Pastures that echo the south of France
THE CALIFORNIA GARDEN
Furniture designer and equestrienne Hélène Aumont roots her Santa Barbara County garden mélange in childhood memories.
FOUNDED in the 1880s as a Wells Fargo stagecoach stop, the town of Ballard never became the seat of Santa Barbara County, but it's hardly a one-horse town. Here, equestrians and weekend ranchers own rolling paddocks where landscaping often involves little more than split rail fences and hay bales on pastures dotted with conifers and cactus. For Hélène Aumont, however, this is a small part of a much prettier picture.
The interior and furniture designer stables two Dutch Friesian horses, Romeo and Florus, at the bottom of a hill on her six-acre spread. High above their barn, however, Aumont has transformed the once-rustic grounds around her 1940s farmhouse into a charming mélange of small and distinct French, Mediterranean and California gardens.
Born in Paris, Aumont grew up spending summers at her parents' ranch on the island of Corsica, off the south of France.
"It's a chaparral where you can grow many things, very much like here in the Santa Ynez Mountains," she says. "It's such a strong tie. You always try to re-create what you most miss."
A low, scrolled Italian iron gate with two antique stone columns as posts ushers in visitors. This welcoming entry frames an Impressionist scene profuse with hundreds of roses -- floribunda, English tea and 'Cecile Brunner,' irises, hydrangea, jasmine, morning glory and dark purple buddleia in beds defined by arrow-shaped picket fences and woven willow edging borders.
A small fruit orchard and a rambling collection of native succulents grow on the other side of the house, warmed by the afternoon sun. Outside the back porch, plantings rise in a choreography of color and height: yellow and orange gazania covers the ground, Mexican sage and English lavender mound above it, agapanthus and swords of New Zealand flax reach skyward, and Chinese and Japanese wisteria vines wrap around the screen door onto the roof. On the broad back lawn, medallion fescue grass surrounds a pool fed by a 16th century stone trough from the Dordogne region of France.
THE property looked nothing like this 14 years ago, when Hélène and Patrick Aumont, her husband at the time, moved in. There were pepper trees, sycamores and ancient oaks, dripping with Spanish moss.
"Everything else, we planted," Aumont says. Additional trees helped define the space and the mood. Italian cypresses add strong vertical lines and a Tuscan flavor; a blue-green acacia provides winter blossoms. It is a 12-year-old willow, however, that nearly makes Aumont weep.
