roses

My friend Bonnie  lives in the neighborhood

where Ty Warner (beanie babies) built the most enormous house in Montecito!

He bought 5 houses on a bluff overlooking the ocean; tore them all down;   (all of them multi-million dollar houses)  and built an enormous “Venetian” Palazzo.

Bonnie called me and said….”Penny;  You absolutely have to meet Renee!  You are ‘soul mates’!”

 “And I want to be there when you meet her and see what she has created in our neighborhood!  You are going to have a complete fit!!!

 No one knows it is there.   She has made the most amazing creation out of some former “stables”!!!”   She said, “until 12 years ago, there were “hippies” camping out on this property!”

Originally, there was a Country Club on this entire bluff.  Around the turn-of- the- century , these stables were to house the horses for the carriages who came to  play golf and visit!

Renee, by the way, is a landscape designer who also has a “Greek Revival” house in New Orleans .  (that explains a lot)

The first hint of what was to come!  What a mailbox!

I have been by here so many times!  It is right across the street from the Music Academy of the West;  and just the week before I had walked by this mailbox with my grandson, and not noticed

it at all!    I was focused on my grandson;  but usually I notice everything……(good or bad..a blessing and a curse!)

How had I possibly missed these gates!!

I have been by here so many times!  It is right across the street from the Music Academy of the West!!     And these magnificent gates!!

 These are  most beautiful gateposts and gates I have ever seen here!  When I met Renee she said;  “Oh we were in France when I started here!

I left the “Chateau”  there;    and I bought the gates and posts and the paneling and brought them here!”

 See those grapefruits?  There was an orchard here that had also been part of the Club.

Lovely nasturtiums  sprouting out and about !

This little “moment” just inside the gates!

Following the wide path to where????

When I saw these rusty arched french doors with the beautiful roses climbing on them;  I had an even better idea of what was coming.  However, nothing could have prepared me for what was to come !!  I wish I had Steve Giannetti with me.  I’m just not a great photographer;  but I have done the best I can!!

Look to the left;  raised beds surrounded by boxwood! The sweet peas are climbing up a French “tree guard”!

gorgeous roses!

Some charming fencing to help the roses climb!  No house yet!!!

Coming around the bend….a one story house with an astonishing trumpet vine going all the way around it!!

Right next to the house,  an old pergola (original ) covered with wisteria.

Yikes!  Two separate  houses!

One separate house is the bedroom and bath.  One house the living, dining kitchen! The larger house was originally  one room!  I’m posting the interiors in my next post!

A clever way to hide the meters and things!

The outdoor dining terrace with the most charming barbecue I have ever seen!  It was foggy; but the view from here is across a rose parterre garden belonging to the house next door;  and then the ocean!!  That “view corridor” is protected!  Renee raised the terrace two feet so the view was over the hedge and through the rose garden to the sea!

Talk about a “borrowed view!”

Renee brought her stone sink from her Paris apartment to use outside!

she lets the alyssum sprout where it wants!

This is the path between the “living” and bedroom areas.

This is between the two buildings this  chandelier is here!  Outside……..totally charming…..(I have to keep adding)  it is just too much to do in one post!  even the outside!!

This is the view from her husband’s desk in a corner of the “bedroom cottage”.

This is a little corner with things “in progress”!  Nothing;  and I mean NOTHING is “staged”!  This is real……real living!!

This is the chimney of the fireplace in the “living cottage”;  and evidence of this trumpet vine that goes all over the entire two buildings.  If someone made me pick my favorite thing in the entire place;  I would pick the next picture.  It is the trunk of the  120 year old  trumpet vine INSIDE THE FRONT DOOR!!!  It is a miracle beyond that it has survive intact!

It had a “guardian angel” protecting it.  Nothing like this whole stable, the pergola…….the trumpet vine……nothing like this has survived here in Montecito……or any other enclave with wealth….and the ability to change.

This reminds me so much (first thought in my head……Tara Dillard…..and the “Poverty circle.”

That makes so much sense;  I believe it it……..how on earth did the poverty circke

This slays me!

When she barbecues she “just moves the vines away”…and then puts them back when it’s all cooled off”!

The top of the barbecue chimney is the top of a dovecote found at a “brocantes fair” in Provence!

This is a glimpse of the lovely house next door which owns the rose garden!

The Secret Garden!!!Read More