Custom Fire pit, paving and tropical planting
For all of the perimeter plantings that this garden had when we first visited the site, it felt exposed with very little privacy. The existing outdoor spaces were virtually nonexistent and hence, went unused. The stairs from the house to the garden were rickety and unattractive doing nothing but transport guests from the inside to the out. As with all of my gardens, the operative goal was Sanctuary in all of it's forms. Creating the sacred from the secular, making the cold and uncomfortable into the warm and inviting. The lot on which this garden was built is one filled with sharp angles that go unnoticed on a conscious level but come into sharp focus when all of the layers are stripped away. My first and most obvious solution was to pour custom circular pads that transport the client and her friends from area to area as if one is jumping from lily pad to lily pad. Small enough in spaces to transport a guest from area to area, large enough to hold a car, the exposed aggregate pads blend in with the multicolored Del Rio pebbles used throughout the garden. A tropical extravaganza, this garden is now the epitome of seclusion and privacy right in the middle of Venice, California.
Round polka dot pavers - love