Elegant, sweeping curves transect this two-tier patio in the San Francisco Bay Area. The curves draw one’s gaze from a mural featuring a pair of egrets on the wall of a backyard music studio to a peaceful water feature and a gravel courtyard set with boulders around a mature lemon tree. Soft plantings fill in spaces behind low walls — which double as seating when the homeowners host parties — and ambient lighting helps turn this backyard into a tranquil garden retreat in the evening.
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Photos by Jan Purat
Backyard at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple with a daughter who recently moved home postcollege; the husband practices saxophone in the backyard music studio
Location: Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland, California
Size: The lot is about 1,150 square feet (107 square meters). The two patios total 785 square feet (73 square meters), with 200 square feet (19 square meters) of bluestone, 410 square feet (38 square meters) of concrete and 175 square feet (16 square meters) of gravel.
Designers: Wildwood Landscapes (builder) and Arca Design Group
The homeowners brought on Wildwood Landscapes to help reimagine their backyard and create a greater connection among the landscape, the home and the husband’s music studio. Both the husband and wife are avid birders and environmentalists and wanted the backyard to feel in harmony with the natural environment, welcome winged visitors and enable them to host a small group of friends for dinner or a larger community gathering.
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Drawing from an original concept design by Arca Design Group, the team at Wildwood Landscapes reworked the layout to allow for more seating and created a more comprehensive landscape plan. The resulting design includes low sweeping walls and a mix of low-water and native plantings, as well as a water feature to attract birds.
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Upper Patio
The music studio, designed and built prior to the garden renovation, opens onto the upper patio through large sliding glass doors. The cantilevered roof also connects the structure to the landscape by opening up views of the trees from inside and provides a covered area for setting up a music stand or a table with hors d’oeuvres.
The upper terrace features a bluestone patio partially enclosed with 12-inch-wide, 18-inch-tall stucco walls that continue down to the lower patio, on the same level as the home. “The walls flow through the entire garden like a ribbon, allowing the two separate areas to connect,” says Elliot Kaplan, founder of and principal designer at Wildwood Landscapes.
While the original design had the walls specced as poured concrete, Kaplan and his team constructed them out of stacked block covered in stucco to save money for their clients. He had the finished walls painted to match the exterior of the studio, so that the walls appear to flow from the structure into the landscape.
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A mature lemon tree, pruned to show off its architectural structure, sits in a permeable gravel bed studded with water-worn granite boulders. Kaplan and the team selected the boulders (Hooker Creek granite from American Soil & Stone) and arranged them to appear scattered.
The bottom curve of each boulder is sunk into the soil, with the bluestone custom-cut around it to create the effect that the boulders are rising out of the flagstone. The look is reminiscent of a Japanese-style stone garden, elegant and peaceful in its simplicity.
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In addition to carefully siting the boulders, Kaplan also paid close attention when choosing them. “We always select primarily based on having ‘good faces.’ There’s always a best face of a boulder, and the goal is to have that face the primary view when interacting with the garden,” he says. He also looks for complementary boulders to create groupings. “You’ll notice on the grouping of two, it almost looks like it was one boulder split, so that the inside edge of each of those two relates to the other,” he says.
The mosaic mounted along the back fence was created by a local artist years ago, Kaplan says.
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Lower Patio
The lower concrete patio serves as the primary outdoor living space. It has a grill, and the family can enjoy meals around an outdoor dining table (removed for the photos). The patio measures about 410 square feet and is made of smooth poured concrete, a material that allows the focus to be on the rest of the landscape and the new mosaic. Created by local artist Juan Lopez of New World Mosaics, the mosaic depicts a pair of egrets, which are herons native to the coastal areas of California, taking flight.
Kaplan planted the bed below with native ‘Elk Blue’ California gray rush (Juncus patens ‘Elk Blue’), and planted ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) along the side fence to complement the mural. “The owners are both avid birders,” Kaplan says. “Once the grasses fill out, the Juncus and Calamagrostis will give the effect of a marshy meadow” and create the effect of a natural bird habitat beneath the mural and next to the bird-friendly fountain.
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This aerial view shows the relationship between the upper and lower patios. “Drainage was a challenge with all of the curves as to not get water trapped in pockets,” Kaplan says. “We had to be mindful of creating subtle slopes when the concrete was poured.”
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Plantings
A mix of low-water ornamental grasses, perennials and native plants fill the beds bordering the patios.
The plants include native island alumroot (Heuchera maxima), ‘Clarity Blue’ flax lily (Dianella ‘Clarity Blue’), both shown here. Silvery acacia (Acacia iteaphylla) is planted along the opposite wall. Pittosporum, hellebores, spurge (Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii), kangaroo paw (Anigozanthos sp.), spiked speedwell (Veronica spicata) and native foothill sedge (Carex tumulicola) are planted throughout the garden. Native manzanita (Manzanita uva-ursi ‘Point Reyes’, whose flowers support pollinators, grows along the edges of the beds to spill over the walls throughout the garden.
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Fountain and Outdoor Lighting
Kaplan and his team created the recirculating fountain on the upper patio using a ceramic container in a vivid blue that matches the flowers in the mosaic. To make it more bird-friendly, they topped the relatively deep container with a grate that sits about 2 inches below the rim, giving birds a place to land and rest while they have a drink.
The yard also invites the homeowners to linger after dark. Subdued LEDs from WAC Lighting and FX Luminaire illuminate the plantings, walls and stairs in the form of washes and pathway lights. To avoid light pollution, the designers used warm light and fixtures that make the beams as narrow as possible. “The lights are on a smart timer and are only used during gatherings, and are turned off when they are not needed,” Kaplan says.
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Kaplan reports that the homeowners haven’t wasted any time in enjoying their new backyard. Three months after the landscape’s installation, after the plants had a chance to settle in, the homeowners hosted a garden-unveiling party for the neighborhood. Sixty people spread out across the garden as music played from the music studio.
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