The house came with a roughly 4,500-square-foot yard devoid of vegetation save for a few banana and guava trees. Lauter started by installing an irrigation system, a skill the artist learned from her soil scientist dad. “My first idea was a meadow of flowers, with fields of poppies and irises,” she recalls. “But my vision constantly changes. When you’re a painter, you never really finish anything. You just move on to another painting, another idea.” As the seasons passed and her taste for planting intensified, what began as a romantic meadow quickly grew in scale and ambition. “I learned a lot from British gardens, specifically how to build outdoor rooms and use trees as architectural structures to create discrete areas,” Lauter says. At present, those trees include olive, eucalyptus, fig, magnolia, silk floss, flame, peach, flowering cherry, purple acacia, pomegranate, orange, lemon, persimmon, avocado, and plum. “I planted things to bloom in waves. You feel the life of the garden—rising and falling, blossoming and withering.”
On the hot-button issue of natives versus non-natives, Lauter comes down on the side of romance and freedom of expression. “I hate native gardens and conceptual gardens. There are plenty of non-natives that are great for the birds and the bugs,” she contends. “I like roses, so what am I going to do?”
This article appears in AD’s October issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.