A contemporary garden in Healdsburg is less an object placed on land than a negotiation with it—an agreement struck between drought, dust, and desire. The ground plane is treated as infrastructure: decomposed granite, acid washed concrete and a crisp lawn stitched into a surface that can fail gracefully when the rains finally come. A towering existing fig and roses shoulder up against feral rosemary and lomandra, blurring the line between intention and accident. There is no nostalgia here for vineyard romance or Tuscan fantasy—only a raw acknowledgment of heat and fire. The palette is tough, silvered, and pragmatic, but the composition is quietly theatrical: shadows carve the space more than walls, and the wind is invited in as a collaborator.

Steel edges hold the geometry - this is a garden that doesn’t perform comfort so much as resilience, one that reads as both newly made and already weathered, as if it has always been here, waiting for the house to catch up. Photos, as always, by Caitlin Atkinson.