Levels of ingenuity Naturalistic planting is used to striking architectural effect in this Californian garden designed over a series of terraces

The San Francisco Bay Area in northern California is a hotbed of experimentation. At this modernist house, Surfacedesign is meshing formality – in the form of courts by the house – with an exuberant meadow designed for year-round interest and structure

Northern California remains one of the world’s most exciting regions for landscape design, not least because it is possessed of numerous clients who want to experiment with naturalistic plantings on a large scale, usually set in a modernist architectural milieu. Surfacedesign is one of a number of San Francisco practices currently riding high on this wave of confidence.

At this three-acre rural property outside the small town of Woodside, on the inland side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Surfacedesign was asked to create a garden of contrasting character around a new single-storey house complex (designed by architects Olson Kundig) that consists of a number of discrete pavilions arranged on a cruciform plan.

“What we inherited was basically a paddock on a sloping site,” recalls James Lord, one of Surfacedesign’s three partners. “The previous owners had horses and the soil was very compacted. We decided to organise the garden as two halves. As you enter, and in the areas around the buildings, it’s a very structured environment, almost farm-like in essence. This contrasts with the other half, which is the meadow, much softer and with the exuberance of the vegetation.”

The entrance drive sets up the farm atmosphere, threading through a grove of some 60 characterful, 150-year-old olive trees (a decommissioned orchard, acquired and then transplanted here). These are underplanted with lavender and specimens of the dwarf olive Olea europaea Little

Ollie (= ‘Montra’) echoing the canopy above.

Then there is a shock: the entrance court is planted up with what is described as a ‘museum’ of cactus and succulent species set amid rocks. James says this has been deliberately engineered. There is further intrigue from the sound of water – emanating from a number of raised pools set in the courts around the building complex. Banks of Equisetum

IN BRIEF What Modernist courts meet meadow garden. Where Woodside, California. Size Three acres. Soil Loamy clay. Climate Mediterranean, with heavy rainfall in winter. Hardiness zone USDA 9a.

Facing page Muhlenbergia capillaris Regal Mist (= ‘Lenca’), seen here in the foreground, forms drifts of colour and movement, while Juncus effusus, Juncus patens ‘Carman’s Gray’ and Siberian irises ‘Caesar’s Brother’ and ‘Sky Wings’ line the drainage swale. This page Terraces of Corten steel planted with Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote’, Stachys byzantina, Artemisia schmidtiana and Cerastium tomentosum rise up to a microvineyard next to the guest house, which forms the last of the court pavilions facing the house.