Every time I see a Pine House Edible Gardens project, I smile.
Photography by Caitlin Atkinson, courtesy of Pine House Edible Gardens.
“We jam pack our gardens with reasons for our clients to be in them,” says Holly Kuljian, landscape architect and principal of the San Francisco Bay area-based landscape design firm. extremely steep) backyard, building out distinct areas, including an orchard, kitchen garden, and firepit.
A pathway lined with concrete pavers and a carpet of drought-tolerant South African groundcover Dymondia margaretae takes you from the house to the vegetable garden. Hot pink Salvia chiapensis, orange kangaroo paws, bright coral Russelia equisetiformis add bursts of vibrant color.
Kuljian created a cozy nook for a firepit with a mix of foliage in various textures and colors like the low-growing succulent Graptoveria ‘Fred Ives’, bright orange ‘Amber Velvet’ kangaroo paws, and large bronzy Canna ‘Intrigue’.
The stumps were repurposed from a diseased cedar tree that had to be taken down on the property.
Kuljian accentuated a wood retaining wall that borders the orchard with cane berries (thornless blackberry, golden raspberry ‘Fall Gold’, and raspberry ‘Willamette Red’), underplanting them with silvery-blue Senecio mandraliscae.
They drilled holes into metal posts and fed cables through them for the berries to climb.
You won’t find a thirsty monoculture lawn here. Kuljian added plants with different foliage colors: dark burgundy Leucadendron ‘Ebony’, Euphorbia ‘Blackbird’, smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria) to complement chartreuse, sword-like Cordyline ‘Torbay Dazzler’ and Coleonema ‘Sunset Gold’.
For the strip along the driveway, Kuljian grouped plants together to create swathes of colors for a cohesive look that lines of the driveway.
To dress up an unremarkable fence around the property, the team stained it a teal-slate, which makes the plants growing near it, like bougainvillea and passionfruit vine ‘Fredrick’, really pop.
“This path, packed with colorful plants, feels both wild and really coordinated at the same time,” says Kuljian.
A detail from the front yard.
In the backyard, shaggy Acacia ‘Cousin Itt’ mixes with ‘Sunshine Blue’ blueberry, silvery blue Senecio vitalis, black Aeonium ‘Zwartkop’, and a tall Aloe ‘Hercules’.