Water Conserving Garden
Ron Lutsko Jr. planted this site-sensitive garden for a couple whose mission was to create a lush yet water-friendly landscape
Napa Valley real estate lures plenty of dreamers who want to re-create a piece of Tuscany or Provence. But for the owners of this hilltop home above the town of St. Helena, nature itself set the aesthetic tone. "We wanted to be as kind to the property as possible," says homeowner Paula Brooks, a budding gardener. "I asked for native California plants, although I really didn't know what that meant. I just knew I didn't want to do something that didn't belong there."
To frame their new home with site-sensitive grounds, Brooks and her husband, Bob Cook, enlisted landscape architect Ron Lutsko Jr. of San Francisco's Lutsko Associates. The couple's demanding venture-capital careers had left little time for home life, but now retired, they were ready, Brooks says, "to nest." They envisioned a tranquil refuge, but the couple's garden preferences—drought-tolerant plants that could co-exist with the native blue oaks and still deliver the pleasure of color year-round—presented a challenge.
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