"This garden needed more than just pretty plantings. It had to be functional and family-friendly,” says landscape designer Erica Timbrell. The Bay Area cottage garden is an integral part of a young family’s second home, serving as a busy living and dining room, in use day and night. In addition to choosing plants that could handle kids hopping around the garden, Timbrell devised a program of rooms around the pool that are equally welcoming to children and adults.
“This garden has so many inviting places to gather. There’s restraint in the plantings. And those beds with the wattle fencing! I would not have thought of that.” —Bunny Williams, author and interior designer.
She refinished an existing pool and chose gray limestone pavers as decking to extend into the living spaces, including where a dining terrace is framed by a pair of L-shaped garden beds. “Raised vegetable beds are typically messy, not something you want front and center,” says Timbrell, who tidied these up for more prominent placement with large-scale willow panels from the Willow Farm in Pescadero, California. “It’s a creative way to dress up less-predictable plantings.”
And by aligning the kitchen garden with the dining table, Timbrell delivers more than an additional sense of order. “Now you know just where to go when you need an extra sprig of mint for a mojito,” she says. And the showstoppers: a leggy parade of Incrediball hydrangeas lighting up a leafy privacy wall of English ivy before giving way to a natural stone border. This seems to merge with the hillside, which stretches into a woodland of California redwoods. “Depending on when you arrive, you can hear kids playing or birds singing,” says Timbrell. “It’s designed as a primary living area.”
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This article originally appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of VERANDA.
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of VERANDA.
2021 Outdoor Living Award Winner for Cocktail Hour’s Most Coveted.
Design by Erica Timbrell Design.
