Garden Tour Offers Perennial Delight

Take time to “smell the roses” by attending the town’s annual garden tour taking place from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 9. Sponsored by the Pacific Palisades Garden Club, this year’s event features six distinctive private gardens. In addition, attendees can spruce up their own gardens via a plant market staged in the parking lot of the Palisades Branch Library, 861 Alma Real Dr., from noon to 4 p.m. Tickets, $20, are available for advance purchase at The Outdoor Room Nursery, 17311 Sunset Blvd. and at the Sunday farmers market on Swarthmore. They will also be sold the day of the event at each of the sites. Proceeds are used to provide horticultural scholarships and fund community beautification projects. Contact: 454-7826. The Lively Italian Garden”’1343 Amalfi Drive Wanted: Garden to complement handsome Italianate-style house, formal but playful, pink, fragrant, with inviting paths. Found: This lively garden! The entrance, with its pair of tall topiaries, accents of Italian cypress, cobbled axial paths, and geometric beds are indeed formal, but within the regularity of box and teucrium edging, pink tumbling bonica roses soften and enliven. (Italian gardens are rarely colorful.) Round armillary sundial and round fountain echo each other. The iron loggia is clothed in pink and white fragrance: pandorea, Jasminum polyanthum, and Mme. Alfred Carrier rose. A path leads past Osmanthus fragrans, espaliered magnolia and Saint Francis to the left; to the right, glimpse 50-year-old olive trees and glorious mountain views. The pool, surrounded by handsome stone walls, is playful with arching water jets. Formal obelisks become fanciful by whimsical shell surfacing. Beyond the pool are roses for cutting and a dombeya which blooms with round pink hanging balls. Next to a wisteria tree is a mix of vining wisteria and pandorea on the dining loggia. A great variety of beautifully planted urns and containers everywhere add elegance, color and design. The side yard contains an herb garden, a formal entrance to the laundry room, an outdoor shower and specially designed hutch for five lucky rabbits. The side gate opens out to cobbled drive which is to be adjusted with construction of tennis court and guest house on adjacent lot. The designer of this beautiful garden is March Wiseley of Stone Canyon Gardens. East Coast Cottage Garden”’811 Galloway Peering over the picket fence, one is immediately captivated by the engaging charm of both house and garden. It’s easy to recognize the owner/designer’s intent to recreate the East Coast ambiance that she had left behind. The front yard entrance gate is framed by two topiary Italian cypress. Dodonaea and blue cypress are used to block views into front windows. A pair of oak leaf hydrangeas frame Adirondack garden chairs. Camellias, white Breath of Heaven and red leafed azalea “Little John” are dominant features of this cottage-style enclosure. Enter the side yard and find the remarkable use of Plectrantrus argentatus as a vigorous vine. More vines, two Eden roses flanking a climbing Iceberg, as well as hydrangeas, Osmanthus fragrans and Geranium maderense are behind the portable garden shed. Note that the lot line is on the diagonal, making the garden seem larger and forming three small triangles to the rear behind the house. Because of the smallness of the house, it was important for this garden to function as an expanded living room. The far corner is the children’s area, with a deck bordered by their plantings of strawberries and herbs. Ferns, hydrangeas, and camellias are prominent plants and ground covers of baby tears, Dymondia and Campanula fill in areas between the unusual stripped pavers, a unifying feature for this comfortable and appealing cottage garden. Jewel Against Sea and Sky”’17646 Tramonto Sky and sea are the main features of this cliff-top garden. Because space is at a premium, it is appropriate to design the garden like a jewel placed amid nature’s magnificent setting. Garden and house are seen as one as plants have been chosen to reflect the color and harmonize with the architecture of the house. At street level are found two species of agave’A. attenuata and A. parryi’and three species of euphorbia, “Sticks on Fire” being the most eye-catching. Conspicuous ground covers are the beautiful red-orange gazania and the blue succulent Senecio mandraliscae. Euphorbia tirucalli, “pencil plant,” grows in a planter by the front door. Enter the gate to the terrace and be greeted by a large container planted with gold eleagnus, bronze loquat and mattress vine. Down the steps and tucked in under a chorisia or silk floss tree, is a flagstone fountain, framed to blend with the house, with water falling over the horizontal edges’a perfect solution to the problem of wind-blown water drops. This garden has been planned to meet the challenges of wind, salt spray and even blowing sand. A container of dodonea and westringia screens neighbors. With elegant intent, no plants are allowed to obstruct this view, across tiles and through rails, to the grandeur of sea and sky. Stephanie Wilson Blanc designed the garden. Four Gardens of Delight”’16927 Dulce Ynez Lane This house boasts four distinct gardens. Enter first to the back through the utility garden dedicated to vegetables and roses. Here are “wrong-colored” roses, i.e., colors not appropriate in the other gardens but beautiful for cutting. Through a second gate one enters into the informal elegance of an Italian garden, a style chosen to honor three resident Italian greyhounds. Gravel paths and terraces are splendid for their running exercises. A bubbling ceramic jar acts as the focal point for the axes of paths and three olive trees. Two pairs of dwarf Italian cypress, “Tiny Towers,” frame a westringia hedge and act as exclamation points to a floral mural. A yellow, orange, gold and white scheme reigns within box borders and on citrus terraces. Imagine this garden in the moonlight with a silvery sheen on gravel, olives and gray foliage. Walk through another enclosed transition garden, passing Euphorbia cotinifolia and a cascading fountain to enter the “Christmas Gift Garden,” a December surprise. This English cottage garden, explained as a “home for indigent hedgehogs,” delights the visitor with surrounding all-season blooms. Design of rear and side gardens is by Kelly Comras, landscape architect, with design and maintenance of front by Carol Wyner of Second Nature Design. A Garden for All Reasons”’955 Hartzell A garden designer for 26 years, Ivy Reid has planned her own personal garden for various reasons: to incorporate the practices of biodynamics using special compost to grow vegetables and herbs for kitchen and gift-making; to satisfy all the senses; to design with a series of vignettes or rooms using feng shui principles to create energy and provide a retreat to nurture and calm body, mind and spirit. From the David Austin roses for potpourri and the vegetable and herb parterre in the front, to the meditation water garden and landscaping library in the rear, these objectives are being met. Reminders of recent Asian travels are the welcoming Thai bed and her new interest in tropicals. Note the unusual cryptocereus (rick rack cactus) hanging within the lattice arch in the front as well as the red and green ti and the taro in the central border. On the other side of the border, wander along the plant trail among the grasses. Enjoy the sounds and shapes of the lotus fountain and realize that these many design goals have been beautifully achieved in a most satisfying and exuberant garden that is used and enjoyed daily. The Many Starred Garden”’500 Toyopa The unexpected begins to unfold on entrance as one passes between a pair of unusual fragrant shrubs, Prunus laurocerasus, and across a wide bridge over a horizontal pond. Emphasis here is on shapes and leaf color. Note the two groupings of four Fagus sylvatica “Dawyck,” a columnar copper European beech, and the lines of hydrangea, box and red-edged photinia hedge. More of this garden can only be peeped at from a path; to enter, use the Almoloya Drive gate. Here the garden opens out to a large lawn bordered by a splendid variety of citrus, stone fruit and figs. Beyond the pool rises a huge rocky escarpment down from which splashes water from ledge to ledge. Steps lead up to the main level of the house, which looks out over a long wood deck enhanced by collections of handsomely planted green and brown containers. Behind the shade structure is the stream, the beginning of the main water feature, moving over and around rocks to flow over the cliff edge and course down to the papyrus pool below. Above all this swing constellations of large electrified stars, a fitting touch to this star of a garden. Sean Knibbs selected and arranged the plants for the garden and pots.