After

Before
Adding a room to this house in Silver Lake, Calif., forced the owner to build an unsightly retaining wall. Green Art of West Hollywood, Calif., designed, built and installed three living tapestries to enhance it. One cubic yard of perite and vermiculite was placed in welded metal frames, which were then planted with 2,500 assorted succulent cuttings. They are watered by hand: once a week in the summer and once every other week in the winter. The pattern on the tapestries was inspired by the couple's wedding china. In-ground plantings include Morea bicolor lemon drop, purple Cordyline, and Euphorbia tirucalli.

As most homeowners know, a house is organic: evolving as families grow and contract, tastes and interests change, and new products and technologies appear. As detailed often in these pages, landscape contractors can be very instrumental in helping homeowners stay put in their current houses, contented and accommodated, instead of having to move.

Such was the case for Brent Green of GreenArt Landscape Design, Inc. in West Hollywood, Calif., and his clients in nearby Silver Lake, whose addition of a great room ultimately led to the need for a landscape upgrade.

This need came about because the new room now occupies most of the original garden space, and the remodeling project brought the house out too close to an existing hill, so the city required a large retaining wall.

Once constructed, the 48-foot-long wall dominated the view from the new room only 11 feet away. Rather than simply obscure the wall with vines or vertical shrubbery, the landscape company took a more artistic approach. The results were three large tapestries of small succulents hanging on a textured, painted backdrop.

To build the fountain, a section of the seating was cut out with a concrete saw. The two basins were constructed from concrete masonry units. The fountain uses a 500 gph Beckett pump. Golden Acorus was planted in front of it. Toro spray nozzles provide the irrigation. The accent lighting is Vista floodlights.

Added to this were numerous in-ground plantings and a simple contemporary fountain. Eliminating the need for bulkier vines or shrubbery left more space for built-in seating.

The wall and seating were already installed when Green and his crew got under way. They first installed the fountain, irrigation, beds, plants and accent lighting, then textured and painted before building the tapestries.

Green designed the wrought-iron frames and had them assembled by a welder. Steel wire mesh was then bolted on to one side. A sheet of heavy-duty weed cloth was put down to hold the inorganic soil. The team first tried to fill the frame as it lay on the ground, but that made it extremely heavy to mount, so they decided to attach the frames to the wall and then fill them. After another sheet of weed cloth, the wire mesh cover was installed, and the frames were then planted.

Six workers needed just one week to install these new amenities, but they will provide the homeowners and their guests years of viewing pleasure.