Woodland Retreat

This recently completed Oakland project called for low retaining walls in the back garden to support the sloping landscape and prevent soil build up from the existing Cedar and Oak trees.

The primary viewpoint and experience of this garden will be from the deck above.  The goal was to create a woodland sanctuary for the local bird population will adding color and interest in the shady conditions.  I used bright leaf color and different textures to create contrast that would be visible from above.

Plants are spaced to accommodate future growth.

Stone steps add visual interest and functionality.

In the front we planted the existing redwood terraced boxes with native and low water plantings such as Correa, Verbena and Euphorbia.  In the lower planting space a dry creek bed was added to break up the planting space. 

Strategically placed stones help create a 'bend' in the river bed.

Now the home owners can enjoy a 'Zen' moment before entering their home.

Garden Photos and Random Sightings

This Oakland Victory garden was installed in 2013.  The drought tolerant and low water plantings surround and 'L' shaped veggie bed encouraging pollination for edibles.  See Eastlake Ave on the Fiddlehead Gardens Project page for details.

Edibles abound in this raised bed with perennials on one side and a low water lawn on the other.

Oakland Garden Oasis.

Field of Dreams.

After dinner in San Francisco one evening I came across this lonely stone looking for a home.   It is randomly sitting at the edge of a cross walk at Harrison and 7th Streets.  Be sure to look both ways before crossing!

New Sign!

We got a new sign to put up in our gardens after we install them. Look for them around town.


This is the same garden from the last post, now in its full summer glory. It only has quarterly maintenance and still looks fab--proof that you can do drought-tolerant and low-maintenance without sacrificing color or 4-season interest.

Container installation

This was a quick project we did last fall, staging some containers for a house in the Hiller Highlands area of the Oakland hills that was going on the market for sale. The house was white stucco, blue trimmed Spanish-style, with terracotta tiles on the roof and brick-red accents. We decided to do one large urn in the front entrance, and flank the arched windows with two matching urn-shaped pots, and use Mediterranean plants like bougainvillea, citrus, and palms.

Before: entranceway


Before: windows



After: large urn in entranceway with palm and colorful shade underplantings




After: two matching ceramic urns with citrus and white flowering bougainvillea

Happy New Year

Hello everyone from Mya and Racheal and everyone here at Fiddlehead Gardens!

Sorry for the long silence on the blog front. We've been extremely busy in the field and the blog had to go on the back burner for a while. Plus I (Mya) had a (second) baby boy in October and went on maternity leave so Racheal was flying solo for a while with a full load of installations, maintenance, and holiday festivities to juggle. Way to go Racheal!!!

Anyway, we are back at the computer with lots of great pictures and garden ideas and tips to share so please check back. And in addition to our perennial list of personal resolutions to exercise more, eat less sweets, and read more books, we have a list of professional goals which we thought we'd share.

Our New Years resolutions include:

1. Blog more! Hopefully once a week. Post more befores and afters, which are so fun to share. Post more maintenance tips for you do-it-yourselfers out there. And share inspiring plant finds, gardening ideas, and pictures from our gardening adventures. We encourage our readers to comment and send in photos and questions of things happening in your garden as well.

2. We would like to get Racheal's beautiful garden at her house in Bernal Heights on a garden tour. We will get some photos up soon for a virtual tour but she is having a hard time finding any organization in San Francisco that sponsors actual tours, so please let us know if you hear of anything.

3. Hopefully this is the year for me (Mya) to re-do my own garden. Classic shoemaker's shoes syndrome here, but I'm going to prioritize my own home this year because I'm tired of looking at my raggedy garden in its current state. I have a lot of edibles in my garden, so it is an opportunity to show how one can incorporate food production for your family into a small space and still have it be beautiful and organic.

4. Continue to learn about and maximize Bay-friendly environmental gardening practices.

5. Do more design and build of small spaces like patios, courtyards, and small backyards. I am particularly interested in the challenges of small space gardening since I have a tiny garden and lots of requirements for how I want to use it. We love all the new trends in vertical gardening and container gardening and otherwise greening up urban spaces.

So we're looking forward to sharing our progress on these various fronts as the year progresses. To kick it off, take a look at the vertical garden pictures above. The first is a succulent-filled picture box that was made (I think) by the fabulous Mike (Teddy) at East Bay Nursery and was on display there for a while last fall. This would be stunning as a focal point mounted on a dark-colored stucco wall. And the second photo is of a vertical garden we built and installed for a client in the Elmwood area of Oakland. The client constructed a fence panel to conceal a trash/utility area and we built a tropical-themed vertical garden on it. They liked it so much that they had us make a second garden panel on the other side of the gate to match. The plants were chosen for their color, ability to tolerate shade, and cold-hardiness/ability to over-winter in our climate, and include some bromeliads, ferns, sweet flag grasses, and shrub begonias. Contact us for construction details if you're interested in replicating this look.

Mai tai, anyone?

This is a garden we designed and installed in the spring. It is a small front garden and back patio planting strip of a condo in the really hot area of Oakland by Fruitvale, the so-called "Banana Belt." It was midday when I took the photos so the lighting is pretty harsh, but the bright colors still show up pretty well even though some of the photos are a little blown out.

The back is secluded and one side is part-shade, so we went for a more lush planting than in the front. We were going for "tropical retreat." The planting had to be in scale with the small space, and well-behaved--not too messy or fussy. Also, unlike the front, we worked with some of the existing plants--a large plum tree, a beautiful and very vigorous bougainvillea, and a globe cypress in the corner. We added semi-tropicals like rainbow coprosma, a tangerine flower cultivar of abutilon, purple lorapetalum, golden acoris, and a Tasmanian tree fern.



The client wanted colorful and dramatic plants that could take the heat against the house in the front, and would remain fairly tidy and low maintenance. We used kangaroo paws, salvia 'limelight', and a leucodendron 'safari sunset' for the focal points and surrounded them with chartreuse green sedum groundcover, orange-flowering arctosis, silvery dusty miller, and parrots-beak flowering lotus to spill over the walls. A purple hopseed bush against the house and purple loraptalum spilling over the wall added some darker foliage for contrast.
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This planting happened in the spring of this year, so you can see it filled in pretty quickly!