Front-to-back overhaul — Glen Park

This was the largest project we've taken on as a studio — a complete transformation of both the front and back yard of a Glen Park Victorian. The clients had just finished a long interior renovation and wanted the outside to match the care they'd put into the inside. The baseline was two large concrete pads, a dying lawn in the back, and a front strip of junipers that had been there since at least the 1980s.

We spent six weeks in the design phase, longer than usual, because the scope was large enough that the order of operations mattered. Removal came first: concrete demo, juniper removal, lawn removal. We brought in a small excavator for two days to break up the back pads and haul material out. After that the soil work began — the back was heavily compacted and needed significant amendment before anything would establish well there.

The front yard design is formal-ish: two flanking beds of Cistus, Phlomis fruticosa, and Aloe striata around a central crushed granite path leading to the door. It reads as Mediterranean without trying too hard. The back is more relaxed — a larger planting area with California natives (toyon, Salvia spathacea, Muhlenbergia rigens) along the fence lines, and a small kitchen garden tucked into the sunniest corner with three raised beds and a small greenhouse the clients had already bought and wanted incorporated.

Installation took four full days with our whole crew. We planted 85 plants total. The clients signed on for a maintenance plan that first summer to help things establish through their first dry season, which turned into an ongoing relationship. The garden is now approaching two full years in the ground and beginning to look like the mature, self-sustaining space it was designed to become.