Serenity is only a backyard away

When the actors complete their out-of-town commitments, they will return home to a different sort of show: their fragrant, joy-inducing garden in the San Fernando Valley.

"It's a real haven," Wehle says, from her New York apartment. "When I come home in March, I plan to 'set a while' in the garden."

Her husband, most recently seen as Capt. James Embry in Fox's "K-Ville," describes the garden as a "renewing" place. "I often find Los Angeles very isolating," he says, via cellphone while on location. "As an actor, I get in my little metal box and drive to another little metal box -- a trailer. Most of the time, I'm hanging out in a parking lot. So when I get home and walk out into the garden, it has a beautiful, calming effect."

Although it occupies barely a quarter of an acre on a Sherman Oaks hillside, the landscape feels expansive, thanks to a design that pleases the senses and captures stunning views.

IN 2004, after renovating their one-story, circa-1958 home, the actors knew they wanted a garden compatible with the sun-drenched stucco architecture and their neighborhood's topography of canyons and hills. They contacted Marilee Kuhlmann of Los Angeles-based Comfort Zones Garden Design and asked: "Could you help us make something beautiful here?" Wehle recalls.

The property's best feature is a view across the canyon toward Mulholland, visible from most rooms of the house. "That view spoke to us," she says. "I wanted our garden to disappear into that geography."

Lynch adds, "Our desire was to honor the piece of land with a garden worthy of it."

Kuhlmann, who studied landscape design at UCLA Extension after a successful computer sales career, agreed. "We wanted no obvious separation between the garden and the view," the designer says. In order to seamlessly connect the 8,000-square-foot, pie-shaped lot with vistas of live oaks, native shrubs, mature Italian cypresses, palms and eucalyptus trees, Kuhlmann suggested removing three backyard distractions: a leaky 1960s swimming pool encircled by brick and concrete, a 4-foot-high block wall that spanned the property's west perimeter and the expansive lawn.