Many of us spend hours thinking about the kind of garden we would like to have, but few of us make it happen. Susann Edmonds of Altadena did — and in a big way.
Thirteen years ago, she moved into a 1908 farmhouse on a big sandy lot.
“I lived here a week before I decided to landscape,” said Edmonds, a hairstylist and chef, and the current queen of the Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah Parade.
One problem: “I just didn’t have the money.”
So she asked an artist friend to make simple watercolor paintings of what she would like to do with the garden in the future. In the meantime, she took advantage of her large yard by stabling pet llamas and using their dung to amend the ground’s sandy soil.
One day, Edmonds was walking her llamas through her neighborhood and noticed Alastair Boase working on a front garden. He was creating a natural-looking stream with rocks.
“It was that one element, I thought when (my landscaping is) going to happen, it’s going to be you who does it,” Edmonds said.
She didn’t tell Boase at the time, but a few years later, she made the call to Alastair Boase Landscape Design in Sherman Oaks. Edmonds showed Boase her friend’s watercolors and added that she wanted a fire feature and an outdoor kitchen, but something that didn’t look like a kit or a fire pit. Boase suggested a fireplace.
“My expertise is in the area of making ideas work,” Boase said. “I have design abilities, but I love machines and systems and garden features that have moving parts, be it water or fire.”
Boase likes features that add drama and create an indoor feel outdoors.
The fireplace in Edmonds’ yard has a barbecue grill and a cast iron stove with two burners.
There is also an alcove that is designated to become a warming oven that will work with the heat produced from the firebox of the grill.
Across the patio from the fireplace is a rock edging that provides a table-type space for a champagne fountain. A hidden ice bucket is built into it with a bottom plug that drains into the flower bed below. The edging also has an electrical outlet.
The garden already had a pool, but it was painted with house paint, had no stairs and was beset with other problems. Boase added stairs, a skimmer and a new filter. He also added a fountain on the wall between Edmonds and her neighbor’s yard that flows into the pool.
“As you walk out the house’s side door, you look at the interesting rusty ceiling panel background with water falling from a great height,” Boase said. It has a “pitter-patter noise and the strong visual effects of water falling and shimmering. It’s actually illuminated from above so at night, it’s quite light.”
The pool is bounded on two sides by a low wall made from river rock that has been cut into angular shapes for a more natural appearance, as well as structural integrity. Many of the rocks are from Edmonds’ garden.
“I wanted to give Susann a lot for her money,” Boase said.
Edmonds requested the wall to be at hip height, but Boase’s crew made it shorter. She showed him that it wasn’t right because if the average woman sits on a low bench her tummy pooches out, whereas if she sits on a high bench, her tummy looks flat.
“I think he was a little stunned when I did that,” Edmonds said. “Part of it is what I do, I want people to feel beautiful. I want women to feel beautiful and I don’t care if it’s in my salon chair or if it’s sitting by my pool.”
Boase added the additional foot seamlessly to the wall.
The result is Edmonds has a lot of additional living and entertaining space. The garden contains a wealth of other features, including a pond with a bridge that serves as a pathway from the house to the patio, an iron pergola graced by foliage that leads to vegetable beds, a folly (an irregular circle of rock) that makes the pergola by the patio look as if its sitting on top of a fallen tower, and a mound in the backyard topped with three tall stones for a Stonehenge effect. There is also a time capsule hidden in fireplace containing house blueprints, garden plans, magazine articles that inspired the garden’s design and other items. Integral to the design is a look of ancient fallen ruins, with pieces that are purposely unfinished or broken.
The llamas are gone now, so their old barn has been temporarily converted into the Llama Lounge, another space for entertaining. Nothing has been done to the existing stable structure and the dirt floor remains intact. But there is a bar with stools and the walls have new paint, a few framed photographs and a fake fireplace front.
“We unleashed our own sense of freedom to do whatever we wanted, starting with a plan and refining it, incorporating new ideas along the way,” Boase said.
It took six and a half months to complete the garden, and Edmonds and Boase are still adding to it and changing it here and there.
Boase grew up on a farm in the West Highlands of Scotland. There, he often visited botanical gardens with his mother and grandparents. He came to the United States in 1987, where he learned his current trade, and has been a landscaper for 25 years.
“I consider myself to be the antithesis of that (negative) contractor personality and that’s why Susann and I have bonded. It’s really a mutual desire to create something beautiful and be creative together with the garden,” Boase said. “I was very motivated to take her ideas and make them work. And that’s really the way I’ve been in my career all along as a landscaper. I can take the idea and develop the idea, modify it, and cut back.”
Boase said his speciality is taking on jobs that other landscapers might refuse; he thrives on the challenge of working out ways to do unusual things.
“I haven’t always made a lot of money because I’ve done it for the love and the opportunity to be creative and the desire to make people happy,” Boase said.
Boase is currently building a structure for his wife, Jennifer Febre Boase, and his next business venture, the McLeod Ale Brewing Co. in Van Nuys. He’d like to plant a hops orchard to supply it.
As for Edmonds’ garden, there are plans to build a broch (a round tower of stone) as a little secret getaway spot in the back of the garden. It will be big enough for two people to relax in and have small windows and a gothic arched doorway.
So what part of the gardens is Edmonds’ favorite?
“It depends on what day it is,” she said.
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