A SENSE OF CALM
This minimalist garden offers a welcome antidote to the busy streets of Los Angeles
“THE IPE WOOD DECKING HAS BEEN CLEVERLY CONSTRUCTED TO INCORPORATE THE EXISTING TREES”
Whether it’s Sunset Strip, Venice Beach or the film studios of Hollywood, Los Angeles is not a city generally associated with calm – which is what makes this garden, set high in the Hollywood Hills, all the more remarkable. ‘There’s so much hustle and bustle in LA,’ says Mintee Kalra of garden design firm Peruse. ‘You have to drive to get up here, through all the traffic and the chaos, so when you arrive, I wanted there to be the feeling of an exhale.’
The garden, which belongs to a house designed in the 1970s by LA architect Fred Smathers, an early proponent of outdoor living, is extraordinarily restful. In part this is achieved through its restrained palette of both materials and plants but there are other tricks at work, too. Mintee – a former fashion designer – was keen that the garden should channel the languid, voluptuous feeling of gardens she’d visited in Provence while travelling for her job. ‘I love that culture of lingering over meals and enjoying an intimacy in the company you’re with,’ she says.
To that end, she designed the garden as a social space with three key gathering areas – the kitchen, dining area and lounge – acting as anchors, connected by a swathe of gravel that crunches satisfyingly underfoot. The kitchen and dining areas are set on a lower level to enhance the sense of seclusion and ease, while the raised lounge space, with its outdoor sofas and board-formed concrete fire pit, feels even more cosy and cocooned thanks to its jasmine-draped perimeter walls, which Mintee extended to heighten the effect.
The climate in LA (warm and often very dry) is comparable to that of Provence, so Mintee was able to use a similar plant palette too, choosing plants with multisensory appeal. There are jasmine and lavender for scent; evergreen cherry laurel (Prunus caroliniana), Australian rosemary (Westringia fruticosa) and spiky, drought-tolerant Agave ‘Blue Glow’ for their contrasting foliage and, most dramatic of all, two wonderfully gnarled 40-year-old olive trees (Olea europaea ‘Sevillano’), which frame the space and provide some much-needed shade. Fifteen feet tall, weighing 6,000lbs and each with a 6ft x 2ft root ball, getting these into the garden was no easy matter. ‘It was one of those hold-your-breath moments,’ says Mintee. ‘We brought them as far as we could on a flatbed truck and then used a skyjack to bring them the last quarter of a mile up the hairpin bends to the house. A long-reach crane then made the final lift to hoist them into place.’
The effort was well worth it. Their twisting, characterful trunks add a feeling of age and permanence to the garden, which was only completed last summer, and their feathered canopies filter the light, adding far more interest and biodiversity than a pergola or sunshade might. Combined with the other trees (crepe myrtles, chosen for their year-round interest, and some tall existing eucalyptus with fabulous peeling bark) they also cast beautiful shadows on the concrete walls in the garden, adding a further dimension to the space.
The colour palette is deliberately minimal, an elegant mix of silvers and blue-toned greens, with pops of lavender and white (from the jasmine and westringia flowers) and bright magenta from existing bougainvilleas, which Mintee had lace pruned to make them more delicate. And yet, despite all the restraint, the overall effect is one of calm abundance, with plants repeated throughout the garden and grouped together in some areas to form lush patchworks of planting. ‘This repetition of plant materials is very important to me,’ says Mintee. ‘It adds cadence and rhythm and, even though it’s very simple, it always feels luxurious.’