TROPICAL COOLER

For 40 years, beginning in 1925, Los Angeles architect Richard Neutra designed strong, simple houses closely linked to the outdoors. In this one--built in 1942 in Brentwood--he extended the architecture into the landscape with straight brick walks, serpentine garden walls, circular ponds, graphic lawns and a grove of Monterey pines. Over the years, smog killed off some of the pines and the property changed hands and went through several landscape styles. By 1980, says Jay Griffith, a Venice garden designer hired to restore the grounds: “Neutra’s concept was awash in the flotsam and jetsam of various adorable ideas--English bits, tropical veldts, French allees, you name it.”

Griffith unearthed the architect’s original plan along with old photos and worked to duplicate what he calls Neutra’s “massive, though understated, landscape gestures.” He replaced the fallen pines with a stand of king palms and Hawaiian tree ferns, restored the ponds and edited the borders, grouping existing gingers into thickets around the lawn. In the back, he edged a 1950s swimming pool with brick to match Neutra’s walks and planted a queen palm grove and tree ferns behind the pool.

Then the property was sold again in the early ‘90s. The new owner, an avid gardener, wanted a broader range of plants and views, as well as areas where she could grow perennials. Thomas Batcheller Cox, a Pasadena landscape designer, kept the focus on tropical greens, which suited the shady site and complemented the house. “Such big, bold volumes call for plants that can stand up next to them and not shrink into insignificance,” Cox says. To expand the tropical palette, he added cycads, taro and heliconias, with massed cannas for blooming color. At ground level, Topanga pond expert Don Hamburger transformed Neutra’s circular pools into vignettes of lush aquatic and bulb plants--Louisiana iris, hardy water lilies and white-flowering zephyranthes. Nearby, Cox designed a tree fern-shaded water rill and reflecting pool as a view garden for the master bedroom. And a new walled garden became the view from the study. There, tucked away from the predominant sweeps of green, perennials such as purple columbines, yellow daylilies, white heuchera and clematis gather around a second rill.

Elsewhere, Cox designed an atmospheric path through the gingers and an allee of king palms at the garden’s entry. Both, he says, “immerse you in the intriguing, primordial jungle and then release you into a clearing.” Even then, though, the rustle of leaves is ever-present, as is the sound of water and the play of light. It’s a garden easy to inhabit in California, which, for Neutra, was the point. The living room he designed features a slide-away glass wall that puts the room entirely in the landscape. Beside the front door, his double-sided pond--half-inside, half-outside, gives the building a sense of powerful transparency. As Cox explains it: “The house draws you outside, where you’re surrounded by it and the garden in a comforting balance.”