Jean Roth Driscoll’s hilltop home boasts beautiful views of Los Angeles
FormLA Friend and Theodore Payne Foundation board member Gary Breaux lives in a beautiful South Pasadena midcentury modern home designed by Jean Roth Driscoll. It’s perch on top of a hill gives it spectacular views – and a few wildfire vulnerabilities we wanted to address in designing the spaces that surround this gem.
Walking by the home’s vibrantly green front slope offers a taste of what sits behind the gate at the top of the hill. See the garden’s interior in the two fire defensive video tours that follow the project snapshot.
In the tours, you’ll see how the garden showcases several defensive landscaping strategies. First and foremost, it has an ample ember resistant zone wrapping the side of the home receptive to wind. Keeping this area open also makes it an amazing place to host parties! Beyond the patio, we created clusters of deep-rooting, lush, leafy, low-water native foliage. From inside the expansive windows, the garden serves as artwork. When on the patio, the design choices translate into abundant birdsong and fragrance. Should embers ride the wind toward the garden, the established tree canopy and varied foliage are positioned to intercept them.
Project Snapshot
Here are some of our favorite spaces in the garden, which is beautifully maintained by the homeowners.
Project Tours
The garden so beautifully illustrates fire defensive design strategies, we’ve asked the homeowners to host multiple tours to help educate others. The project was the site of the final, capstone video of a series on fire defense by the Thedore Payne Foundation, which featured FormLA President Cassy Aoyagi.
The homeowner, Cassy and landscape architect Eric Crow also provided a tour during the USGBC-LA thought leadership series on preparing for wildfire.
We hope you enjoy these conversations and take away something that helps you prepare your property and community.
Plant Palettes
Year round maintenance goes a long way toward fire defense. By effectively spacing and placing foliage from the following plant palettes, we created a defensive garden that is also low maintenance.
More Information
Here is a little more information about the strategies we used to create this garden: