Honestly, I think the garden of the Bailey House got forgotten by Pierre Koenig and his clients. Several pieces of Architectural Pottery were planted with sedum and the steel-framed reflective pools where decorated for the early photo shoots with additional rushes. This probably was because of the limited budget. Koenig’s sketches don’t indicate much more regarding the landscape.
Somehow I think that this became the week-spot of CSH #21; different from its successor, the Stahl House (CSH #22) with its spectacular view over LA, this house was built between a sloping neighborhood street and a steep dry mountain-side way up in the West Hollywood Hills. So the focus was kept on the house’s center-patio and its terraces. Over time bushes have overgrown some of the mountain slope and some grass had been planted for presentation purposes and to prevent further erosion. The last owner surrounded himself with a wall of bamboo, which cut the house off the neighborhood in the style of Beverly Hills and a cinder-block retention-wall along the street had been added.
Essentially the guiding principle for a new garden design was low-maintenace. What came to mind was a desert-like climate, you don’t think so much about that when you see the rainforest-like planted neighborhood streets. But succulents take to the dry grounds (oh surprise!) and the sculptural character of succulents complements the straight angled building shell. The fact that they absorb water during the rainy season and then store it means they can last longer during the dry season. This way irrigation can be kept to a minimum, a necessary consideration helped as we found out later that year to get through the ongoing California drought.
Inspired on the one hand by the wild, desert vegetation of the Joshua Tree Park with its randomly spread Joshua trees accompanied by creoste bushes, ocotillos and teddy-bear cacti; and on the other hand by the well-groomed urban succulent garden in San Marino at Huntington Botanical Gardens which looks more like a dense jungle of cacti and agave. We decided for a wide variety of succulents, planted in clusters, and rare Joshua trees from Texas, since the Californian Joshua tree is close to extinction and also is very difficult to transplant (it has to be replanted exactly at the same angle and orientation to the sun in which it grew).
The neighborhood association*, founded even before the house was completed in 1959, eventually set up rules to keep the community alive and open, preventing Wonderland Park Avenue from turning into a gated community. Needless to say, the moment that the bamboo went, happy faces arrived by foot or Porsche, commenting that they are glad to have the building again as part of their community.
At the end, the gardens are the interface between home and neighborhood and provoke public interest more then I ever expected, since they provide a viewable amenity and more so, an identity.
* I was told, the neighborhood association was founded in the mid 1950’s by a diverse selection of working professionals, who got the basic infrastructure built on Wonderland Park Avenue, even working out bank financing at the time. The area was refuge to middle class people who would have been marginalized because of race or ethnicity in the postwar Los Angeles housing market.
Contemporary photographs curtsey of the author.
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