By Sara Pentz
Creating a garden is like painting a canvas with broad three-dimensional brush strokes. Each garden has its own vitality, nature and style, thoroughly beholden to the purpose of the painter.
We found this sweet explosion of Earth tucked away near the coastline in Laguna Beach. It is a joyously dense and rambling landscape. Yet, it is pruned and orderly in its own fashion. It displays a subtle blend of secret pathways and formal outdoor garden rooms. One longs to thrust full face into the roses just to see if there’s some precious animal succumbing to the fragrances beneath while bees and butterflies flutter and romp overhead. In fact, two doves built a tangled nest to share their own safe haven in this garden.
Interior Designer Ingrid Kristensen created this breathtaking abundance out of a crumbling ruin and her fertile imagination. In the mid-nineties she inherited this half-century-old Oceanside cottage, a shell of its former self. Bare and broken its fate seemed deathly certain. In her mind’s eye, however, she envisioned a worldly life for its future.
Ingrid herself built this old forsaken house from ground up into a Southern California home to rival coastline mansions. Its interior is a blend of European 17th, 18th and 19th century furnishings, each piece a memento from another life. The gently worn upholstery fabrics and antique designs inside repeat the quiet colors and delicate shapes of the garden out of doors. And in some extraordinary way, the inside complements the outside of this carefully crafted house as one room flows into another and then ventures outside to repeat that pattern.
She tore out walls to widen interiors and opened windows to the sunlight. She shattered old concrete paving to let the ground breathe. Against a backdrop of deep sepia rust and golden hues she planted ivy as a warm blanket over outside walls and around doorframes. Snow-white roses, amethyst, azure, crimson blossoms, and emerald, jade and lime-tinted greenery proliferate and waft in rhythm with the seaside breezes.
She worked it all by hand according to her vision. She tenderly planted a profusion of vegetation and let the passion of each plant grow up according to its own plan. Like a Plein Air painting, this home and garden capture shimmering light and soft shadows on a gentle palate that reflects the character of the artist.
This is what makes Ingrid’s garden so engaging.
