Different Worlds

A love for California native plants inspired the garden in front of this West L.A. bungalow, but what you can’t see from the street is where this leafy passion has led.

Five years ago, Barry Campion and Nicholas Walker of Campion Walker Garden Design helped the owner choose sages, heucheras, artemisias and ceanothus to create her street-side chaparral garden. Later, when she had a guest house built into a hillside below, they crafted a rooftop terrace for it, extending their palette to include such dryland exotics as Ecuadorean polygonum, Australian flax and South African succulents. But the dreamy part was still to come: The owner, an avid traveler whose taste for plants, and knowledge of them, grew faster than her garden, also yearned for some tropicals, though their broad leaves and thirsty nature were incompatible with the existing flora.

Luckily, in building the guest house, a contemporary wood, metal and concrete design by Lubowicki/Lanier Architects, she had already established the theme of compartmentalized eclecticism. Tucked as it is into the sloping lot, the new two-part structure--half copper-clad, half stucco--is invisible to the house above. So is the landscape it overlooks, a piece of ground sliced by a stream and a stand of bamboo that evokes jungle. “The house and guest house coexist on the same land but in separate worlds,” explains architect Susan Lanier. “One faces the public realm, one seems buried in a garden that erupts out of it and around it.”

Like a mussed toupee, dwarf pampas grass sprouts from part of its roof, while sprays of grass-like russelia fill stepped planters around it. Inside, enormous plate-glass windows frame a view of palms and other tropical greens against the feathery bamboo, and skylights let in rustling treetops. Outside, a swath of broken concrete paving divides the growth, bringing order to the forest and forging a path that meanders down, eventually, to the stream.

The same concrete, which covers the roof terrace and appears again near the house, was a garden motif with which Walker and Campion knit their pieces together. “There’s a fine line,” says Campion, “between an interesting plant mix and a hodgepodge. But with the help of a strong, controlling edge and repetitive patterns, you create a whole, and give the eye places to rest.”

To keep the concrete from getting the upper hand, grasses and other ground covers were planted between the paving, suggesting civilization gone gently to seed. The designers also introduced potted plants, especially on the roof terrace, where they add stylish touches to seating spots and showcase the owner’s collection of succulents.

These spiky specimens, which she’s had for years, represent an early phase of her horticultural quest. More recently, she has developed a yen for California bog plants, which Walker and Campion have scattered beside the creek, after building stairs and terraces to clear the way. Instead of the wild berry canes that once choked and obscured the stream, native juncus grass now waves on its banks. Which brings the garden full circle, back to its California roots.

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Campion and Walker’s Garden Inspirations:

* The film “Zabriskie Point,” with its California desert setting.

*”The Sheltering Sky,” Paul Bowles’ novel of expatriate life amid a strange and evocative landscape.

*The late L.A. assemblage artist H.C. Westerman, who had a distinctive, eccentric way of putting disparate elements together into box-style installations.

*Music from “The Buena Vista Social Club” album produced by Ry Cooder, with its flavor of moody, jungle-edged Havana, Cuba.