(A Sleek Permaculture Design)

Having just bought a cozy bungalow in the heart of Santa Barbara, these newly-weds wanted to increase their living space by building a landscape for entertaining. They wanted an outdoor dining area, an area to lounge around a fire pit, and a space to grow food. Additionally, they needed a small lawn area for their dog to enjoy and they wanted it all to be sustainable. Their aesthetic is clean and modern, but the woman in the couple also has an affinity for softer plantings— roses, blue and white flowers, and blue-green to sliver foliage.

What we came up with is a simplified food forest built around outdoor rooms. A food forest combines diverse plantings of edible, medical and otherwise useful plants, along with plants that support the overall health and growth of the food-forest. The idea is to attempt to mimic the ecosystems and patterns found in nature. In this case, we used a combination of California natives and other Mediterranean adapted species, herbs, fruit trees and other perennial edibles. For the annual vegetables that need to be replanted every season we installed three raised veggie beds. Flowering natives attract beneficial insects and birds that will keep pests at bay in edible crops. The herbs and their strong scents keep away pests such as rodents. We added a water feature for thirsty birds and insects, and the sound of the water feature also drowns out the constant sound of TV coming from the neighbor’s house. 

Usually at Sweet Smiling Landscapes we are all about lawn removal because they take a lot of water and maintenance, and can also use a lot of chemicals to keep green. But there is a place for a small, well-planned patch of grass. If you are going for a lawn, use the real thing*.  The lawn in this project is laid out to be irrigated with minimal over spray.  The property was graded toward the center, where the lawn is located, to minimize run off. Sprinklers are water efficient, with multi-trajectory spray heads. The lawn is planted with a combination of lower- water need grass seed, mixed with English daisy and clover. The clover helps fix nitrogen, which keeps the grass greener without fertilizer and the English daisy has leaves that stay greener with less inputs, and they blend in with the grass to create a more resilient lawn area.  

For the hardscape we used a combination of gravel and concrete pavers. These provide a clean, contemporary look and allow for water to percolate. This means that water can sink in to the ground where it can hydrate nearby plant material as well as replenish the aquifer and protect against water damage to the house.  

This garden almost doubles these home owners’ living space. They eat in and from this garden on a daily basis, and now have a space they can relax in and enjoy flowers blooming, fruits ripening, as well as watch birds, bees and ladybugs zoom around.

  *See my blog post on artificial turf.