1236 Kern Court
Mountain View, California
(built in 2016)
This client converted a traditional ranch style dwelling built in the 70’s to a Spanish Mediterranean home. It is located at the end of a cul-de-sac providing ample opportunities to create a habitat garden that is showy as a large wildflower meadow every spring. (Native bunch grass meadows sequester more carbon than native forests.)
We created chaparral, grassland, riparian and native edible and Mediterranean food gardens. We expanded their inventory of fruit trees and added cattle troughs filled with perennial and annual food plants.
Additional features included down spout diversions to a carex pansa meadow, two greywater systems, porous hardscapes with gravel and flagstone and two dry creek beds that divert storm water to landscaped areas. They also invested in a significant conversion from traditional energy for heating, lighting and cooking with fossil fuels to geothermal pumps and solar panels. This client hopes to bring friends, neighbors and students to their home and gardens to learn the specific ways they have reduced their household carbon footprint.