Landscape Contractor / Design Build Maintain

NOV 2013

LC/DBM provides landscape contractors with Educational, Imaginative and Practical information about their business, their employees, their machines and their projects.

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LC DBM Marketplace, November 2013 Information Request # 267 Information Request # 180 Information Request # 257 Lush but Sustainable Information Request # 262 San Luis Obispo County, on California's Central Coast, receives almost all of its rainfall from November to April. Many residents, like Craig and Mimi Van Rooyen, are exchanging their water-hungry lawns for droughttolerant outdoor spaces. Tey chose Gabriel Frank of Gardens by Gabriel to design and install a landscape that was water-wise but also beautiful with a focus on clean, curvilinear lines, strong swaths of plants, and subtle, sweeping movement. Frank planted native grasses that are adapted to the lack of water, senecio and agaves that store water in their leaves, and gaillardias and kangaroo paws that bloom freely, despite the heat. Tis garden uses less than half the Site Amenities Information Request # 279 Information Request # 263 30 water consumed by a lawn of the same size. Other elements include radius benches custom-built with cedar and ipe by Todd Lewis; one capped with a smooth slab of concrete by Maysun Wells of Wells Concrete Works. Wells also poured and crafed a 30-inch fountain water bowl and a 50-inch fre bowl. A concrete artisan, Wells is proud of his work's elements of sustainability. "My mix includes fy ash as a partial substitute for the cement content," he says. "Fly ash is the residue generated in coal combustion in factories and power plants. I also get wine bottles from local bars and restaurants, break them up, and use them in my pieces as a decorative element."

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