Beside Manor

Anyone who’s ever napped in a meadow knows that a flower bed is no mere figure of speech. But Jill Seawright Curtin, a Hermosa Beach designer, has taken the concept a step further, creating a blooming bed that’s both dreamy and practical. Her idea was born on a client’s bluff in Palos Verdes, a little-used sitting area a considerable distance from the house. “We needed something compelling enough to draw people to the view but also gardeny to soften the concrete,” she recalls.

A living bed seemed ideal to Curtin, who is known for crafting metal furniture from recycled objects. For this bower, a filigreed gate serves as the headboard, the footboard is a piece of swap-meet fence and the legs are concrete pillars. Her “blanket” came from a Camarillo wholesale nursery as a roll of redwood mulch in which rudbeckias, nierembergias and violas were embedded. “I laid this over a wooden box of soil,” Curtin explains, “watered it and the plants took hold.” Dwarf grass grows in the box’s angled sides, also deep enough for soil.

Her creation--which changes with the seasons--is a way, she says, “to raise flowers to eye level, like a big bouquet.” Can you throw yourself face-down in them? “You really shouldn’t,” she concedes. “What’s important here is the idea--the seductive invitation.”