Sage Outdoor Designs » landscape design

Just a quick image for today of a lovely little fence I came across in Northpark. I’m just a sucker for cute Craftsman details. Now, if only the fire hydrant was restored to its original brass (one or two of them around town are)!

I adore this front yard in Mission Hills and have been meaning to show it off to y’all for some time now.

There are a lot of things I like about it (whoever trims those Chinese Elms deserves a medal for it) but the one thing I wanted to talk about today is designing a garden using only a single flower color. In this case they used white, arguably the most elegant and understated choice. It contrasts wonderfully with the clean greens and pulls everything together into a single composition.

Most of these are very common plants, like the Lantana ‘White Lightning’ in the foreground, ‘Iceberg’ Roses, and ‘Tiny Towers’ Italian Cypress, but the combination of them is just flawless. If anyone knows who designed this, please leave a comment and let us know!

It takes a lot of restraint to limit yourself to one flower color, but it is a simple way to get a designer look, with or without a designer. This is absolutely a look you can duplicate at home! If you don’t like white, how about red?…

I think there is no style that makes it into the magazines more often than the English Garden, especially the national magazines. A lot of people love the style but assume it can’t be done in Southern California. I disagree! I think you can get the look with plants that grow well here.

Here are just a few that would be perfect for a formal garden to accompany a Tudor style house: box hedge (Buxus microphylla), Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’, white Birch, and holly (Ilex wilsonii is often grown as a small tree, very round and compact). I also like adding rose trees, especially the Flower Carpet Scarlet, for a kind of a queen-of-hearts aesthetic.

So I can imagine getting some disagreement when I say that Flower Carpet roses are hands-down the easiest roses to grow. By all means, leave me a comment if you have a rose you’d like to nominate instead! But, I’ll take some convincing….

Flower Carpet roses have been around for almost 15 years now and are unique from the other major rose categories (ie. floribunda or hybrid tea) because they produce new growth from their roots. A rose that doesn’t have to stand as ugly bare canes in the winter- whoever thought of it is a genius! You can literally runs these things down with your lawnmower and they will grow back even more beautifully. They are covered in blossoms throughout the spring and summer, especially the red, pink (apple blossom) and white. The orange (amber) and yellow are a little less vigorous and have a taller, less compact shape where the flowers are mostly born on stalks that stand out a bit above the foliage.

I always find myself wishing for more plants in the 18″-24″ height range and these fit that niche perfectly. As you can see from the photos, they look great in mass plantings.

There are a lot of knock-offs now, like “Floral Carpet”, and I have less experience with those, although I expect that they are fine and may even be grown from the same stock. I tend to stick with the Monrovia trademarked Flower Carpet, since then I know they will be top quality.

If you know me, you probably already know about my obsessive love of tile. Every once in a while, my love for it gets strong enough to be worth sharing. These are two tile companies that definitely meet that criteria.

Before I wax poetic about them too much, I do want to put forth the warning that both of these companies are expensive. The best tile usually is. The key to using it is to keep two things in mind: 1) search for small spaces where tile will have a big impact since it is a high cost per square foot. For instance, think backsplash instead of the whole kitchen, or waterline instead of the whole pool. 2) Buy tile that will stand the test of time. Classic eras of tile like Malibu and Batchelder are still considered beautiful almost a century later. When you think in those terms, the expense for really good tile starts to sound worth it.

The first photo is Heath tile (distributed by Ann Sacks, or here is a direct link to the Heath website). This tile line was started on the north coast of California in the late 1940’s and is hand made with a focus on sustainable manufacturing. I especially love their dimensional tile for its wonderful tactile quality. I can imagine spending my life running my hand along the ridges in the tile as I walked through that doorway, and being pretty darned happy about it.

The second photo is a local company out of Encinitas, Laird Plumleigh. They specialize in Craftsman and Batchelder tile, so if you are working on a restoration project, you might want to start here. I love the fiddleleaf fern design in the outdoor shower, but they also have a lot more than just tile on their website. Spend some time there- the lanterns alone are worth the visit.

Considering tile in your outdoor space? We’d love to help with the design! There are a lot of ways to get in touch with us through our website, www.sageoutdoordesigns.com