This Oregon coast garden, created by Mosaic Gardens, is full of beautiful ideas. There is nothing typical about this design. It is a full front, back, and all-sides garden renovation that takes a weedy lot and transforms it into a haven you’d hardly recognize.
Let’s take a tour – starting with the front garden.
You’ll see that that building has great views of the ocean from the front and side, so it makes sense to frame the view with a lush, beautiful garden.
The Backyard Stock Tank Water Garden
A stock tank, cited in the center of a stone-edged circular gravel patio, provides both a focal point and a reason to travel to this area of the garden.
Remember, if there is no reason to go to a place- then you will never go there. Something like this provides an excellent reason to walk through and actually enjoy the garden.
Other Details of the Garden:
Catching my eye is the oversized arbor over the ‘L’ shaped bench. Typically, you might see a narrower arbor over a single bench.
The planting is striking and bold, combining well-known plants but in slightly lesser favored varieties. (like the yellow Kniphofia and the fresh green Japanese maple, as opposed to the typical red)
The L-shaped Bench and Arbor
Designed by Mosaic Gardens
Kniphofia and purple-leaved plants make a beautiful tapestry of textures.
Creeping thyme grows over the stone stairs.
An Arbour Made of Birch Trees.
The Birch tunnel.
The Vegetable Garden and Orchard
I wholeheartedly agree with Mosaic Garden’s own statement about sculpture in the garden. They have many projects where they have placed an Andy Goldworthy-esque stacked stone sculpture in a landscape.
“We believe that simple forms make the best features. In a classical or contemporary space, clean, unadorned forms dovetail with the geometry of their surroundings. In spaces that overflow with plants or lack a formal framework, visual complexity would be lost in the noise. Clean, quiet lines balance the surrounding chaos. We have designed several features, including a rusted metal fountain at the new Watershed building and several stacked stone sculptures. When left to our own devices, we always return to the simplest forms.
-Mosaic Gardens
This Goldsworthy-inspired stone ball sculpture is in their gravel courtyard (that is also an orchard), and it is a strikingly simple art feature that gives a clear focus to a space that would otherwise lack a defining characteristic.
Before – The Backyard:
Another trick I am noticing throughout this garden is a strong consistency of repetitive foliage colors. In the top areas, there are a notable number of blueish-colored plants. Picea pungens ‘Montgomery blue’ and other blue spruce combine with euphorbia, silverly blue phormium, and other plants to create a strong repetition.
As you move into the area of the garden with the stock tank water garden, you notice that the blues are gone and are replaced with a strong repetition of dark purple-leaved plants. These reddish and burgundy elements repeat, and even though they are not the same plant, the color pattern once again makes the space feel cohesive. Do you see it in the heucheras, phormium, Japanese maples, and elephant ears (among others)?
Finally, when you are in the vegetable garden area, some fresher greens and plants with green and white variegated leaves are introduced. These background tonal changes through the various rooms of the gardens really heighten the feeling of separate spaces, and the idea of separate spaces ultimately makes a small garden feel bigger.
What design tricks are you noticing? There are so many things to admire…what is your favorite?
They are all my favorite. Gardening is one of many reasons I loved living in the Northwest for 10 years.