INSIDE: N Classified Marketplace, page 63 N Puzzles, page 64
Home Front ABCs OF VEGGIES ... Jody Main, food and garden writer and an expert in edible landscape design, will teach “How to Start Your Vegetable Garden” on Saturday, May 15, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Common Ground Educational Center, 559 College Ave., Palo Alto. The class, which includes a plant list and recipes, will cover organic planting methods, including growing heirloom vegetables, traditional Native American methods of planting and summer harvesting techniques. Cost is $31 plus a $5 materials fee. Information: 650-493-6072 or www.commongroundinpaloalto. org or http://veggiegarden.eventbrite.com. PRUNING FRUIT TREES ... Master arborist Dave Muffly will offer a workshop on pruning fruit trees on Saturday, May 15, from 9 a.m. to noon. The workshop, which is sponsored by Canopy, will take place at a private home in Los Altos with decades-old trees that offer a range of learning opportunities. Cost is $25. Information: 650-424-2448 or susanpa@sonic.net. CARE FOR CACTI ... Robin Stockwell will talk about “How to Care for Your Succulents” on Tuesday, May 18, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Gamble Garden Carriage House, 1431 Waverley St., Palo Alto. Cost is $40 for nonmembers, $30 for members. Information: 650-329-1356 or www.gamblegarden.org. REPRODUCING PLANTS ... Filoli will offer a hands-on lab in “Plant Propagation” on Tuesday, May 18, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at 86 Cañada Road, Woodside. Topics include vegetative methods — cuttings, layering and division — as well as seed propagation. Fee is $40 for nonmembers, $35 for members. Information: 650-364-8300 or www.filoli.org. CARBON NEUTRAL ... Drew Maran and William Duff will offer a free presentation on “Building a Beautiful Carbon Neutral Home” on Tuesday, May 18, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park. The talk will cover case studies on using sustainable design, (continued on page 44)
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Bali meets Craftsman
Unusual private gardens are on display during The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days story by Aimee Miles photographs by Kimihiro Hoshino
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estled away behind a cedar-shingle house, a Los Altos garden offers a world of complementary opposites — where Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions converge seamlessly, where tropical and deciduous flora cohabitate and bloom in turns, and where nature’s feral beauty is meticulously harnessed to cultivate a paradoxically ordered micro-paradise. The mastermind behind this striking parcel is landscape architect Lisa Moulton, whom the owners called on seven years ago with a vision of remodeling their back yard into a vibrant, perennially blossoming garden that would serve as a stunning venue for outdoor family gatherings. The results of this vision will be on tour during The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days on Saturday, May 15. The couple had previously spent nine years in Hong Kong, and traveled extensively in Asia during their time abroad. Their frequent vacations to Bali left them enchanted with the island’s lush tropical gardens, and they asked Moulton to recreate elements of Balinese style in their California plot. Moulton faced several challenges as a designer — the first of which was to harmonize intricate Southeast Asian aesthetics with the robust Western look of the couple’s Craftsman-style house. “The inside of the house is very formal,” Moulton said. “Outside there’s a little less formality, but there’s a lot of organization. It goes with the house, but it doesn’t feel like Versailles.” Her solution was to create a stylistic gradient spanning from one end of the garden to the other, reflecting a nuanced transition between the Balinese side-garden facing the dining room and the understated Mediterranean look of the vegetable garden and rose-laden trellises framing the garden shed, which matches the Craftsmanstyle wood shingles and white trim of the house. The pool itself is the unifying centerpiece — a shimmering blue facet set amidst a spectrum of verdant greens, whose flowing fountains and naturalistic curvature more closely resemble a fish pond than a swimming pool. Moulton chose the pool’s freeform outline in favor of a more structured footprint in order (continued on page 43)
The freeform pool (clockwise, from top), a unifying centerpiece to the East-West design, is surrounded by colorful lavender and other blooms; the front yard offers a mix of Asian and Western-style plantings, including a lawn; the Balinese side garden includes a statue of Buddha. *> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ >ÞÊ£{]ÊÓä£äÊU Page 41