Landscaping

The road to Charles and Jennifer Coburn's home meanders through the hills north and east of San Diego. Their property is a quick left off the main road and up a winding drive that ends in a field filled with animals. An older gent stands on a ladder to groom a handsome stallion. His clippers make a snap, snap, snapping sound as he trims bright green privet leaves along the stallion's spine.

Brenda Wehle is appearing on Broadway in "Come Back, Little Sheba," which opened last week at the Biltmore Theatre. John Carroll Lynch is in Vancouver shooting "Traveling," a film with Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston. . 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.

IF Carson Kressley did a series on "How to Look Good Naked" for the home, the thing that he would need to coax off many of our houses would be the coy ring of hedging around the foundations. America needs someone as observant and funny as him to turn our homes toward the mirror, point to the line of shrubs running beneath the living room windows and ask: "Why? What is so ugly about the line where structure meets earth?"

Tucked into a tough Pomona neighborhood behind a bamboo-camouflaged metal gate is an otherworldly garden that once was a magnet for horticulturists and designers experimenting with plants and landscapes. The contained wildness still beckons with a sense of mystery. Hundreds of exotic plants crowd meandering paths leading to a maze of hidden outdoor rooms and patios. Lush vines and plants dangle from branches of dead trees.

Some people have a window office. Greensman Robbie Penny has the great outdoors. "I've always been involved in horticulture," says the Auckland, New Zealand, native. "My mother and father were both very keen gardeners, and my father worked for a company called Turners & Growers. I've never really been that interested in much else." Penny studied horticultural science with an emphasis on landscape design and nursery management at Massey University.

Turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks circled lazily over the Weir Canyon Wilderness Area, gliding on an air current that breezed through the canyon with the smell of charred vegetation from last weekend's Windy Ridge fire. The 2,036-acre fire was declared under control Wednesday evening, but on Thursday two fire crews were still in the area. They were not keeping watch for flare-ups, but to erase any sign that dozens of firefighters had tromped through the area in the last few days.

You've plastered cracks and washered the dripping faucet. You've rubbed, scrubbed and spit-shined both upstairs and down, under the couch, atop the wardrobe and beneath the snoring dog. Proudly, you examine your gleaming home and think, "It'll fetch a million bucks." But did you remember to fix up the garden? Tending to the garden is frequently the last thing on a seller's mind.

From atop Pepperdine University's hilly seaside campus, Californians' changing approach to the local landscape is dramatically apparent. The school's older lower campus is a sweeping green expanse of lawn set with decorative, often nonnative trees, all irrigated by Pepperdine's own treated wastewater. Above, the dry slopes surrounding the newer 49-acre Drescher Graduate Campus are devoid of any signs of foreign lushness.

Here's an interesting fact: Only 100 feet divides Adventureland from Frontierland. While one land drips with banyans and bromeliads, the other sizzles with cactus and sage. It's within this great divide that perceptive visitors can find their own garden inspiration -- one of many masterfully conceived mini-landscapes at Disneyland whose design just might work at home. That's right. Now that the summertime crowds are starting to ebb, put on the mouse ears and head to Anaheim.

CORONADO, Calif. -- The U.S. Navy has decided to spend as much as $600,000 for landscaping and architectural modifications to obscure the fact that one its building complexes looks like a swastika from the air. The four L-shaped buildings, constructed in the late 1960s, are part of the amphibious base at Coronado and serve as barracks for Seabees. From the ground and from inside nearby buildings, the controversial shape cannot be seen.