Wine and Chi
The words “landscape” and “portable” aren’t often grouped together. “ Roots“ and “impermanent” might seem like they’re the antithesis of one other. And you’d rarely hear a landscape described as “moveable.” Todd and Kendra Clift of Los Osos took these traditional ideas of landscaping back to the drawing board with their Autumn landscape project in 2011.
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Native San Luis Obispo Haven
In the spring of 2008, we worked with Mary Lou Wilhelm and her husband, Richard Root, to replace their front lawn with a mostly California native landscape. The water bill was getting to be too much, and more importantly, Mary is a conservationist at heart. “My husband loves lawn, so I had to let him have a patch of it. But that’s in the back, and my garden is right where I can see it in the front.”
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Pacific Northwest Flair
Randy and Karen Allen have been reworking their San Luis Obispo home since they moved in 15 years ago. Outside, the plot of their future garden bided its time. Karen is a real estate professional with Century 21 Hometown Realty, and she gained inspiration for her potential garden while showing homes to clients. “I kept taking note of gardens I liked, and every time it seemed to be a Gardens by Gabriel creation,” she says, laughing.
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Grecian Grover Beach Paradise
Heather Nicol grew up without so much as a houseplant. Montreal, Canada was her home until 1970 when she moved to California, and everything changed. For the first time she saw the diverse and exotic plant palette that was possible, and her curiosity was piqued, to say the least. Initially, Heather lived in rentals where all that she was only able to water existing landscapes. As she moved around the state and ultimately bought her own home in Grover Beach, she was sufficiently inspired and informed to create a garden of her own.
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San Luis Obispo Zen
“Wabi sabi embodies the Zen nihilist cosmic view and seeks beauty in the imperfections found as all things, in a constant state of flux, evolve from nothing and devolve back to nothing,” – Juniper, A (2003). Wabi Sabi, the Japanese Art of Impermanence. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing.
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Nipomo WOW Garden
Nipomo is home to a number of different soil types, including thick clay, dry sand, and a rocky shale composite. If you’re really lucky, like John and Hollee Parker, you get all of them in one lot. Creating a garden out of sandy clay soil takes determination, but fortunately the Parkers had that in spades. They came to us with a bevy of ideas and a wealth of creativity. “I wanted a ‘Wow!’ garden,” says Hollee, “not something that I’d see anywhere else..."
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Katy Canyon
John and Ali Stephenson can tell you that a 200-plus-degree panoramic view is a double-edged sword. One on hand, their unending views of the ocean, soft hillsides, and of both the sunrise and sunset can safely be considered spectacular. On the other hand, the price of spaciousness is frequent cold winds and brisk, foggy mornings.
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The Chorro House: Quintessential California
Theresa and Michael Mulvihill began the restoration of their new home, San Luis Obispo's historic Anholm House, in the fall of 2010. Hailing originally from Michigan, the owners wanted a garden that artfully represented their new California environment. Their goal was a water-wise landscape to compl...
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Bocce by the Bay
Had you visited Vince and Janet Marino's property in the spring of 2010, you would have seen a brown, rocky slope dotted with patches of weeds and lined with two of the Central Coast's most abundant resources: Palm trees and birds of paradise.
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