South African Style in Woodside

We were called in to save this garden. Although the garden was quite new, and the garden layout was very pleasing, the plants were all dying! What we found was an extremely difficult growing situation, with rocky clay soil and little drainage. The clients wanted to keep the lawn for their young boys to play on, but the lawn water intensified the drainage problem. After agreeing to resuscitate the garden, we moved all the remaining plants in the level areas of the garden up into the surrounding slopes. We then added new soil to the borders, and created a new planting scheme for the different growing conditions within the garden. Because one of the owners was a native Californian and the other was from South Africa, we used an eclectic planting scheme featuring plants from those two climates (two of the five mediterranean climates in the world). As the new plantings began to grow, we created stone and grass walkways through the overly long borders, added the Spirit Song bench and Italian pots at the pool, and suddenly found that we had created a unique garden style new to Woodside. In just a little more than a year, the garden went from being a failure to being featured on the prestigious Woodside School garden tour.

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