The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Improve Your Home Landscaping

A carporch gives a shaded terrace for the mild seasons, more than ample winter protection for your car. The beautiful brick driveway and walks make a dramatic setting for house and landscaping, providing space for guest parking and a safe area for bicycle-riding children.

Well-designed walks with neat edgings, steps which seem to belong where they are placed, and intriguing little paths that lead you deeper into the garden, can do much to improve your grounds. You can scarcely lay too much emphasis on your selection of material. Concrete paths and steps, for example, while often just the right thing, can form too sharp a contrast with the surrounding turf and planting. Informal walks of wood butts (perhaps slices of telephone poles!, flagstones, or tanbark may be much more suitable. Colonial houses are traditionally set off by brick; modern houses favor wood; small houses seem to call for flags.

Garden Pools and Fountains

Water, in almost any form, enriches a garden and delights the senses. Modern houses are bringing garden pools right into the patios and terraces. Ideal is water in movement, a splashing fountain or a narrow little brook running through the grounds and between flowers over clear stones. But even a spigot with a wooden bucket below it or a tub to fill with water and use for plunging cut flowers can bring a verdant, cool feeling into the garden. Using the sound of running water and the evaporative qualities of a fountain or pool to bring relief from the heat is a trick we have learned from the gardens of Japan. Spain and other hot climates.