The Hanging Gardens of Cloud Temple
Our Home in Cypress Park provided the grounds for our first Otherworld Garden, a retreat for friends and family with an abundance of pollinator friendly flowers, citrus, vegetables, and herbs. This continues to be our ever-changing experimental garden, our food forest, and our faerie portal.
This low resolution image is from Zillow and is the best representation of what the yard looked like when we moved in. The citrus trees were healthy, but besides a hammock and a foundation from an old hot tub that had been removed; not much going on. We knew we wanted to grow food and hide the fences that made us feel... fenced in. 4000 sq ft felt luxurious and our imaginations ran wild.
We were just getting started! Some plants flourished, others did not, so Marissa began to learn. And learn. And identify. And we made a deal: if Zander built it, Marissa would plant. Of course they helped each other, and soon they had a passion fruit vine that grew 25 ft a year, bundles of white sage drying on the roof, fresh heirloom tomatoes from Fig Earth Supply, and enough oranges to give out dozens to friends and family.
Although Zander built the studio at the top, a fully insulated photography and party loft over the foundation of the old hot tub, the terracing and hardscaping proved too much for one person. Hiring our first hardscape contractors, we not only created permanent terraces and a trex deck for the studio, but prevented erosion that saved the blood orange tree and helped manage our drip irrigation.
