Carlsbad Home - Before Photos

This weekend Aeonium Design Studio finished up another residence. This one in Rancho Carlsbad - a community of manufactured homes just East of the Carlsbad Flower Fields. ADS is working on the entryway to this community for the HOA, and as new owners come in, will be helping them to redo their landscaping according to their HOA guidelines.

Our first yard, a demonstration house for the community, went in this past Sunday:

Front Yard - Before

Side Driveway Planting - Before

A note about the property. Rancho Carlsbad started out as a trailer park some years ago. About 30 years ago the community members started buying the homes AND the land. Now when many people move into the community they pull out the existing structure and rebuild.

The community itself is gorgeous. Its a dedicated senior community, built with Mission style architecture and planting. Two creeks run through the property, a large clubhouse sits on a lake in the center of the community, and they boast a large community garden, resort style pool and recreation area, and a heavily planted environment.

Photos from the installation, as well as photos of the completed front yard will be up shortly!

Aeonium's Garden Shop - Now Open

Things have really been cooking over here at ADS. Right now I'm tying up plans for an HOA's Community Entry, finishing up the maintenance manual for my 2 latest happy landscaping clients (postings soon to come), working on some live gifts for a Garden Shop client, and well, working on the Garden Shop.

Garden Shop? Yeah. Garden Shop.

As if life in general, and life at Aeonium weren't busy enough - I've decided that Aeonium will have two arms, so to speak. One is the landscape design aspect of the business - facilitating people to develop their  outdoor spaces, create their dream yard, or dress up a house in need of a face lift. On the other end of the business you'll see the Garden Shop - essentially a place for me to play around with centerpieces, miniature succulent gardens, vertical wall gardens, succulent wreaths, and one day (one day soon I hope) planted furniture.

As an avid Etsy buyer and seller, it seemed pretty natural to start up an Etsy Shop and Account for Aeonium and run the Garden Shop through there. So here they are, the first two listings:

Morning Coffee

4 Tiny Pails

Slowly but surely I'll be adding more little plantings to the Garden Shop. So keep checking in here: Aeonium Design Studio Garden Shop for updated listings!

I got this today...

... not gonna lie - pretty excited!!! 

Mudscaping

Once again, its been a while, and once again there are some more pokers on the fire here at Aeonium Design Studio. Azlynn took the month of October off - and toured Scotland and England with her best friend, but since she's been back the nose has definitely been on the grindstone. To be honest I can't help but think that if I stopped going on vacation all of the time I may be able to turn this into a viable business!

Right now at Aeonium, there are three active projects (2 in Carlsbad in design development, and 1 in Redondo Beach undergoing installation), and a couple more lined up to continue after the first of the year.

The residence in Redondo Beach is being installed by yours truly and the homeowner (lets face it, this is at times a low budget operation) and we've certainly been getting our hands dirty. We started 2 weekends ago in unseasonably warm weather, and were able to clear the property (a small yard attached to a condo complex) and finalize the design and purchase plants. This past weekend we continued to prepare the ground and plant despite the buckets of rain and whipping winds that came into LA. At the moment the project has been sidelined due the fact that its difficult to install paving when your a sliding around on mud, and while you dig holes they immediately fill with sludge. We've dubbed it mudscaping - and I wish I had some photos - but to be honest I didn't want to get my camera too muddy. I left on Sunday after watching this beautifully leveled yard turn into a flood zone, and a ceanothus nearly ripped in half/pygmy date palms bending at 90 degree angles, and fountain grass flattening itself all due to the wind. I'm hoping all of the plants survive the wind and the flooding!

Here are some before photos of the Redondo Beach residence - after photos to come in a couple of weeks!

Happy Holidays to you all, I'm sure I'll have more updates for you on this residence and other projects soon after the holidays!

ADS' First Clients = Happy Clients!

This last week has been very exciting - the installation on my first residence finished up! I went over this afternoon to take some photographs and give my clients a maintenance manual for their new plants. I'll include a few photos in this post, there are more on Aeonium's Design Studio Facebook page.

The back yard is split up into the main yard, the garden, and the side slope:

Before - Main Backyard

Before - Garden

With the Scripps Ranch residence, it was important to the homeowners to have drought tolerant/low water and low maintenance plants. They had outgrown their need for a lawn, but still need wide and stable access through the backyard on either side of the existing patio. Flagstones set in mortar create a wide walk, are easy to keep clean, and create more of a garden feel compared to the existing concrete side walk. On one side of the garden the walk features an expanding bend which will allow for two small outdoor chairs, or one lounge chair.

A low keystone wall system was installed along the slope on the side of the house and replaced a low wall providing soil control for the Coral Tree. A low, stepped keystone wall was also installed along the back of the main yard.

After - Main Backyard

After - Main Backyard

After - Garden Area

After - Garden Area

Plants on site were selected in collaboration with the contractor and include, but are not limited to some of the following: Agave attenuata, Tecomaria capensis, Rosa mutabilis, Euryops tali, Coprosma repens 'Marble Queen', Crassula mulitcava, and Iresine herbstii 'Brilliantissima'. All plants were planted in either 1 or 5 gallon sizes, so they will need some time to fill in. Also note that today while photographing temperatures were roughly 90 degrees - so some of the plants look a little droopy.

Thanks so much to the homeowners and the team at Dream Builders Construction, its been a real pleasure working with all of you!

Fences and Plans

Life has been busy for me on the personal front the last month, so I've been neglecting updates, blogging, and the like.

Aeonium has a couple of pokers in the fire right now, and today I felt like spotlighting one - Jason and Julia's house. Jason is a friend of mine from Cal Poly and he and his fiancee Julia have recently purchased a house here in San Diego. I'm helping with the landscape design, and Jason (an architect himself) is overseeing, and to be honest, doing, the installation. There really is no backyard space on the property due to the siting of the house, so we are creating a back yard in the front yard. We are going for more of the outdoor living room feel. There will be a wrap around deck with cutouts for in ground planters, a flagstone living room area, a vegetable garden, and a plant palette heavy on California natives, and some drip irrigation to keep it all alive.

Its been great fun working with the pair of them, and the yard is starting to take shape. They are documenting it here at: http://thecactusrecoveryproject.blogspot.com/ The fence went in recently, the deck is next on the docket. We are all pleased with how things are shaping up right now, and I'm excited to see this continue to move forward!

Schwag!

I have a logo, business cards, and a splash page on my personal site for Aeonium! Currently working on two houses, and excited to start prospecting for some more clients!