PLANTS THEY REVEL IN THEIR HABITAT GARDE

AN ECO-CONSCIOUS LONG BEACH COUPLE WANTED MORE THAN WATER SAVINGS WHEN THEY TORE OUT THEIR SICKLY FRONT LAWN

- BY JEANETTE MARANTOS

IT WAS A FRIEND’S tiny apartment garden that brought Christian Svanes Kolding and Adriana Estrada together in San Francisco in 1995, but it would be another 26 years, after their stints in Denmark, Brooklyn and Venice Beach, before the couple would finally be able to create a garden of their own.

And it’s not just any garden. Estrada, a longtime surfer and former chair of the Surfrider Foundation’s board of directors, particularly wanted a watersaving landscape that was ocean-friendly, to keep rainwater in the ground instead of having the runoff wash into the street to collect pollutants before dumping into the ocean.

Kolding also wanted a garden that inspired and welcomed neighbors, so he and his wife could meet members of their new community. And he wanted to include a fence that attractively edged the yard instead of creating a tall barrier to keep others out.

Finally, Kolding and his wife, who are both marathon runners, wanted a landscape that mimicked the color and fragrance they experienced on their runs in the Laguna Hills and Santa Ana Mountains. Initially, they thought they would focus on succulents and cactus, Kolding said, “but then we started noticing white sage and sagebrush — cowboy cologne — which is very fragrant. And that made us think, ‘Why can’t we bring these plants in too?’”

Their opportunity came in 2021, when they purchased a Craftsman-style home built in 1919 from a Pacific Ready-Cut kit in Long Beach's Craftsman Village Historic District, a community of narrow streets, vintage homes and wide, well-used porches.

Their house is 1,050 square feet, but with the porch and their yard, it feels palatial to Estrada and Kolding, who spent 12 years living in an 850-square-foot studio apartment in New York City, “where our exterior spaces were the fire escape and front stoop,” Estrada said.