Flora’s Berkeley Garden

The stepping stones are sliced basalt from American Soil & Stone in Richmond, honed smooth on both faces and left rough at the edges. They sit in plain pea gravel (also called Pami pebble), the cheapest gravel at any rock yard, which also replaced the lawn. Because the stones are only set in gravel, Flora can shift them to make room for plants.

The front garden replaced a lawn and a slab of concrete. An Acacia cognata and a Brahea clara palm screen the picture window from the street, backed by a tall hedge of Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Silver Magic’. Under them, soft green mounds of Acacia cognata ‘Cousin Itt’ spill toward the path between round boxwoods (Buxus ‘Green Mountain’) and rosettes of Aeonium ‘Mint Saucer’.

Beside the porch grow dianella, Farfugium japonicum ‘Giganteum’, and the blue fern Phlebodium aureum ‘Blue Star’. Around the fountain, a white pot, grows its green cousin Phlebodium pseudoaureum (also in the close-up) with Asparagus retrofractus. Out in the gravel are low growers that need little water: Ceanothus ‘Diamond Heights’, silvery Leucophyta brownii, Santolina ‘Lemon Fizz’, and Dymondia margaretae.

The white wire chairs and side table are from Bend Goods in Los Angeles. The green vessel on the porch is Bauer Pottery’s 12 Inch Oil Jar in Chartreuse, made in California.

The tall, pencil-stemmed plant in the terracotta pot is Euphorbia leucodendron. At its feet are the striped Haworthia ‘Variegata’ and the fuzzy white cactus Oreocereus trollii.

Elsewhere in the garden grow Beschorneria ‘Flamingo Glow’, the twisted black locust Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Twisty Baby’, and Grevillea ‘Peaches & Cream’.

The minute Flora and Greyson saw this ugly little Berkeley cottage, they knew it was the perfect home for them. A tiny house left room for an oversized front and backyard. Here’s what the front of the house looked like before:

The Backyard

A garden’s furnished spaces tend to evolve over time, too, as you learn how best to enjoy the light and shade in different seasons. Flora’s gardens—both the manicured front yard and the wilder, more free-form backyard—were designed to allow her and Greyson to follow the sun throughout the day, with sitting and lounging areas sprinkled everywhere.

Flora loves covered spaces because you can use them spontaneously, without having to sweep or mess around with the furniture much. Blankets, pillows, and rugs make these spaces feel like additional rooms of the house, to be used just as comfortably and as often as the indoor rooms.

In the backyard, a ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) blooms in a pot beside the bench. A Norfolk Island palm (Rhopalostylis baueri) and Kniphofia thomsonii grow in the back yard too, along with Westringia ‘Wynyabbie Highlight’ and the palm Chamaedorea plumosa. The tree in many of the backyard photos is a fruiting Persian mulberry.

Here’s a photo of the backyard before Flora started making changes.