Front garden, ongoing care — Bernal Heights

We've been working with this client in Bernal Heights since spring 2022 — one of our longer-running maintenance relationships. The garden is a south-facing front yard with mixed perennial beds and a small raised herb section off to one side. It's the kind of space that looks effortless but takes real consistency to keep that way.

The previous gardener had a heavy hand with shears and left a lot of the plants over-shaped and stressed. One of our first priorities was backing off and letting things breathe — stopping the aggressive cutting back that was happening every visit and giving the shrubs a full season to recover. By fall of that first year the difference was already visible.

We visit monthly and do a full sweep: deadheading, light pruning, weeding, any watering adjustments on the drip system. In fall we add bulbs. In spring we do a full cleanup and any replanting. The client handles supplemental watering during heat spikes, which is all they need to do.

The garden today looks loose and layered in the way that Mediterranean gardens do when they're genuinely healthy — not because someone styled it that way, but because the plants have had room and time to establish. It's one of our favorite stops on the route.