This Romantic Garden Returns to Its 1930s European-Inspired Heyday
Gabriela Yariv roots her landscape designs in knowledge and experience, but sometimes kismet comes into play. She first encountered this Joseph Kucera-designed home and its European-influenced garden while perusing real estate listings.
“I noticed it because my parents once lived in a Kucera house,” she says of the California architect noted for his 1920s and ’30s-era Period Revival homes. This one formerly belonged to Winifred Starr Dobyns, author of the seminal 1931 book California Gardens. Yariv even popped by the open house, noting the then-fading garden would be a dream project. Two weeks later, she got a cold call from the new owner, who wanted to hire her to carefully rehabilitate it.
To do so accurately would require some forensic gardening. Because the house and grounds were completed after the book, “there was no documentation about this garden in Dobyns’s pages,” explains Yariv, who consulted architectural historian Dr. Barbara Lamprecht. And her own familiarity with the area was key. “I grew up around the corner from the Irving Sturgis garden in the San Gabriel valley, designed by Florence Yoch, and it’s almost a doppelgänger to this one. So I realized either she assisted Dobyns or maybe Dobyns copied the greats,” she says.
Guided by Dobyns’s book and its Sturgis garden photographs, Yariv uncovered the original rose bed outline, reinstated a circular fountain, and removed overgrown shrubbery to reestablish the axial and symmetrical long vistas typical of Period Revival estate gardens.
She completely restored a wood pergola, along with pavers, each painstakingly taken up, cataloged, and fixed or replaced. Magnificent old-growth olives and agaves were protected, as were old benches and stone walls, while Yariv added a new outdoor pizza oven beneath a glorious purple-raining jacaranda.
“It’s a fun tension, juxtaposing those old rustic gestures with the needs of 21st-century owners,” Yariv says. “To get my hands on Dobyns’s own garden and to sleuth using her book—this is what I trained for my whole life.”
Entry
Containers overflowing with echeveria and trailing portulacaria stand at the entry of the Southern California Period Revival garden’s restored fountain and original rose beds, replanted with six fragrant varieties.
Fountain
A fountain and its surrounding rose beds were restored to Period Revival glory.
Guesthouse
Bougainvillea climbs the guesthouse walls. Olive trees and perennials adorn the courtyard, where original paving stones and an octagonal fountain were restored.
Pizza Oven
While honoring the classic axial lines and symmetry of a Period Revival estate garden, Yariv added a new outdoor pizza oven.
Back Garden
Period-appropriate boxwood hedges outline the back garden, where potted agave adds Mediterranean flavor. The outdoor furnishingswere selected by Madeline Stuart Associates.
Pebble Pathway
Rosemary, Greek sage, variegated pittosporum, and Little Ollie grace a pebble pathway.
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