Sacred Spaces
I was called out to this property to help with a very narrow scope of work: satisfy the Mill Valley fire department. Brush needed to be cleared. 3’ weeds needed to be pulled and cut. The dry meadow needed to be mowed. I don’t normally do maintenance, but when I arrived, I saw the bones of one of the nicer properties I’ve come across. I wanted to see the property restored. So I took the job.
It was a real pleasure to see a home and garden that truly impressed me. I learned that an architect had built the home for his parents and the love and attention to detail really showed. That being said, it was very neglected. Moles had destroyed the lawn. It had not been pruned in years and there were so many weeds that it was impossible to see all the amazing specimens.
My client was a young man with a lot on his mind, so the normal design approach wouldn’t work. Rather, I found that he liked to make one decision at a time and spend around $15k per 6 months doing something that was easy to think about. Over several years following this approach, I was able to restore the garden to its original glory and add a few embellishments, such as the lighted agate stepping stones below.
When the client decided to sell the property, I borrowed experience from my days as a General Contractor on Whidbey Island and saw that the inside was restored as well, refinishing all the floors, putting new carpet down, painting, cleaning the windows, and many smaller jobs. I knew that if I didn’t take the initiative, these things would not get done with such an absentminded client and the realtor was grateful for my help. We both knew that the house could not get top dollar in its present condition.
When making adjustments to a well-designed property, one of the most important things is not to dilute the design by introducing too many new elements. When I added a gate to keep the client’s dogs in part of the garden, I was careful to match the existing style and paint of the perimeter fence. It turned out that the metal fence was painted using a Porsche car paint, which led me to learn how Porsches are painted and to do the most extensive paint preparation for a fence in my career. One of the finest aspects of this house was the way that the inside extended naturally to the outside. For all of its five acres of land and majesty, it was only a 3 bedroom house.
It had a separate pool building that was covered in vines when I arrived and proved quite a challenge to restore while working over a swimming pool. One thing I love about fine design is that it is worth restoring and preserving. It would have taken just as much work to restore a poor design, but this house and landscape was fun to bring back because it was so carefully and tastefully thought-out to begin with.
The crystal fountain was my personal favorite part of this project. Crystals are 40-200 million years old and each one is a total original. Then there is the fact that they look even more beautiful at night when lit up and bring year -round-interest to a garden. Add to that the fact that they are drought-tolerant, deer resistant and don’t need weeding and it’s amazing there are not more people integrating them into their gardens.
I found an amazing Brazilian quartz point weighing one hundred and twelve pounds and I thought it was stunning. I designed a sketch for my client with a three rivers flagstone base and showed him what it would look like in the vanishing pool that was already there. Threading low voltage wire through existing conduit so that it could all be lit up at night made such a difference.
Then there was the question of what to do with the large planters on the tiled patio. The client would never water them and they had no irrigation. I decided that the best thing would be to create art with crystals and crystal tumbles to tie into the water feature. These would not require any water or maintenance. Xeriscaping is a form of design that eliminates all need for water. Arranging rocks in beautiful paintings of color and texture is a great xeriscaping technique.
http://www.mysticallandscapes.com/portfolio/#/sacred-spaces/
It was a real pleasure to see a home and garden that truly impressed me. I learned that an architect had built the home for his parents and the love and attention to detail really showed. That being said, it was very neglected. Moles had destroyed the lawn. It had not been pruned in years and there were so many weeds that it was impossible to see all the amazing specimens.
My client was a young man with a lot on his mind, so the normal design approach wouldn’t work. Rather, I found that he liked to make one decision at a time and spend around $15k per 6 months doing something that was easy to think about. Over several years following this approach, I was able to restore the garden to its original glory and add a few embellishments, such as the lighted agate stepping stones below.
When the client decided to sell the property, I borrowed experience from my days as a General Contractor on Whidbey Island and saw that the inside was restored as well, refinishing all the floors, putting new carpet down, painting, cleaning the windows, and many smaller jobs. I knew that if I didn’t take the initiative, these things would not get done with such an absentminded client and the realtor was grateful for my help. We both knew that the house could not get top dollar in its present condition.
When making adjustments to a well-designed property, one of the most important things is not to dilute the design by introducing too many new elements. When I added a gate to keep the client’s dogs in part of the garden, I was careful to match the existing style and paint of the perimeter fence. It turned out that the metal fence was painted using a Porsche car paint, which led me to learn how Porsches are painted and to do the most extensive paint preparation for a fence in my career. One of the finest aspects of this house was the way that the inside extended naturally to the outside. For all of its five acres of land and majesty, it was only a 3 bedroom house.
It had a separate pool building that was covered in vines when I arrived and proved quite a challenge to restore while working over a swimming pool. One thing I love about fine design is that it is worth restoring and preserving. It would have taken just as much work to restore a poor design, but this house and landscape was fun to bring back because it was so carefully and tastefully thought-out to begin with.
The crystal fountain was my personal favorite part of this project. Crystals are 40-200 million years old and each one is a total original. Then there is the fact that they look even more beautiful at night when lit up and bring year -round-interest to a garden. Add to that the fact that they are drought-tolerant, deer resistant and don’t need weeding and it’s amazing there are not more people integrating them into their gardens.
I found an amazing Brazilian quartz point weighing one hundred and twelve pounds and I thought it was stunning. I designed a sketch for my client with a three rivers flagstone base and showed him what it would look like in the vanishing pool that was already there. Threading low voltage wire through existing conduit so that it could all be lit up at night made such a difference.
Then there was the question of what to do with the large planters on the tiled patio. The client would never water them and they had no irrigation. I decided that the best thing would be to create art with crystals and crystal tumbles to tie into the water feature. These would not require any water or maintenance. Xeriscaping is a form of design that eliminates all need for water. Arranging rocks in beautiful paintings of color and texture is a great xeriscaping technique.
http://www.mysticallandscapes.com/portfolio/#/sacred-spaces/
