SANTA ROSA HILLSIDE
HILLSIDE RESIDENCE
SANTA ROSA, CA | 2024
The goal for this rural residential landscape was to seamlessly integrate the new architecture of the home and create comfortable outdoor living spaces within a challenging hillside condition. The plant palette is intentionally subtle, featuring a diverse mix of majority native grasses and forbs, so that over time it will blend in with the surrounding landscape.
This project required an elevated attention to detail, from the hand-crafted drystack retaining walls that form the garden terraces to the curving timber steps that lead from one level to the next. While the plantings around the house were placed on an irrigation system, the clients agreed to a bold experimental approach in the lower hillside meadows, which are unirrigated and will be sustained through a deep mulch method.
HIGHLIGHTED PLANTS
Achillea millefolium (Yarrow)
Asclepias speciosa (Showy Milkweed)
Eriophyllum lanatum (Woolly Sunflower)
Festuca californica (California Fescue)
Melica californica (California Melicgrass)
Muhlenbergia rigens (Deergrass)
Penstemon heterophyllus ‘Margarita BOP’ (Margarita BOP Penstemon)
Sisyrinchium bellum (Blue-Eyed Grass)
Stipa pulchra (Purple Needlegrass)
Symphyotrichum chilense ‘Purple Haze’ (Purple Haze Pacific Aster)
Images by Miridae