Before beginning work on a steep site above San Francisco’s Glen Park, Anastasia Sonkin and Taylor Palmer of Talc Studio encountered a space that felt closer to a neglected woodland than a city garden. Beneath years of leaf litter and overgrowth were remnants of old San Francisco cobblestones, a surviving tree fern, a buried gingko, and a single redwood casting shifting bands of dry shade across the slope. “It was a disaster when we first got there,” says Palmer. “But it felt really magical.”
The clients—a couple working in education and tech, both transplants to San Francisco—had bought the property knowing its complications: more than 50 steps from the street to the house and garden, steep grades throughout, and difficult planting conditions beneath a mature redwood canopy. Rather than clearing the site back entirely, Talc Studio approached the landscape as something to read first, preserving the existing vernacular while reorganizing the way it could be lived in. They designed a redwood stair off-center to encourage a slower, more meandering movement through the garden and resisted heavily terracing the slope, mixing flatter gathering spaces among planted inclines so the landscape would continue to feel like a small woodland rather than a series of constructed tiers.
Dry shade beneath a mature redwood is among the more difficult planting conditions to work with, and much of the project evolved through close observation. Over the course of a year, the designers mapped changing light conditions across the property, paying attention to seasonal shifts in sun, moisture, and canopy cover and placing plants accordingly. Australian and South African species sit among California natives, ferns, meadow grasses, palms, and perennial Dichondra repens in a palette drawn from layered greens. Reclaimed redwood, cedar decking, shaded seating areas, and moments of dappled light create a garden that feels less formally composed than slowly settled into place.
Photography by Jorden DeGaetano, courtesy of Talc Studio.
For more of Talc Studio’s work see our previous posts:
- Designer Visit: A ‘Magical Green Pocket Garden’ in San Francisco
- Landscape Design Visit: ‘Moving Art’ in a San Francisco Yard by Talc Studio
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