[LifeStyle] Hiding behind the hedges

[-Artisan ツ]

Written by Debra Kamin

The homes of Hollywood’s rich and famous have long been enclosed by walls of sky-high ficus, designed to shield their wealthy occupants from paparazzi and peeping Toms. Robert Frost may have thought good fences make good neighbors, but in Los Angeles, those fences are planted rather than built.

“Hedges are a constant in every design I do,” said Brent Green, a veteran landscaper in Los Angeles whose clients include Regina King, Regina Hall, and Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne. “You guys are all concrete in Manhattan, and for privacy, you have doormen,” he said to a reporter. “But here in Los Angeles, you can live near a freeway, a heavily trafficked street or be right on top of your neighbor, and you’ll still have a backyard. Hedges create privacy and make that a usable space.”

Los Angeles is a horizontal city, a sprawling quilt of stitched-together neighborhoods bounded by crags and ocean. Its real estate is overwhelmingly low-slung, single-family and short on breathing room between properties. In a city where the bedrooms and bathrooms of one house are often within sight of the house next door, a high hedge wall — which increases privacy while reducing both noise and air pollution — has become the ultimate status symbol.

In neighborhoods such as Beverly Hills and Bel Air, entire blocks are made up of individually cordoned-off homes — residential jewel boxes tucked behind elaborate leafy curtains; the real estate equivalent of the velvet rope. Behind them, the city’s elite landscapers have crafted Alice in Wonderland-like gardens. The typical starting price for their elaborate handiwork, including plants and labor, is $1 million.

“We entertain quite often. We have small gatherings, dinners with 60 to 100 people, and even with up to 260 people. And people always appreciate the gardens,” said Andrea Alberini, whose husband, Carlos, is CEO of Guess. The couple bought their 10,000-square-foot home, on nearly an acre of land in Beverly Hills, for $16.5 million in 2014. The seller was Bruce Willis.

But they didn’t move in immediately — they spent more than two years remodeling both the interiors and exteriors. They brought in celebrity landscape artist Scott Shrader, whose other clients include Patrick Dempsey, Ellen DeGeneres, Lionel Richie and Cher. He spoke to the Alberinis about their hometown, Olivos, a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, and they told him how olive trees remind them of home. His vision was to first wrap the home, which sits on a busy stretch of Benedict Canyon Drive, in a double layer of sound-insulating hedge walls. And then inside, he would create a dreamscape inspired by Mendoza, in Argentine wine country.

https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/hiding-behind-the-hedges-los-angeles-hollywood-homes-8672387/