Tips & Tricks Archives - Page 5 of 6

6 Steps to Designing Your Own Outdoor Sanctuary

Jul 2, 2020

If you’re like most of us, you spend a lot of time staring at a computer screen, stressed about deadlines, and silently willing the weekend to arrive sooner – whether you’ve returned to the office or not. And for the foreseeable future, we have to seek stress release in isolation when we’d rather be meeting friends for dinner at our favorite restaurant or singing along at a concert with a hundred other fans. Instead, we’re at home finally cleaning out that junk drawer in the kitchen, finding new hobbies to master or DIY projects to conquer – anything to take our minds off the sense of being stuck inside our homes.

Right now, it’s perfectly understandable to be looking forward to going anywhere but home, but there’s no reason we can’t transform the spaces we have into personal sanctuaries. So, when you close your eyes and imagine escaping to a place that brings you peace – where do you go? What about relaxing in your backyard? Let’s explore some of the elements that can help elevate our yards into places where we can escape.

1. Seating

Nothing beats collapsing into a comfy chair and kicking your feet up after a long day. Whether it’s lounge seating or dining arrangement, spaces made for relaxing must have seating.

To make your seating area inviting, first, you must find a focal point. Some yards are open and have an ocean view or vista that they can enjoy. Those viewing areas are a perfect place to set lounge seating. However, if the yard is enclosed and without “borrowed” views, you can easily create a focal point using strategically placed plants and hardscape details. For example, if you want to seat a large group, arrange seating around a fire pit. It brings everyone’s focus inward, and the people you’re with become the center of attention. Another example is setting up lounge furniture that faces a water feature surrounded by potted plants. When space is limited, you can build integrated seating – such as seat walls or bench planters.

2. Plants

It might seem obvious, but greenery and live plant materials are vital to creating a calming, outdoor oasis. Looking at plants and flowers, whether indoors or outdoors, is a peaceful activity that distracts the mind from worries. It encourages living in the present moment and engages the senses to ease tension and stress.

Some plants offer wafting scents or the sound of rustling leaves when the wind blows; others have tactile features such as velvety leaves or textured bark. Plus, plants look great! There are endless combinations to utilize plants that will enhance the desired feel of a space.

Some of our favorite plants are jasmine and sage – for their pleasant fragrance – and sycamores and London planes – for sound and movement. To add texture, we recommend Artemesia and Pennisetum for their soft feel, and the barks of oaks and manzanitas add a more tactile experience.

Whether they’re planted in pots or the ground, “greening up” your space is a key to soothing your surroundings.

3. Lighting

Once the sun sets, lighting is essential to the functionality and ambiance of a space. When done correctly, lighting can completely change the mood of your space.

First, lighting should provide safety. Stairs and precarious edges of patios are especially important to provide bright, direct lighting. Second, it should define the boundaries of your space. Illuminating features like boulders or trees at the perimeter of your yard is not only pleasant to look, it also subconsciously instills a sense of security. Third, create the feeling of a warm room by illuminating trees, bushes, pergolas, and fences that will serve as walls. Lighting a few select features will cause your mind to connect the dots and feel the geometry of a room you have created.

Learn five specific ways to light an outdoor patio.

4. Water Features

Studies have proven that being near water can make you happier and less stressed. While not everyone can take advantage of living seaside, we can recreate the soothing effect of water by implementing water features in the landscape.

Core-drilled boulder fountains are one of our favorites since they fit seamlessly into the natural, native aesthetic we often find ourselves designing. Boulder fountains offer a subtle bubbling effect and don’t require the same level of maintenance as a traditional fountain since they are pondless – with their recirculating reservoir sitting below ground.

If subtlety isn’t what you’re after, there are other ways to make your water feature a more significant part of the landscape. Architecturally-integrated water walls are a unique feature that can enhance the architectural aesthetic of a structure. Standalone ponds can also offer a tranquil oasis without much-added noise, while waterfalls and spouted fountains can provide white noise, which also has a calming effect.

5. Nooks and Cozy Corners

When you’re looking for a place to relax, creating intimate nooks or vignettes, especially with seating, is a great way to give yourself a quiet place to hideaway. There is a sense of relief that comes with feeling like you are in a protected little corner of the world, especially when set in a familiar atmosphere like your own backyard.

These special spaces are perfect for receiving some extra attention. Enhancing these spaces, or creating them from scratch, can be as simple as adding intentional seating in a sheltered corner of the yard, or growing some plants over an arbor and adding a bench below. But, sometimes, these unique places don’t necessarily have to be tucked away in a corner. They can be in the open – like a swing hanging from a tree, or Adirondack chairs amid a tall, grassy meadow. The key is to find the spaces where you feel at ease and add to them in a way that makes them more private and cozy.

6. Useable Features

What does your yard need to draw you outside and use it? This question is essential when going through the design process because “destination” features throughout the landscape move people through the space with purpose.

While making spaces look beautiful is always part of the goal, making them useable is just as important. For example, cooking usually takes place inside, and sometimes feels like a chore. But, placing an outdoor kitchen into your backyard getaway can make cooking for the family feel like it is on vacation. Even if it’s just a grill with a little counter space, outdoor kitchens are convenient and useful enough to be used any day of the week – not only weekends or special occasions.

Fire features are another useful, popular request. Just as humans are attracted to water, they are also attracted to fire. There are firepit shapes, fuel types, and styles for every space. A small, wood-burning pit is rustic and offers the nostalgia of sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows. More modern fire bowls fit a different aesthetic and provide the same warmth and coziness of a flame without the presence of smoke.

Other worthy features for your backyard oasis might be designated spaces for games such as a bocce court, horseshoe rings, or open lawn; or more stylized areas for reflection such as labyrinths or reflexology paths.

Whatever you enjoy doing, explore how you can give yourself a space to do it outside!

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!

The Synergy of Your Landscape: Adding Value to Your Home

Jan 31, 2020

How Landscaping Increases Your Home’s Value

Synergy is when two or more components produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. Landscaping can create some of the best synergistic benefits available to a property owner. Not only does it add value to your property immediately, but it also increases that property’s value over time—for decades to come. While your indoor décor changes regularly as styles change and your mechanical systems wear out over time, your trees and other plantings grow larger and more valuable as the years go by.

Well-Designed Landscaping Raises Property Values

Quite simply, well landscaped homes are worth more than homes that are not. That value increase can commonly be from 5% to 15%, depending on the particulars of the property. This is where good landscape design comes into play. The beauty, functionality, maintenance requirements, and environmental sustainability all contribute to the overall impact of the landscape. In a Washington Post article, a “quick Web search resulted in a medley of statistics on the return on investment of landscaping. I found numbers ranging from a 100 percent to 1,000 percent ROI on landscaping.” (April 1, 2015)

When a house is on the market, first impressions are very important, and when a potential buyer first pulls up and sees your home, the design and care of the landscaping are the first indicators of the condition of the home. They call it “Curb Appeal”.

But if the landscape is not well designed, problems can and often do arise in the form of failures, expensive removals and do-overs, as well as lost usefulness, synergy and serenity.

How Gardens Add Value

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” This proverb has never been more literally true. The larger the plants grow, the more valuable they are. Another big part of a well-designed landscape is how it makes people feel. This may sound subjective and abstract, but the sense of “home” and “place” are real and part of what makes for comfort and eases stress.

An article in the SFGate states: “A landscape full of large, mature plants is obviously one that has been carefully tended to over the years, and that sends a signal to buyers. That’s a good indication that they’ve taken care of the inside of the house as well, which is appealing to home buyers.” The Appraisal Institute recently advised homeowners to properly maintain their landscaping, which can significantly affect property values. “If a landscaping change is positive, it can often enhance price and reduce a home’s time on the market,” says Appraisal Institute President Richard L. Borges II, MAI, SRA.

A Few Tips on Creating Financial Synergy in Your Landscape

-Plant Trees! From getting rid of CO2 and creating oxygen to producing fruit, shade and so many other reasons, trees add thousands in value to your home and reduce the time on the market when homes are for sale. Plant the right tree in the right place! Could they be oaks?

-Make sure your landscape is as sustainable as possible. This includes food production. It also includes fire safety.

–Match your landscape to your architecture. This is a key to the above-mentioned “Curb Appeal”.

-Install an automatic irrigation system. It’s important to properly balance the needs of your landscape with water efficiency and conservation. It’s also vital in protecting your investment.

-Keep maintenance needs to a minimum. A key part of good design and the affordability of growing your investment in landscaping, a “low maintenance” landscape is a big selling point to many home buyers and owners.

-Landscape lighting makes it possible to enjoy (and promote) your landscape well after dark.

For all the above reasons, good landscaping represents investing wisely and making the most of your property assets. Good landscaping + time = Synergy!

Let’s Plant Some Oaks!

Nov 19, 2019

When we think of our favorite trees, many Californians will immediately visualize our native oak trees: the same trees found over so much of the Central Coast, in so many different conditions and micro-climates. Fall is the best time to plant these trees, whether from acorns or containers. Let the winter rains and cool temperatures help them get established. As has been wisely said, “If you are thinking a year ahead, sow seed. If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant trees. If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people.”

There are three important; one could say dominant, species that greatly define the Central Coast in most people’s eyes. The Cost Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia), Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) and Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii).

While the Coast Live Oak seems to be regenerating in adequate numbers, this is not the case with Valley Oaks and Blue Oaks: regeneration rates for both species are alarmingly low. Wildland fires, development, agricultural clearing, grazing and the effects of climate-change are a few of the reasons for these regeneration problems. So more than ever, it is incumbent on us to protect these precious resources, and many of the threats can be corrected through the efforts of an aware community, dedicated to protect their native forests. We all love these mighty oaks, but we cannot continue to take them for granted. Oak woodlands are disappearing at an alarming rate-more than 10,000 acres a year statewide, according to the California Oak Foundation. Add that to the insufficient regeneration rates of several oak species, and we appear to face the disappearance of these trees before we know it. We want to encourage everyone to join in and PLANT SOME OAKS, so that the next generation of these trees, are here for future generations of Central Coast residents to enjoy.

Let’s take a closer look at these three prominent species, and think how each of us can promote, protect and wisely manage these resources.

Quercus agrifolia – Coast Live Oak

“Coast Live Oak, with its curious and elegant architecture, is as much a part of western California as are the golden hills beneath its shady, dark canopy,” says Bruce Pavlik in the excellent book, Oaks of California. It is the only evergreen oak among the three species discussed in this article. It is found from foggy Coastal bluffs to inland valleys, canyons and hills up to 5000 ft. elevation. At home in mixed evergreen forests that include pine, redwood, bay laurel, madrone, toyon, etc. Matt Ritter calls it the “backbone of coastal California woodlands”. Unlike the Blue and Valley Oaks, it seems to have decent regeneration potential, although it is no match for unmitigated bad management, like clear-cutting! The worsening conditions, induced by climate change, also threaten Coast Live Oaks with not only cataclysmic fires, but GSOB (Goldspotted Oak Boar) and SOD (Sudden Oak Death), both of which have yet to make much impact in San Luis Obispo County. So let’s find a good place to plant some oaks!

Quercus lobata – Valley Oak

This is considered the largest or second-largest oak species in the USA. It is Winter-deciduous, is found growing at 2000-6000 feet elevation, with 25 inches rainfall, and prefers deep bottomland soils. In Matt Ritter’s book, California Plants, he states that “early Spanish explorers called these majestic oaks robles due to their similarity to the English oak (Quercus robur), a name that became the origin of California place names like Paso Robles. Tragically, over 90% of the Valley Oak population has been lost since the 1880s! Since Valley Oak regeneration is so endangered, it makes sense to plant them if you have room.

Quercus douglasii – Blue Oak

These patient, sturdy, enduring oaks grow in shallow soils, on hills, in exposed, hot, windy locations (110 degrees+, 15 inches rain). They actually prefer dry conditions, and according to Bruce Pavlik, in Oaks of California, they uniquely combine “the mechanisms of opportunism, conservation, tolerance and resiliency” that make them perhaps the most ‘Californian’ of our native oaks. I have personally seen a 14 inch trunk stump of a 300+ year-old Blue Oak tree on a ranch east of Santa Margarita, Ca. Patient indeed! Tragically, like the Valley Oak, Quercus douglasii, as a species is not adequately regenerating.

Respect the Root Zone, the most crucial area being within 6 ft. of the trunk. Try not to irrigate, plant, or disturb the soil in this area. The root protection zone is 1.5 times larger than the area from the trunk to the drip line (or edge of canopy). Minimize disturbance, irrigation and planting in this area. In that crucial root zone, avoid alteration of natural grade, cut and fill, damaging roots, trenching and paving – direct drainage away from the tree.

“Caring for Young Trees” is a tree planting video, courtesy of California ReLeaf:

Watch the 3-minute video Caring for Young Trees

When building or landscaping around existing oak trees, we need to be careful not to cause problems.

More Oak Tree Care information courtesy of the City of Visalia: Care and Maintenance of Oak Trees