Published in Palo Alto Weekly, April 22, 2009

Soon after Edgewood Garden was constructed, Andrea Testa-Vought’s young son used water and mud to plaster the garden’s low retaining walls. Testa-Vought said she would never forget when she walked into her backyard and found mud covering the newly constructed walls that form outdoor living nooks in her garden.

“I just let it go, and eventually about a year later it just melted off the wall,” Testa-Vought said, shrugging her shoulders. “You just can’t beat that kind of experience for a kid. It’s all about connecting with the outside.”

That was about 10 years ago. Today Testa-Vought’s son is a teenager and no longer plasters the garden walls with mud, but the hardscape elements of the family’s unusual garden on Edgewood Drive in Palo Alto continues to inspire people looking to enjoy time outdoors. The garden design is understated yet striking and acts like an extension of the home, an effect carefully thought out by Testa-Vought and landscape designer Bernard Trainor.

Edgewood Garden will open its doors on May 2 as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program, where more than 300 private gardens around the country are showcased for self-guided tours. This year two of the gardens are in Palo Alto — both on Edgewood Drive — and a third is in a woodsy neighborhood in Atherton.

The Garden Conservancy chose Edgewood Garden because, as Trainor, one of the designer’s helping Open Days Program with recruitment said, “(The garden) is a peaceful family retreat that appears to be comfortable with the climate. It does not feel imported to me and this establishes a look and feeling that makes people feel grounded and at one with this place.”

Built in 1999, Edgewood Garden incorporates Mediterranean plants Testa-Vought calls “wacky.” Flora originating in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Central and South America and Africa decorate the half-acre plot in a zany way that is reminiscent of Doctor Seuss.

“I knew what I wanted as far as attracting the wildlife and it being true to the property,” Testa-Vought said. “I didn’t want to create New England in Palo Alto.”

Most of the garden is off the grid, but Testa-Vought said she hand waters some of the plants on a monthly basis. The garden has no grass, something Testa-Vought said her family has never missed. They have private walled areas, a bocce court and a pool instead.

“Plants are just the icing on the cake,” according to Trainor. “You need a good hardscape and a cohesive design to establish the ‘bones of the garden’ and set the stage for the plantings.”

Pulling off this approach, Testa-Vought said, goes back to a really professional design; the structure — the walls, the seating and even the big trees — serve as a foil for the plants. Since Trainor initially designed and built the backbone of the garden, Testa-Vought has been able to tailor the plantings as the garden evolves.

Trainor based the garden around the family’s lifestyle of eating outside, having friends over and sharing glasses of wine and celebrating the California environment. The garden has a bocce court made from compacted sand and oyster shells where Testa-Vought’s kids played when they were young. Now the court serves as a place to set up the ping-pong table and as a dance floor during parties. An outdoor dining area with various edible plants is where the family takes its dinners when weather permits.

A bubbling fountain is another key feature of a Mediterranean garden, and although this came about from an accident, it has become a prominent aspect of the garden. The birds love to feed from it too.

Plants have grown in to hug a Frank Morbillo sculpture near the long pool. Testa-Vought said she never expected to incorporate a sculpture into her garden, but she fell in love with it at a gallery in Berkeley. “It has becomes an anchor in the garden.”

Another impromptu feature of the garden is an arbor designed by Trainor that was supposed to guide grapes, but has ended up as a sculpture itself. “Now (the arbor) is more like art,” Testa-Vought said.

Trainor said the walls give the garden more “oomph.” The separation of space provides the garden with rooms. “There is so much more depth here, and most significantly is the light play. You don’t just have the plants but you have the movement of the shadows and the leaves and the walls give us that. They are sort of a canvas for the plants,” Testa-Vought said bending down to brush her hand across an acacia from Australia.

“He incorporated different ways for us to be outside and seek out places for us to go and think. … It’s a very restful place. It suits our family’s needs.”

About 20 years ago, amidst a drought, Testa-Vought and her husband bought a home in San Jose, and the couple was inspired to find a low-impact alternative to the unsustainable, water-thirsty gardening practices so common in California.

Xeriscaping was popular then, Testa-Vought noted, but the designs turned out to be quite ugly during the summer when everything turned brown. “I wanted to do something that didn’t need water, but gave a nice look,” Testa-Vought said.

As a young girl she took great pleasure in working in the garden with her grandfather, but hadn’t delved too far into gardening until she moved to Palo Alto and met Trainor.

Trainor’s early landscape design experiences in Australia and Europe lent him what he described as “extremely inquisitive eyes (to) observe the genius of the place, connect with the architecture and respond to the personality of each client.” His methodology also explores space and light in the garden.

Trainor said his design for Edgewood garden was different from any project he had worked on at the time because it went beyond the water-guzzling lawn model that is an epidemic in the United States. “Andrea gardens appropriately to this region (through plant selection and using fewer resources). So many others bring the ‘baggage’ from other places that are mostly not in tune with this climate,” Trainor said.

Although it’s not necessary for her type of garden, Testa-Vought said she spends considerable time�puttering around her backyard. “It’s my passion,” she said.

Testa-Vought said she hopes people can leave her garden “with some tiny taste of what they can do without having to buy something and adding gallons of water each day, to give people an idea that there are other ways and other plants.”

What: The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program self-guided tour
When: Saturday, May 2, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Two gardens in Palo Alto and one in Atherton
Tickets: $5 admission to each garden; children under 12 free
Info: Begin at 1474 Edgewood Drive, Palo Alto, for directions to other gardens. No reservations required. Visit www.opendaysprogram.org

Published April 28, 2009 in Palo Alto Weekly

A mother and her daughters sell Girl Scout cookies to their neighbors, walking door-to-door through several cul-de-sac streets that make up Palo Alto Orchards. This is the second generation the neighborhood has seen grow up and most of the cookie-cutter tract houses that were built after World War II have been remodeled to contemporary aesthetics.

Darcy Huston, the mother who accompanies her Girl Scouts, moved to Palo Alto Orchards five years ago with her husband to raise three girls. The Hustons came for the stellar public schools and for the neighborhood’s sense of community; they wanted to be able to sell cookies to neighbors they actually know.

The Huston girls can play in the streets during the summer, and ride bikes around the neighborhood with their parents, but their mom Darcy worries about them walking to school alone because Palo Alto Orchards is wedged between bustling Arastradero Road and El Camino Real.

Henry Lum, a resident of Palo Alto Orchards, has been working diligently to convince the city to put in a crosswalk on Arastradero Road to provide a safe way to connect Palo Alto Orchards to nearby Juana Briones Park.

“I understand the City of Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Department has included this request into their future traffic-calming plans for the Arastradero corridor,” John Spiller, neighborhood association president, said.

Misao Sakamoto and her late husband also raised three children in Palo Alto Orchards, but they did so during a simpler time when parents could rest easily when their children walked to school.

“When my children were little, the mothers sat out in the yard watching the children playing in the street while the fathers went to work. The children were outside playing with each other and walking to school together,” Sakamoto said. “The mothers too had a chance to socialize with each other because unlike today’s mothers, we were not working. It was a very peaceful type of living.”

The Sakamotos moved to Palo Alto Orchards fresh out of UC Berkeley student housing, where they lived while Calvin Sakamoto was a student. The community was still surrounded by walnut orchards then. The Sakamotos joined many former GIs who came to raise their children in one-story homes priced under $10,000 on streets with names such as Suzanne and Lorabelle, after the original developers McKellar and Kelly’s wives.

“This was a very nice place to raise children and it still is, but lifestyle has changed. I don’t see as many kids outside on the street,” Sakamoto said.

Half a century later, young professionals starting families jump at opportunities to live in Palo Alto Orchards. “As soon as a house goes on the market, somebody with kids moves in inevitably because they want to be in the school district,” Huston said of Palo Alto Orchard’s evolving demographic. “Older folks are moving out and new families are moving in.”

Sakamoto values neighborhood interaction and for three years she has invited neighborhood children, their parents and their grandparents to gather around the piano in her family room for Christmas music recitals. Pianists and violinists of all skill level, a single clarinet player and a bassoon soloist bring their instruments and a platter of goodies to her house, and the hostess said they are all very willing to perform and participate.

Sakamoto has seen many neighborhood families grow up. “I love to see the projects of these little children, their aspirations and their accomplishments. I value those relationships where there’s mutual dependencies.”

FACTS
CHILDCARE AND PRESCHOOLS: Palo Alto Montessori School, 575 Arastradero Road; Young Life Christian Pre-School, 687 Arastradero Road
FIRE STATION: No. 5, 600 Arastradero Road
LIBRARY: Mitchell Park branch, 3700 Middlefield Road
NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION: John Spiller, rice49er@pacbell.net
PARKS: Juana Briones Park, 609 Maybell Ave.; Terman Park, 655 Arastradero Road
POST OFFICE: Cambridge, 265 Cambridge Ave.
PRIVATE SCHOOL: Bowman International School, 4000 Terman Road
PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Juana Briones Elementary School, Terman Middle School, Gunn High School
SHOPPING: El Camino Real, San Antonio Shopping Center

Published April 24, 2009 Spring Real Estate edition of Palo Alto Weekly

John King, a broker associate with Alhouse King Residential in Palo Alto, wants to be honest about local condo markets.

“We all want it to be a rosy picture, but the reality is that right now our communities are experiencing the difficulties the rest of the nation has been facing,” he said.

That doesn’t mean that Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View and Los Altos aren’t terrific areas where people will always want to live, he added, describing the local real estate market as “last to fall, but first to rise.”

While projections for this year’s closing sales paint a dismal picture, realistically priced units are likely to push the market back on track, he said.

Unsold condo listings are at the highest level since September 2002 when the market bottomed out from the dot-com bust. In 2006, there were about 830 townhomes and condos sold in the cities of Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Los Altos and Mountain View. By 2008, that number had dropped to about 520.

Based on the 50 units sold in the first quarter of this fiscal year, King estimates condo sales for 2009 at around 300, or about one-third fewer sales than last year.

The reality is that the condo market in these seemingly untouchable communities is along for this economy’s bumpy ride. But the good news is the bottom is beginning to show. Appropriately priced properties are beginning to sell at around their 2004 price levels.

Read the story in its entirety at Mountain View Voice

When it came to sustainably updating her home, Bridget Rost asked “why not?”

It all started with recycling and buying a hybrid car, but Rost wondered why she shouldn’t extend this mentality to her home.

“If I can choose to get reclaimed lumber instead of cutting down a tree, why not?” she questioned. Reconfiguring old kitchen cabinets: no problem. Using paint made with no volatile organic compounds and installing dimmed fluorescent lights: sure.

What resulted from a series of practical and smart decisions is a GreenPoint-certified remodel of Rost’s 1945 home in Midtown. This is one of three sustainable Palo Alto homes that will be on display during early October’s Build It Green (the nonprofit organization behind the GreenPoint rating system) showcase tour.

After raising three children, the Rosts added a 500-square-foot family room to the footprint of their house and a 500-square-foot second story. They watched a home across the street receive a “green-180” by architect Tali Hardonag and Rost recalled thinking, “If we’re going to spend all of this time making the home comfortable and renovated, why not also spend the time to make it green?”

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