Los Altos Residence
A family garden with a sense of humor — a garden railway, a resident dinosaur, and rooms that keep growing with the family.
Built for watching the grandkids grow.
Oak root fungus was moving through the yard, taking plants with it, and the lawn was more than anyone needed. What the owner wanted instead was a garden for her own pleasure — and a place to watch her grandkids grow. The design kept the redwoods and mature canopy she loved.
The rusted-steel dinosaur browsing the shrubbery above the lawn was her idea, not mine: she'd admired them for years on drives past the sculpture yards along Highway 92.
The garden railway — tunnel, station, and all — brought the family's own trains out of a back building and into the front planting. A children's garden anchors one corner: a basalt-column fountain over river pebbles, and a raised planter for gardening with the grandkids.
I designed the garden and built the first phase in 2009; Flora Farm Landscaping installed the front yard in 2012. I tended it through its first years, down to tracking the family's water bills to make sure it lived as lightly as it looked.
Three generations live there now, the train still gets dressed up for Halloween and Christmas, and as the owner puts it, the garden "keeps maturing into a wonderful space for entertaining and family gatherings."
