Featured Garden: Penngrove Landscape Design & Installation

Covered with scrub oak, and redwood and pine seedlings, this one-acre property with dozens of mature redwood trees in the background, sat on three different elevations.

One of the challenges for Details Landscape Art, a Penngrove landscape contractor, was to transition from one level of the garden to another. There was an old rotting deck at the threshold level of the back door with narrow steps down to the garden. The outdoor living area was expanded by creating a series of five semicircular steps down from the back French doors to a sweeping flagstone patio. Around the perimeter of the patio an eighteen-inch high retaining wall was built, faced with cultured stone and capped with flagstone to provide additional seating. On the slope behind the patio/seat wall a cascading waterfall beginning back under the redwoods and ferns winds down into a koi pond directly behind the seat wall. The sound of running water and low voltage lighting add a nice flavor to an expansive and inviting entertainment area.

Flagstone steppingstone stairs down from the patio led to a new lower lawn area bordered by a perennial garden and an L-shaped redwood three-tiered arbor framing a small intimate flagstone patio.

Another stone retaining wall and steppingstones transitioned from this lower side area around and up to the front entry and the upper lawn area. Several Japanese maples, large placement boulders and a smaller pass-through arbor gave this entry and transition area an Asian flavor.