers of blue, purple, yellow, and red.
The work took a hard-working crew five weeks, and it was the kind of hard work that goes with landscaping a house that has, as they say in the trade, “difficult access.” I won’t tell you what it cost, but it was ungodly reasonable, given the result. I have never in my life seen an equivalent bang for the buck.
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