Friday, June 17, 2016

MISSION VIEJO GARDEN

Kill your lawn and increase your property value! This has been my motto for the past few years and I stand by it.  I get that if you need lawn for kids or dogs then by all means have it and hopefully you utilize more sustainable lawn options like Carex pansa.  But otherwise I just don't see the point.  In this case my clients in Mission Viejo had lawn and cracked concrete that they wanted to replace. The kids had fled the nest and having the lawn was no longer necessary.  Their driveway was cracked and needed to be overhauled as it had also created various trip hazards.

In this case there was only one solution...  Gut everything and start from scratch.  The design intent was to use soft set flagstone throughout most of the garden and only mortar set it where it was necessary to do so.  We also used California native plants to help bring in the local wildlife and added two rain barrels to catch whatever water comes out of the gutter.  That combined with some boulders and accessories makes this a true sustainable garden.



The materials we used are:

  • Flagstone - color butternut (formerly known as oaklahoma buckskin) from Resource Building Materials in Lake Forest.  They also have several other locations.   
  • Rain barrels - provided by the homeowners local water agency.  
  • Boulders - already existing on site and re-purposed.
  • Plants:
    • Existing Crape Myrtles
    • Arctostaphylos densiflora 'Howard McMinn' - McMinn Manzanira
    • Calylophus hartweggii - Sundrops
    • Eriophyllum nevenii - Catalina Silverlace
    • Galvezia juncea 'Gran Canon' - Baja Bush Snapdragon
    • Mahonia aquifolium - Oregon Grape
    • Oenothera speciosa 'Rosea' - Pink Evening Primrose
    • Salvia clevelandii - Cleveland Sage
    • Salvia clevelandii 'Alan Chickering' - Alan Chickering Cleveland Sage
    • Salvia greggii 'Coral' - Coral Autumn Sage


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