[ Lost in the Landscape ]

hiding from the neighbors

We have new neigh­bors imme­di­ately behind the house next door. One of their first acts was to erect this gonzo back deck.

The pre­vi­ous owner was a house-bound woman who for the last twenty years of her life lived mostly indoors. Her back fence stopped at the prop­erty line and was six feet high. We never saw her, she never saw us.

The new own­ers, a young cou­ple, appar­ently didn’t care for the big dark fence get­ting in the way of their view. And they appar­ently didn’t think their back yard was large enough since the new deck juts out many feet into a city ease­ment. I’m sure they have a great view of the ocean. But using the equa­tion, I can see them = They can see us, I’m cer­tain they also have a tremen­dous view of my back yard.

There are a few islands of pri­vacy. This black bam­boo pro­vides a lit­tle bit of screening–if you’re stand­ing in just the right spot.

But this view from the bed­room win­dow shows that the isn’t much pri­vacy from much of the gar­den. I planted a Dr. Hurd man­zanita in front of the bam­boo, before the new neigh­bors moved in. Once it hits its twelve foot tar­get, it’ll help pro­vide some shel­ter. But being a man­zanita it’s tak­ing its good old time get­ting larger. Had I known we’ve have this pri­vacy issue I’d have planted some­thing faster grow­ing, maybe a desert willow.

A few things get in the way of plant­ing more large plants on the prop­erty line. There’s a buried drain–not the best thing to plant a small tree over. This is also the the south­ern edge to the prop­erty. A tree would pro­vide some shel­ter, but it would also shade a gar­den pop­u­lated with sun-loving plants and home­own­ers. Also, the pre­vi­ous own­ers of our house installed a large fish­pond in what would be the most wel­come spot for a small tree.

We’re still try­ing to think of what to do. Until we have a larger plan in place, we’re let­ting some plants get taller than we oth­er­wise might. This mys­tery shrub came with the house. Although it’s grow­ing too close to a fence to let it get very large, we’re still let­ting it grow taller. There’s one of these plants in the canyon nearby and the best idea I have is that if it’s native it might be a Pacific wax myr­tle (Morella (for­merly Myr­tica) cal­i­for­nica), but I think the ID is incor­rect because Calflora shows its native range end­ing to the north, in Los Ange­les County.

Here’s a closer look at the foliage. Later in the year it has tiny white flow­ers with an insanely pow­er­ful fragrance–gardenias on steroids, maybe. Feel free to send me any ideas for this plant’s iden­tity. It’s prob­a­bly wish­ful think­ing on my part think­ing this is a native instead of an escapee from one of the local gardens.

[ EDIT, Jan­u­ary 24 ] Well, I knew you guys would come through! Mag­gie and Bahia have pointed me in the right direc­tion. Think­ing that it was a local native was def­i­nitely wish­ful think­ing on my part. The mys­tery shrub is a Vic­to­rian box, Pit­tospo­rum undu­la­tum. The fact that it’s escaped into at least one spot in the local canyon makes me think that this is des­tined not a long-term plant, par­tic­u­larly when you con­sider that it can get mas­sive size for a sub­ur­ban lot, not to men­tion it’s ridicu­lously close place­ment to the fenceline.

The Cal­i­for­nia Inva­sive Plant Coun­cil describes its prob­lem poten­tial this way: “Infes­ta­tions in CA are small. More prob­lem­atic on north coast.” Not the worst plant, but I could def­i­nitely do better.

The pri­vacy prob­lem could be worse. The neigh­bors spend almost no time out­doors, and much of that is in the rel­a­tive pri­vacy of dark­ened evenings.

Still, gar­dens are as much about fan­tasy as they are real­ity. It’s not that we’re doing any­thing par­tic­u­larly scan­dalous in the back yard, really. But if we were, we wouldn’t want the neigh­bors to see!

January 24 2011 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • my garden | Tags: neighbors • privacy • screening • what to do? | 18 Comments »

virtual garden tour

It’s high spring in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and time for the annual gar­den tours. The Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety offers one, as do a lot of neigh­bor­hoods, includ­ing my own.

Rather than pony­ing up the fees and fill­ing up the gas tank this past week­end I decided to make up my own gar­den tour. Online.

I’m not espe­cially smit­ten with Hol­ly­wood celebri­ties, but thought that might be an inter­est­ing start­ing point. I ran­domly pulled up one of the pile of web­sites with addresses of celebri­ties, then went to Google Maps with the address in hand. And Google Maps has that con­tro­ver­sial fea­ture to actu­ally view at street level what you find on a map. The street view isn’t imple­mented for much of the coun­try, but it hap­pens to be in place for prac­ti­cally all of Bev­erly Hills. How convenient.

So…what does Madonna’s front yard look like? What might that tell me about her as a per­son and about celebrity in general?

First off, let me say that the Google fea­ture indi­cates that the addresses shown on the screen are only approx­i­mate. So this might not actu­ally be Madonna’s front yard. But assum­ing that it is, I guess I felt a lit­tle let down. The yard is really green. Lots of green. Some­how I thought the gar­den would be a lit­tle more…exotic? Out of con­trol shrub­beries and lurid stat­u­ary maybe? But it does say she likes her pri­vacy. No sur­prise there.

Then I went over to Mia Farrow’s.

More of the pri­vacy thing, again. But the yard seemed a lit­tle more welcoming–probably some­thing to do with the steps lead­ing up to the front wall. And I felt really good that she recycles.

Next was the late Charleton Heston’s pad, which didn’t look like the one in Michael Moore’s Bowl­ing for Columbine. Either he’d down-sized or I was knock­ing at the neighbor’s.

Nice, con­ser­v­a­tive land­scap­ing. Pri­vate, but not hos­tile. You know that tres­passers would be shot, so there’s no need for higher hedges.

And on to Jay Leno’s:

Walls again. And more hedges. These neigh­bor­hoods have abnor­mally high hedge counts for South­ern California.

Then over to Bette Midler’s.

It’s a lit­tle hard to see the yard, but it looks like it’d be a nice place to unwind with the divine Ms. M and some martinis.

Maybe the most sur­pris­ing was Har­ri­son Ford’s.

Like, where’s the killer fence and the yard for the guard dog? And the birch trees make the house look like it’s on the wrong coast. It’s nice enough, but makes me think he’s not much of a gar­dener. Or maybe this one’s for sure the wrong house. Dunno. Unfor­tu­nately, online, you can’t be the obnox­ious stalker fan and go knock­ing on the front door. I might just have to leave these peo­ple to themselves.

April 17 2008 | Categories: landscape design • rambles | Tags: Bette Midler • Beverly Hills • Charleton Heston • front yards • Google Maps • Google Street Views • Harrison Ford • hedges • Jay Leno • Madonna • Mia Farrow • privacy | 1 Comment »