Desert Meditation Garden

A big project I am currently working on right now is a meditation garden in the southern California desert at a small hot springs spa. The garden will be on what is now four residential-sized lots that will be sandwiched between the delightful 7 room spa and a new treatment center that will house massage rooms. This new garden will have a labyrinth, a large outdoor gathering area for yoga, 5 private meditation pods, a small desert Zen garden, and a fire pit. Both the hot daytime heat and the cool desert evenings will be taken into account so that it will be comfortable and magical experience no matter when one is there. We will use desert plants that the owners have on hand after having purchased a nursery that was going out of business. Right now we are in the design stages and getting the irrigation put in to make sure the first year of planting does well. Virtually all of the plants are native to the desert southwest so it will be a sustainable landscape. There is also some run-off from the spa pool into a small area that we will built the Zen garden around. The view of the San Jacinto Mountains to the south and the Joshua Tree National Park to the north will be a feature of the garden. The photo of the landscape is the actual property, the next is the view from the spa, and the other shots are of plants that I saw while visiting nurseries in the area.

Little Urban Gem

I'm currently working on a yard in Seattle that needs to have a new life. The family is growing up and the kids are leaving so Mom wants a renewed and more useful yard for this. We started this project back in October...well, September, really - but due to weather and the busy schedule of the client it really got off the ground right after the big Halloween party that she and her neighbors have at her house each year. The goal is to make an urban garden on the south side of the house, fix the not-too-effective middle yard that drains into the outside basement stairway and provide a new outdoor room on the north side of the house for repose and contemplation and to help extend the deck area.

The client wanted to do a lot of the work herself and agreed to tackle the hard work of putting cardboard on the old lawn and covering it with about 4" of mulch to sit there all winter generating itself into the best garden soil ever! This house sits about 12 steps up off the street so hauling all that mulch up to the yard to some time and effort. You can see the before and after shots of the three parts of the yard here - the grassy areas are the old yard, the muddy shots are the new mulch and cardboard turning into new soil. Kind of messy right now but it will be great when it all gets replanted.

We also had a small garden shed built in the north yard which will add charm to the new outdoor room. When spring rolls around we'll put the new plants in and fix the middle area by terracing and creating effective drainage. The north yard with the shed will have a circular seating area surrounded by native plantings that will give it an enclosed feel - the outdoor room! It will look great.