It started as Plan B: Annette Gutierrez and her husband wanted to create a great room in their Hollywood home but didn’t have the budget for a remodel. “So we thought, Let’s just do it outside!” says Gutierrez. To transform the 3,000-square-foot yard, she created a series of outdoor rooms landscaped almost entirely with potted plants.
Gutierrez may be professionally biased toward containers: She’s the co-owner, with Mary Gray, of Potted, a garden-design shop in L.A.’s Atwater Village. But a potted garden also suits her space. Her three dogs can’t dig into containers as they would with beds. She also likes the color and sculptural look the vessels add: “The plants are accentuated by the pot they’re in rather than just being massed together in the ground.”
Another upside to the garden is that it continuously feeds Gutierrez’s love of design.
“I get to redecorate over and over,” she says. “I just move my pots around a little and I have a whole new yard.”