Garden Visit: Native Flowers and Cor-ten Steel in a Santa Barbara Landscape Designed by Kathleen Ferguson
Garden Visit: Native Flowers and Cor-ten Steel in a Santa Barbara Landscape Designed by Kathleen Ferguson
Garden Visit: Native Flowers and Cor-ten Steel in a Santa Barbara Landscape Designed by Kathleen Ferguson
Photography by Trevor Tondro, courtesy of Trevor Tondro/OTTO, unless otherwise noted.
“I’m a huge nature lover,” says Los Angeles-based landscape designer Kathleen Ferguson.
Ferguson, an arborist who has a degree in horticulture, sticks to a drought-tolerant, climate appropriate plant palette, using as many natives as possible in her projects.
Photograph by Michael Ferguson.
The Right Plants, Right Place, Right Conditions
On the path leading to the front door, Ferguson planted tall, reedy Juncus textilis adjacent to the weeping boulder.
For more color, she added the tough and versatile Nandina ‘Gulf Stream’, which flaunts red and yellow-green foliage throughout the year, and gold-flowering Mimulus aurantiacus (syn.
Hardscape Heaven
To complement the modern architecture of the house, Ferguson chose Cor-ten steel to make rectilinear pavers, fountains, and planting boxes around the property. (The clients, who no longer had young children, decided that they would always wear shoes outside.)