A resilient landscape keeps working, and stays beautiful, under the pressures California now puts on it: fire, drought, habitat loss and a changing climate. The resilience is in the design choices, not the absence of a garden.
The six reinforce each other more than they conflict: a well-chosen native palette is low-water, supports habitat and, placed and spaced correctly, is safer in a fire. The craft is resolving all of it on one real site, with a real budget and a client's real life in the middle.
The six themes
Fire-safe by design
The right plants in the right places, non-combustible materials near structures, and defensible space that still reads as a garden. In the first five feet from the house, paving and gravel, no bark mulch, and very little planting; from five to thirty, irrigated plants kept free of dead growth, with space between them and trees limbed up. Outdoor dining in a high fire zone, Orinda →
California native + climate-adapted
Plants chosen for this place and a changing climate: beautiful, low-input, and alive with birds, bees and butterflies. A front lawn turned native garden, Palo Alto →
Water-wise, not barren
Low-water gardens that read layered and textural, carried through the dry months by seasonal planting. A no-mow native meadow, Stanford →
Edible + productive
Fruit trees, kitchen gardens, and edibles woven into the ornamental landscape, from years designing edible landscapes at Farmscape. A rooftop kitchen garden →
Living soil, materials that age well
Living soil is the whole game: compost, mulch matched to the site, no plastic weed cloth, ever. Materials chosen to age well.
Clean Bay by design
Rain gardens, permeable paving and bioretention that keep stormwater on site and meet the Bay Area's C.3 clean-water rules where they apply.
Fire, water and stormwater rules change. Anything here is re-checked before I apply it to your project.