
Every Room Gets Its Own Garden in This Classic California Indoor-Outdoor House
This house could have been built in 1954 or 2024. It channels the functional liveable minimalism of the Case Study program and is a case study in creativity and friendship.

Dotted throughout the innumerable nameless hills of Los Angeles, hidden in nooks and canyons, obscured by oaks and palms, and up or down winding roads are havens you can’t see from the street. There are thousands of unseen houses of countless styles perched on the slopes and cliffs of this secret skyline. And behind each of these houses is a story. And the story behind this house is one of friendship and ideas that stand the test of time.

Thomas J. Story
The house in question has been called Hidden House and Hidden Canyon by its architect and landscaper, respectively, and when you arrive, you understand why. After climbing the vertiginous switchbacks of the highest points in L.A.’s Mount Washington neighborhood, you need to navigate a narrow private road that goes from paved to dirt and is only wide enough for one car to pass; then you wind down another narrow road that hugs the curve of a steep hill, past a grove of trees and a fenced-in garden growing a wild tangle of flowers and vegetables. It’s like passing through sequential airlocks that progressively lead from the urban to the agrarian. At the end of these roads is the house, all muted stucco and redwood patinated by time. It’s low-key, receding into the hill. But the more you pay attention, it becomes clear that it’s high concept: That garden provides bouquets and vegetables for LA Homefarm, the Atwater food and housewares shop run by farm box pioneer Lauri Kranz. This home was an early commission of Standard Architecture, the firm responsible for the serenely minimalist, whitewashed, blonde-wood James Perse shops and Jenni Kayne stores. (As well as the residences of the brands’ owners.) The homeowner, Laura Gabbert, is a tastemaker Angeleno in her own right, having directed City of Gold, the acclaimed documentary on the late food critic Jonathan Gold. And the garden is by Fi Campbell, the former set decorator turned landscape designer and an old friend of Gabbert.

Thomas J. Story
When Gabbert and her then-husband first bought the house, it was an old, unremarkable midcentury post-and-beam house. The remodel and subsequent expansion by Standard Architecture prove that the oldest ideas are the best. Above all, this house is Californian. There’s a timeless L.A.-ness to the house that draws a line from the Schindler house in the flats with its intelligent emptiness and sense of flow, through the Case Study House program’s use of readily available construction materials used honestly and transparently: standard timbers, stucco, and concrete. Enormous sliding glass doors dissolve the division between indoor and outdoor. Outside, there are distinct seating areas: a dining patio off the massive kitchen. An upper patio for Gabbert’s daughter. A lounge with a firepit sits off the living room, and yet another private lounge with an outdoor shower sits just off the primary bedroom, leading to a two-person perch for looking out over the canyon in the shade. The afternoon wind shooting up through the canyon drops the temperature a full 10 degrees. And the pool, jutting up to the edge, no railing, ringed with Heath Ceramics tiles, is surrounded by an ipe wood deck that offers views of the city beyond.

Thomas J. Story

Thomas J. Story
After the home was remodeled by Standard, there wasn’t enough budget left to execute a grand and somewhat overwrought proposal from a big landscape architecture firm, so Gabbert approached Campbell to design the garden stage by stage, in smaller phases, to roll out over time.

Thomas J. Story
Campbell and Gabbert became friends when their daughters were attending the same grade school. “Fi would spend time here with her daughters and understood how we used the spaces,” says Gabbert. The dogs and children would play in it, and Campbell and Gabbert’s hangouts would become design workshops.

Thomas J. Story

Thomas J. Story
And so began what’s turned into a decade-plus collaboration that shows how the best landscape designs are iterative, requiring a consciousness, attentiveness, and sensitivity to the site, the lives of the people living with the garden, and the requirements of nature. Much like the home itself, the garden needed to be adaptable. So, Campbell planted fast-growing sycamores to shade the dining area. She extended the hardscape of the front patio with local flagstone and boulders that take you through a yard of agaves tucked next to boulders, which each create a microclimate and focal point to hold the space while the plant grows and provide shade when it needs it. The yard needed to be sturdy enough to thrive when its owner was on the road for work. She selected a palate of native plants: billowing bunch grasses, thickets of various sages.

Thomas J. Story

Thomas J. Story
“If you sit with something long enough, it will speak to you,” says Campbell. “You don’t have to be rigid in your plan, and you can change your mind as you go through the process.” So over the years, as the friendship and children and plants grew, what started as a sun garden turned into a shade garden as the native California oaks and sycamores and toyons matured. Gravel paths were added to match the flow of socializing and play. A grassy area for the kids went away as they grew out of it.

Thomas J. Story

Thomas J. Story
The separate bedroom wing for Gabbert’s daughter was the most significant architectural addition. Whatever happened, it had to accommodate this: kids and four dogs. Campbell is inspired by the restrictions of Hollywood production budgets: “If there’s a budget, I’ll adhere to it like a set designer… It’s in my nature to provide something for somebody… I don’t want to splash out; I’m a staunch functionalist. It’s about economic and ecological sustainability. I believe in using stone and the beauty of organic shapes. If there’s anything we can repurpose, I want it to look like it’s been there forever. I like things that fade: stone and wood.”

Thomas J. Story

drops the ambient temperature by a full 10 degrees.
Thomas J. Story
But what doesn’t fade is the friendship that built this garden. “As a working mom who travels a lot for work, I don’t really have much time to garden,” says Gabbert. “I love the plants and do the weeding, but part of our friendship is walking through the garden and deferring to Fi. I trust her vision.” Campbell, for her part, considers it an honor to check in on the plantings every six months and write suggestions of what to do with them. And every fall, she sows wildflower seeds to return in spring and watch them bloom with her friend.