Let California Be California

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If ever you should decide to redo your garden, sooner or later you’ll likely hear someone say, “Be sure to stay true to the surroundings.” It is one of those stock phrases that architects and decorators often use to suggest that the garden’s design shouldn’t veer far from the style of the home and interior, or that native plants and local aesthetics should be embraced. But for Lisa Gimmy, a landscape architect who has spent the last 20 years designing gardens around Southern California, the idea of staying true to your surroundings goes far deeper. For her, garden design is a matter of seamlessly integrating inside and out, lifestyle and landscape — and her solutions have yielded gardens that are livable above all else.

Many of the gardens she has designed, including the two featured here, belong to midcentury modern California homes. She’s a master at selecting plants and hardscape that not only work with the dry California climate but also with the horizontal lines and hard edges of modernist design. But Gimmy’s philosophy and approach to design is universal, and could just as easily apply to a farmhouse in the Midwest or New England.

More attuned to a home’s ethos and environment than her own personal vision, Gimmy does not have a signature style. It is possible to visit several of her gardens and not immediately realize they are by the same person. “There is not a look,” she says. “My gardens are more about the site, plants and views, and about finding a design that is in sync with the architecture and that allows the clients to live the life they imagine for themselves.”