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Gardens for Living: Designing Your Outdoor Room ( Text )
Natural outcrops of stone anchor this informal flight of steps, both physically and visually, providing pivots on which it is hinged. It meanders up the slope to a lawn at the top, the carved wood retaining wall at a turning point providing a nicely theatrical touch in this Los Angeles garden.
17951 Sea Breeze Drive
This garden is different from many in that it was installed before the house was built. The owners supplied landscape designer Rick Mosbaugh with a footprint of the new house five years before construction, so he could provide a mature, ready made landscape, including the existing swimming pool. Stone pines dominate the horizon and can be seen soaring above the house from the street. The front landscape and infinity-pool fountain provide a cooling influence on the hot exposure of this house, which sits well above the street. The fountain is backed by a multicolored ashlar wall and planted with papyrus and willow. A sneak preview of the back garden is visible from the window in the front door. The garden in the back is a study in texture and in shades of green. The hardscape seems to grow right out of the land. The fountain consists of a simple urn centered on roughhewn Yosemite canyon boulders, covered with lichen and mosses, and surrounded with variegated ivy. Note the striking plant combinations in the planters. Each area shows off a masterful combination of plants, often reflecting Mosbaugh's latest enthusiasm.
In Brentwood, Richard Mosbaugh of Statice Landscape and Design in West Los Angeles created a pool that seems to spill right over the canyon's edge, the water on its way to the sea. The effect is completely natural because slightly mounded planting beds help camouflage the pool's coping and shape.
Richard Mosbaugh of Statice Landscape and Design in West Los Angeles has a passion for garden benches. Most of the gardens he designs get several, and one has no less than five. All are sculptural built-ins made of stone or wood; "they're usually clean and ready to sit on because they get watered along with the garden," he says. Mosbaugh places his benches under trees so that they feel protected. There, they also stay cooler during the day and tend to not get dewy at night.