The properties of Hollywood’s wealthy and well-known have lengthy been enclosed by partitions of sky-high ficus, designed to protect their rich occupants from paparazzi and peeping Toms alike. Robert Frost could have thought good fences make good neighbors, however in Los Angeles, these fences are planted moderately than constructed.
“Hedges are a continuing in each design I do,” stated Brent Inexperienced, a veteran landscaper in Los Angeles whose shoppers embrace Regina King, Regina Corridor and Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne. “You guys are all concrete in Manhattan, and for privateness you’ve got doormen,” he stated to a reporter. “However right here in Los Angeles, you may stay close to a freeway, a closely trafficked road or be proper on prime of your neighbor, and also you’ll nonetheless have a yard. Hedges create privateness and make {that a} usable house.”
Los Angeles is a horizontal metropolis, a sprawling quilt of stitched-together neighborhoods bounded by crags and ocean. Its actual property is overwhelmingly low-slung, single-family and quick on respiratory room between properties. In a metropolis the place the bedrooms and bogs of 1 home are sometimes close by of the home subsequent door, a excessive hedge wall — which will increase privateness whereas lowering each noise and air air pollution — has grow to be the last word standing image.
In neighborhoods like Beverly Hills and Bel Air, total blocks are made up of individually cordoned-off properties — residential jewel packing containers tucked behind elaborate leafy curtains; the true property equal of the velvet rope. Behind them, town’s elite landscapers have crafted Alice in Wonderland-like gardens. The standard beginning worth for his or her elaborate handiwork, together with crops and labor, is $1 million.
“We entertain very often. We’ve small gatherings, dinners with 60 to 100 folks, and even with as much as 260 folks. And folks at all times admire the gardens,” stated Andrea Alberini, whose husband, Carlos, is the chief government of Guess. The couple purchased their 10,000-square-foot house, on almost an acre of land in Beverly Hills, for $16.5 million in 2014. The vendor was Bruce Willis.
However they didn’t transfer in instantly — they spent greater than two years reworking each the interiors and exteriors. They introduced within the movie star panorama artist Scott Shrader, whose different shoppers embrace Patrick Dempsey, Ellen DeGeneres, Lionel Richie and Cher. He spoke to them about their hometown, Olivos, a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, they usually informed him how olive timber remind them of house. His imaginative and prescient was to first wrap the house, which sits on a busy stretch of Benedict Canyon Drive, in a double layer of sound-insulating hedge partitions. After which inside, he would create a dreamscape impressed by Mendoza, in Argentine wine nation.
“The idea from the start was a home that fell in the course of an olive orchard,” Mr. Shrader stated.
Greater than 20 olive timber, every of them over 100 years outdated, have been introduced in from Sacramento and transferred to the property by way of crane; lemon, lime, orange and apple timber have been planted as effectively. However one of many first steps of the renovation was to plant partitions of privet and ficus across the house’s perimeter; by the top of the renovation, that they had grown to greater than 10 ft and created, he stated, “out of doors rooms with layered supplies that create a sound barrier, privateness and seclusion.”
Most inexperienced partitions wrapping properties in Los Angeles are product of Ficus nitida, which has dense, lustrous leaves and pesky invasive roots; typically they’re made up of Podocarpus gracilior, whose shiny, needlelike foliage grows in billowing clumps. Hedges enchantment to owners not solely as a result of they provide privateness, but in addition as a result of they’re harder to police.
Within the metropolis of Los Angeles, front-yard fences are often capped at 3.5 ft, and that rule applies to hedges and timber as effectively; in backyards and aspect yards, obstacles should cease at 8 ft. Different cities inside Los Angeles county, together with Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and Culver Metropolis, have comparable guidelines on the books. However landscapers say that when the fence is one thing that grows, regulators almost at all times flip a blind eye.
“With a hedge, you may go as much as 20 or 30 ft,” Mr. Inexperienced stated.
Patricia Benner, a panorama artist who has labored on the properties of Ewan McGregor, Moby and J.J. Abrams, stated that on a typical challenge, she brings in round 50 24-foot hedges and crops them with six to 12 inches of house in between.
“My shoppers at all times level out the necessity for privateness. It’s a given. We plan forward with a privateness hedge and if there’s a home beneath development, we get in there and plant the hedges as quickly as potential to get them rising as excessive as we will earlier than they transfer in,” she stated. “You’re not speculated to go above 42 inches within the entrance yard or eight ft within the again yard, however in Los Angeles, all people does.”
David Supply, a Los Angeles actual property agent, and his spouse, Leslie, cared a lot in regards to the privateness that eight years in the past they moved from a house in Brentwood that didn’t have hedges to a brand new seven-bedroom home instantly throughout the road that did. Their three kids at the moment are grown, so they’re now gut-renovating that earlier house, changing it from a six-bedroom home to a four-bedroom with a big main suite and a health club, and Ms. Benner has introduced in 12-foot ficus timber so this time round, they’ll have a hedge wall surrounding their house.
“I positively really feel like the outside now could be an enclosed room on the market, which is totally different from what we used to have. I didn’t know what I used to be lacking earlier than we had the hedges, and now I for certain desire a privateness hedge,” Ms. Supply stated.
Ficus timber are favored due to how briskly they develop — many can shoot up by a foot or two every month. To keep away from their roots burrowing into pavements and driveways, they must be planted with root obstacles and trimmed frequently.
At Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne’s house, which was within the flats of Beverly Hills — it’s since been offered — Mr. Inexperienced planted ficuses shortly after the home was bought, and waited months for them to develop excessive sufficient to dam their subsequent door neighbor from view earlier than the couple moved in. Final yr, at Regina Corridor’s house within the suburban neighborhood of Tarzana, Calif., he planted a collection of eight-foot ficus hedges as a part of a multiyear renovation whereas the actress traveled to filming places. They’ve since doubled in measurement.
“As soon as she strikes in full time, the privateness wall be totally grown in,” he stated.
Mr. Shrader’s work within the Alberinis’ house features a aspect backyard the place a firepit normal from a Twelfth-century Italian effectively is flanked by the purple buds of Forest Pansy timber; gravel low-water hard-scape, canopies of fruit timber and a swimming pool of Indiana limestone.
He introduced an identical mentality to the gardens at Alison and John Hawkins’s Beverly Hills property, the place behind a street-front perimeter of twisting silver olive timber and privet hedges, a blush pink colonial villa sits on three quarters of an acre. The yard was already hidden behind 30-foot ficus partitions when the couple, who each work in personal fairness,purchased it for $14 million in 2013. The Hawkinses like to trip in France, so Mr. Shrader introduced in a stone fountain normal from an vintage cask as soon as used for the grape harvest in Aix-en-Provence; Arras-style garden furnishings is positioned alongside gravel walkways beneath swaying palms and geometric boxwoods.
From the road, a passer-by would do not know that an alternate universe exists simply past their leafy inexperienced partitions.
“It’s like Beverly Hills meets the South of France,” Ms. Hawkins stated.
The typical 24-foot ficus hedge prices $300 per tree. Ms. Benner estimates that her shoppers spend round $15,000 on the hedges that include their panorama design; on bigger properties, the associated fee can climb considerably increased.
“On the time, I used to be like, we might set up a gold-plated hedge for much less cash,” Ms. Hawkins stated in regards to the design and planning course of with Mr. Shrader. “However he stated, ‘We’ve to do it this manner.’ And he was 100% proper.”