Beth Fillerup, Author at Madrone Landscape

Work From Home: Designers in Their Home Habitat

May 4, 2020

Madrone’s Landscape Designers: a unique breed. Creative, social creatures; it’s not often you’ll find us alone. We tend to work in packs.

But these days are not the norm. We’re currently working from our home habitat – roaming our yards and living rooms, and keeping a safe social distance. While on one hand, it’s nice to have time to work on our own gardens and yards, it’s also been a challenge to work away from the office, field, and teammates.

#WFHLife: The Pros

For Megan Savage, working at home has some real benefits. “It’s a flexible workspace,” she says. “I usually set up at either the couch in my living room or at my dining table. But, on nice days, I can sit at my patio table in the sunshine while I work; it looks over a small greenbelt, and my neighbor’s jasmine is blooming right now so it’s very peaceful. And my dog Lily is happy I’m home!” Ian Parker, too, finds some solace in his own personal landscape, saying that one of the things he likes best as he stays at home is the opportunity to “work in my beautiful backyard and spend time with my best doggie friend Daisy.”

Both Jill Bleher and Christy Dufault are enjoying the company of feline friends. Christy says that she’s “actually enjoying the solitude of working at home. Of course, having animals in the house helps. My cats are keeping me company.” For Jill, her cat Destiny has been one of the best parts of working from home, along with seeing her husband Alec throughout the workday. When sharing social isolation with anyone, from friends to family, it’s a relief to have good company.

#WFHLife: The Cons

Even with the designers who have people or pets at home, the isolation can be a new kind of challenge, missing the company of both coworkers and social ambiance. For Megan, it’s the chatter she yearns for. She misses “being able to talk to my coworkers without having to pick up a phone.” Likewise, Christy says, “It will be nice to see everyone and be able to communicate in person!” Ian misses collaborating with his “lovely teammates”. Being unable to share ideas with one another so effortlessly is truly one of those things that we don’t realize we’ll miss until it’s gone.

Christy's Workspace feat. Viktor the Cat

Thank goodness for technology! Jill admits that “our communication remotely is relatively good with Zoom and phone calls and technology in general”—work would be strenuous without it—but it still can’t compete with physical proximity. The “long-distance communication just doesn’t match in-person connection!” she remarks. Ian finds that his home technology falls a little short – he longs to use his big computer screen.

All in all, our Madrone Design team is still working away from their respective homes; starting new projects and continuing their efforts for current clients. We look forward to resuming work in our usual manner, but the circumstances have allowed us to grow and appreciate our working environments in fresh ways—both the old and the new.

While we all work together to make sure this pandemic passes as quickly as possible, we take solace in our surroundings and look forward to the friendships, teammates, and work spaces we’ll come back to when this is over. In the meantime, stay safe and upbeat – we look forward to seeing you in the office or field soon!

On the Boards: Paso Robles Southwestern Residence

Apr 14, 2020

At Madrone we thrive on bringing a vision to life for clients who fully embrace a style not usually seen in the Central Coast area. For this project, we began with an existing palette that features warm colors and solid, hard materials that are reminiscent of a Southwestern-Baja aesthetic.

A solid foundation of existing hardscape features, mature trees, deck structures, and a koi pond were a great starting point to designing a new planting plan, hardscape updates, and upgrading the irrigation infrastructure.

We found a variety of ways to re-use materials already found in and around the home. The same type of flagstone originally used in the backyard is now reflected in the side and front yards, and a new deck platform matches the existing backyard deck. While the plant materials vary from the front yard to the back, a similar set of accent plants are carried throughout. Succulents and silver-toned specimens were used as accents amidst a colorful drought tolerant plant palette. Warm-toned, angular gravel was used in place of traditional wood mulch to bring the essence of the Baja heat.

Healthy, existing trees were kept, and new trees of the same type were added in other areas in the yard to offer moments of shaded relief. These small design details bring the new and old together to create a single, cohesive, overall vision.

Our collaboration with a client who doesn’t shy away from what they like, and is flexible to suggestions, helped us transform this landscape into a true oasis.

On the Boards: Arroyo Grande Countryside Residence

Apr 6, 2020

Located between Arroyo Grande and San Luis Obispo, this new home sits amidst rolling hills and breathtaking views. The hardscape aesthetic plays off the modernized farmhouse architecture, with clean lines and concrete. A soft native and Mediterranean-inspired plant palette flows into the surrounding native meadow environment.

Madrone was hired to do an all-encompassing design for planting, hardscape, and irrigation with lighting placement and specifications, plus some detail features such as fountains.

The scale of the site demanded thoughtful restraint to minimize future maintenance requirements, as well as a smooth transition from “kept” landscape areas to the natural surroundings. With an upper tier designated as the “kept” landscape, the area below it remains a native meadow. We created a seamless transition by staggering slightly fuller specimens to blur the edge of the landscaped slope.

The design utilizes clusters of plantings to form implied pathways. When walking through the landscape, it will feel light and airy. When sitting down, the view will be a full and lush landscape.

Just as the home was constructed to be fire safe, we kept fire safety in mind with the landscape design. Using Cal Fire’s recommendations for defensible space to inform our design, we used gravel as our mulch material closer to the home and populated the plant list with low-risk plant materials.

Building a new home demands time, energy, patience, and confidence. It was a gift to work with a conscientious client who thoughtfully assembled their team of professionals to craft solutions for both the indoor and outdoor environments.

Edible Landscapes on the Central Coast

Mar 21, 2020

This article was originally published in Living Lavishly Magazine Volume 10, Spring/Summer 2020.

The Satisfaction of Growing Your Own Food

There are few things more fulfilling than feeding someone. If you can grow the food yourself, it is even more rewarding. I started growing tomatoes and sugar snap peas as a young kid and it pushed me to pursue horticulture, landscape architecture, and landscape construction. For a kid, a bite of a home-grown tomato can be a life changing experience.

Your landscape is a wonderful place to create something beautiful and grow something you can eat at the same time. Some of us grew up with family gardens, and now we want to bring them to our own landscape. Many of us have never grown any food in the garden, but feel it would be a fun thing to do. The great thing about living on the central coast of California is that you can grow so many good things to eat!

When deciding to grow food in your landscape, think about how you will use the garden. How much time can you devote to the gardening a week? What types of fruits and vegetables do you like to eat, and how much of them will you really use? How much do you cook?

If you enjoy spending your weekends working in the yard, love fresh produce and cook a lot, you can really go all out. If you have a busy lifestyle, but enjoy some fresh produce, there is still hope. Just keep it simple.

Tips and Tricks for Everyone:

Put in the work early to make it easier on you later.
- Raised garden beds can make it easier on your back to garden without bending over.
- Think about critters—provide protection from deer, rabbits, squirrels, gophers and birds.
- Install automatic irrigation systems so you don’t have to remember to water.
- Make sure you organize your plants based on similar water requirements.
- Add rich compost to the garden before you start planting.
  Put your garden as close to the kitchen as possible.
- Build a compost bin so you can reuse your green waste and kitchen waste as compost.
Grow the right plants.
- The central coast is full of micro-climates. If you don’t know what grows well in your area, ask your neighbors or local nursery for advice.
- For fruit trees, look at frost tolerance, chill hour requirements, and pollinators.
- Plan the spacing and height of your plants to fit the space.
Do it together.
- If you get your kids or spouse to help, it will be a fun group project so everyone can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
- Having others with a stake in the success will help motivate you to keep up with the work.

Simple Gardening for Beginners

Perennial Herb Garden:
- Grow water-wise perennials such as rosemary, oregano, chives, thyme, and mint.
- You can tie it into an irrigation system for other Mediterranean landscape plants and you don’t need to designate a separate garden space.
- You will never need to buy herbs at the store again, you will always have fresh herbs just outside your kitchen with almost no work.
Fruit Trees:
- On the coast you can have avocado or citrus trees as part of landscape trees for year-round fresh fruit.
- Inland (and on the coast) you can grow apples, peaches, pears, apricots, plums and more to have seasonal harvests.
Small Vegetable Planters:
- Designate an area for some raised planters for a handful of vegetables in a controlled environment.
- Get crafty and you can use things like livestock troughs for an instant planter.
- Plant easy vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, peas or leafy greens.

Advanced Gardening for Enthusiasts

Create a Food Forest:
- Use the fruit trees as your backbone and layer perennial and annual crops below.
- Organize raised garden boxes with in-ground crops to maximize your vertical space.
- Create garden paths and benches to have a place you can get lost in the food forest.
Train your plants:
- You can trellis vining plants or prune trees to create arches to walk through or walls of green to contain the garden.
- Create structures to grow vining crops such as tomatoes, beans, peas, berries, and grapes.
- Train aromatic groundcovers into walkways to step on and enjoy the fragrance.
- Use tall plants like blueberries or corn to create a labyrinth.
Prepare for great meals and seasonal activities:
- Pumpkins for Halloween.
- Apples for pie season.
- Tomatoes for canning sauces.
- Cucumbers or zucchini (yes, zucchini) for pickles into the winter.

Enjoy the Experience

Incorporating edible plants into your landscape is a great experience. You will impress your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers with your bounty of food. Whether you go big or keep it simple, you can improve the quality of life for yourself and others with the celebration of home-grown vittles!

On the Boards: Japanese Zen Garden with California Natives

Feb 13, 2020

Artistic Design

The Millward Residence homeowners have an artistic eye for details. Madrone designers worked very closely with them to ensure the design captured their intentions. The West Atascadero project blends a minimalist Japanese Zen Garden style with California native plants to provide a tranquil setting. A beautiful stone walkway with stone slab bridges provides a pathway to the front entry.

Challenging Installation

The project site is on a steep hillside, which meant limited access for trucks and heavy equipment. Because the project was installed during the winter months, rain and mud added to the challenge of the jobsite. Madrone’s installation crew worked through the site logically, starting with the hardest-to-access areas and heaviest grading, then working our way out. Timing was critical: We finished the grading before the rain came, so we were able to focus on flagstone path work during the wet weather. We used mid-sized trucks and tractors to bring in the materials in small loads, getting as close to the work as possible.

True Work of Art

We made many site adjustments to ensure the project achieved the goals of the owners. Due to the very collaborative design and installation, the finished landscape is a true work of art that the owner can really appreciate at a deeper level.