A place where kids can dig in
Actress Amy Brenneman and her husband, director Brad Silberling, own an English country-style home on a shady, tree-lined street in the San Fernando Valley. With broad lawns edged in tall pepper trees and native sycamores, their property includes a lovely swimming pool, a tennis court and, under the twisted branches of a melaleuca, a wonderland for the couple’s two children.
The kid-sized space behind a guesthouse is filled with child-friendly elements created by designer Anne Phillips of Go Green Gardeners, an environmentally friendly landscape company in Van Nuys. For Brenneman, who plays Dr. Violet Turner on “Private Practice” and starred in “Judging Amy” before that, it’s a place that son Bodhi, 3, and daughter Charlotte, 8, can call their own. They check on tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce and chard growing in a pair of raised beds. They clamber over the wooden footbridge that crosses a make-believe stream composed of polished blue and white recycled glass. Bodhi has been known to stop and toss a few chunks of glass around the garden. But that’s OK. This is a children’s space, after all.
This back corner was a swampy no-man’s land for a decade. Overgrown trees cast dense shadows, making it too dark for grass. Previous gardeners turned up the irrigation, hoping more water might improve the situation. Instead, the water made it worse.
Phillips took over the care and maintenance of the three-quarter-acre property a couple of years ago, envisioning the possibilities for the L-shaped space in back. Brenneman’s only stipulations were that it use little water and be free of pesticides or other chemicals. Beyond that, Phillips could use her imagination.
The designer had the tree canopy pruned to allow more light through. She installed an underground irrigation system that saturates plant roots as water percolates toward the surface. The system is virtually invisible but connects with regular irrigation valves. It is so efficient that in the hottest months of summer, it runs only 15 minutes, twice a week.
With the infrastructure set, Phillips turned to design. She incorporated tinkling chimes and a big copper wind spinner among textural plants such as billowy ornamental grasses and felty lamb’s ear.
Terra cotta pots nestled into a wire framework became garden percussion. When the children “play” the pots with drumsticks, the different sizes deliver unique tones.
In one flower bed, Phillips planted artichokes with their fountain of frond-like leaves. Tall stalks grow buds that the children can cut, cook and eat -- or leave until they form brushy, vibrant purple flowers.
Brenneman’s mother was a gardener, so when the actress was a child growing up in Connecticut, vegetable gardens were part of the landscape.
“I didn’t appreciate what went into them then,” she says. “But as I’ve become an adult, they’ve become more important to me,” and to her children as well.
Brenneman remembers when Bodhi discovered home-grown broccoli, the one vegetable that he eats willingly. When they harvested their first crop last spring, “it blew his mind,” Brenneman says. “It was like, ‘Wow, broccoli doesn’t have to come from the supermarket.’ ”
Charlotte and Bodhi hang out on the kid-sized double swing chair made of recycled lumber. The swing is flanked by what Phillips calls two candelabra, each planted with string of pearls succulents that cascade over the sides. These oversized elements, along with brightly colored glass flowers tucked into the flower beds and a cute little mosaic frog, all contribute to the garden’s Alice-in-Wonderland feeling.
Unplanted spots in the garden are just as important as planted areas, says Brenneman, who is spokeswoman for Healthy Child Healthy World, a nonprofit policy and education organization. She wanted not only an organic garden, but also a landscape with empty spaces that the children could own and use as they pleased.
“That’s where they dig,” she says. “It’s where they can get dirty, and not have to worry about it.”
Brenneman says the garden meets her children’s needs -- and their parents’ too.
“We go everyday to check the vegetable gardens, then I go back and poke around the lettuces,” she says. “I love to watch the light change, to see it in late afternoon light and in morning light. That’s part of the magic of the space.”
And the children?
“They think it is really cool,” she says.
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