Rustic Elegance by Alida Blair landscape designer

When Alida Blair invited me up to view her newest landscape installation in Napa Valley I jumped at the chance.
I have long admired the design work of Alida and welcomed the opportunity to see one of her projects in person.
The project is located deep in the heart of California’s wine county, the Napa Valley.
Most people are familiar with the low land of Napa, with it’s sprawling majestic open acres of vineyards , wineries and quaint little towns offering wonderful restaurants and upscale boutiques.
But there is more to Napa Valley than just the low lying vineyards. There are the surrounding undulating hills studded with native oak trees, manzanita and fir trees.
This is where many of the wine makers and locals live.

Below is a glimpse into how one family lives their lives out of doors in rustic elegance in the Napa Valley.

A stone terrace and overhead shade structure adjacent to the back of the home.

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

Californian natives such as Centranthus rubra commingle with other low water use perennials and shrubs

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

Located directly off of the stone terrace is the outdoor kitchen, complete with pizza oven.

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

Note the beautiful blending of rustic and finely crafted finishes such as the wood bar with it’s natural bark attached to the edging and the tree stump legs.

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

From the outdoor culinary area a dry lay Arizona flat stone path undulates down to the swimming pool, passing the hammock hung between two manzanita trees and the fire ring.

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

I really liked the variety of herbs and low growing creepers growing in the dry laid patio beyond the fire ring

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

A photo of the designer, Alida Blair walking down the path towards the pool

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

From Alida Blair Landscape Design

I will be posting more photos of this soulfull garden in the coming weeks.
Stay tune to see the infinity edge swimming pool as well as some other wonderful details.

Drought Solution

I have a very small lawn area in my front yard.
It is a parched yellow 10 x 20 foot area right now.
I've been rationing my water use. The small amount of water that I use has been dedicated to my front yard perennial border and my back yard which consists of sub-tropicals and succulents.

I think I am going to bite the bullet and install a faux lawn.

I've installed them for several clients whose situation was perfect for an artificial lawn and now after some introspective thought, I feel my small flat area is perfect for one.

Our local water department is willing to chip in some dough if we rip out our lawns.
I'm going to give them a call and start the ball rolling.

Below is an artificial lawn by ForeverLawn . They generously provided this replica lawn when I did the S.F. Garden Show.
I will most likely do business with them.

Anyone else have a good candidate/ site specific area for a faux lawn ?

From San Francisco Garden Show 2008

A few swimming pools

A few that we've designed and or redesigned :

New Pool Construction

From Pools

From Pools

From Pools

Remodeled

From Pools

New Pool Construction

From Pools

From Pools

New lap pool construction

From Pools

Pool remodel

From Pools

New Pool construction

From Pools

Let's take a dip ! It's hot outside.

It’s swimming pool weather !
Unfortunately here in California we are experiencing our third year of drought and the local water department authorities have put a permit ban on filling any newly built swimming pools.
I usually design one or two swimming pools a year, but due to the drought and our current economic crisis there have zero opportunities to design a swimming pool.

Below are some photos of some of my favorite swimming pool designs that I had an opportunity to see while in Bali.


This pool has a Mayan temple feel to it.

From Bali

From Bali

Beautiful underwater mosaics

From Bali

This small dipping pool was part of a private suite - sweet !

From Bali

Love the built in concrete lounge area that extended into the pool.

From Bali

From Bali

From Bali

From Bali

This pool overlooks a beautiful valley. I like the seat wall in the pool as well as the terrazo bath tub sunken in the adjoining stone patio

From Bali

Lush surrounding garden

From Bali

From Bali

Made Wijaya’s pool

From Bali

This pool was located just steps from my bedroom at a private villa a few of us rented together .

From Bali

These pool pictures were taken two years ago on a trip to Kauai.
We stayed at the Grand Hyatt for 5 fantastic days.
The best part of the stay was being able to swim at night in all of the different swimming lagoons.

From Kauai Trip

From Kauai Trip

From Kauai Trip

This was one of my favorite swimming areas, it opened up to several other large pools.

From Kauai Trip

I loved the slide !

From Kauai Trip

That's a wrap.

Last week we wrapped up a project in Northern California.
Previous to the renovation the outdoor area was a series of ramps, masonry walls and wooden platforms all at various disjointed heights and widths.
To get from the side yard to the back yard you had to climb up a set of steps, cross over a tilted ramp and then step down a few more steps.
The new layout is an open flow plan allowing for easy level access from side to back yard.
In order to achieve this we had to dig back the hillside by several feet and install a 10 foot tall retaining wall.
To break the over all height of the wall we terraced it back to accommodate two walls , a 7 foot and a 3 foot retaining wall.
A glass and slate mosaic water feature was embedded into the 7 foot tall wall along with a stone planter.
A New England bluestone patio was also installed as well as an outdoor cooking area.

From Water fountains in the landscape

Planting is still very young. It is mostly subtropical in nature.
Plants include agave attenuatta, aeoniums, banana, papyrus, colocasias and creeping fig vines that will eventually cloth the tall stucco wall.

From Water fountains in the landscape

Detail of the water feature. A copper hood was installed so that low voltage lighting could be installed at the top of the water fall line.
Flamed edged blue stone borders the slate and glass tile.

From Water fountains in the landscape

Ruth Bancroft Gardens & Sculpture Show

Last weekend I visited the opening of “Art in the Garden” at the Ruth Bancroft Garden.

The Bancroft Garden is located in Walnut Creek CA, a arid inland suburb about 40 minutes from San Francisco.

http://www.ruthbancroftgarden.org/

This distinctive garden works in harmony with its dry desert like climate.
It is planted with lots of cactus, succulents, palms and other drought tolerant plants from around the world.

The art that was exhibited in the garden was nicely curated and well placed amongst the desert foliage, which are sculptural in their own right.

From garden tours.

My favorite piece was a glass sculpture blown by Kim Webster - www.kwebsterglass.com

From garden tours.

I met Kim in the garden and she described how she designed the sculpture with LED lights to illuminate at night time.
Brilliant !

My apologies go out to the artist who sculpted the 3 foot diameter head pictured below. I have misplaced the name .
This piece, sculpted in clay, piqued my interest.

From garden tours.

The sculpture show runs thru mid July 2009.
I highly recommend making the trip to anyone who love fine sculpture and sculptural plants.

From garden tours.

From garden tours.

Cornerstone Festival of Gardens - Sonoma CA

The water lilies are blooming at Cornerstone Festival of Gardens located in Sonoma CA.

From New Album 6/20/09 5:20 PM

From New Album 6/20/09 5:20 PM

From New Album 6/20/09 5:20 PM

and the whirly gig sun flowers where twirling in the wind

From New Album 6/20/09 5:20 PM

Topher Delaney’s exhibit garden is holding up quite nicely - I think the name of this garden is ‘bar code’.

From New Album 6/20/09 5:20 PM

While cruising the outdoor shopping grounds at Artefacts Salvage I came across this wonderful passenger bicycle.
I really would love to have this !

From New Album 6/20/09 5:20 PM

And finally, an interior photo shot taken in the shop known as Artefacts Salvage.
The shop owner and staff does a wonderful job with staging their merchandise.
The lighting is always superb.

From New Album 6/20/09 5:20 PM