Elements of Style: The Classic Mediterranean Garden

A classic Mediterranean style garden is typically low-maintenance, drought tolerant and perfect for a climate dry and hot in Summer and warm and moist in Winter. For those of us living in California, this seems a perfect fit. Traveling throughout the Mediterranean region, focused on the landscape and gardens, reminders of California are constant.

The defining characteristics of the Mediterranean style are:

• Focus on hardscapes, with very little or no lawn
• Citrus, olive trees, rosemary and lavender often planted in terracotta pots
• Fountains and water features are key. Water features became popular in the gardens of the Italian Renaissance. They reflect the garden and provide the relaxing elements of sight and sound.  Because of the scarcity of water in the Mediterranean,  many water elements offer a relief from the heat.
• Large and small terracotta pots and urns and statuary. Pottery in many forms has been a part of Mediterranean gardens since their origins in ancient Roman households. From intricate bas-relief to simple and plain, they are quintessential for a European garden.  Statues, urns and planters provide focal points and because their footprints are small, they are particularly useful in a small garden. The Greeks and Romans filled their pots with flowers to add color to their courtyards and pathways without depleting the water supply, or they used them to grow fruit trees that could be moved about  according to the outside temperature.  But pots were also used as beautiful objects on their own – a classic oil jar at the end of an allee, a row of terracotta pots topping a balustrade, or an urn crowning a pedestal.

You don’t have to live in Spain, Greece or Italy to reflect the siren call of the Mediterranean classic garden.  A few carefully chosen garden elements… an antique Greek pithari, a scattering of large terracotta pots and urns and a simple water feature will create your classic otium.  Being water conscious and embracing a rustic, muted look will go a long way toward making your space the place to be.

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center recently welcomed some members of the San Diego district of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. Headed by Koby Hall of Koby’s Garden Alchemy, Inc., the group of landscape designers hit the road for a weekend of visits to major garden influencers throughout the Santa Barbara area.

They stopped by EOTD here in Carpinteria for some tea and tours by owner, Brent Freitas, and sales rep, Mitch Walker who were happy to share information about our company history and an in-depth overview of our various product lines. This included our Italian terracotta from Terrecotte San Rocco and American pottery from Gladding McBean. The APLD group walked our showroom to see our extensive collection of fountains, statuary, and containers. Brent also spoke about our customization services including coloring, aging, and fountain conversions.

We were happy to see some EOTD items find new homes in future San Diego APLD designs. Special thanks to you guys and we’re happy you could visit!

If your group would like a tour of Eye of the Day, please contact us at: trade@

Click the slideshow for more of the San Diego APLD visit at Eye of the Day:

We recently had the pleasure of photographing a Malibu garden design by landscape architect Wendy Harper.

Hidden in a canyon perched on a point overlooking the Pacific, the property owned by Harper’s clients is a perfect weekend getaway. The experience begins on the winding narrow road leading you around a bend where you get your first glimpse of the ocean. To enter the property you must then cross over a babbling creek on a beach cobble bridge. Harper used natural beach cobble and Santa Barbara stone to connect with the surrounding environment. Large Monterey Cypress and towering California Sycamores, planted when the home was built in the mid 1900s, create an inviting canopy over the site.

“The property is long and narrow with many constraints and challenges,” says Harper. “My goal was to make all of the spaces in the garden feel like living spaces, even the parking court, which is incorporated into the yard by introducing a weeping wall water feature, grass ribbons in the beach cobble paving, lush plantings with antique urns dripping with succulents and colorful blooms most of the year.”

The entertaining patio outside of the kitchen is warmed by an outdoor fireplace decorated with Eye of the Day’s Antique French mantel and surround. Select cut Santa Barbara stone set on sand paves this outdoor room. Eye of the Day’s containers planted with succulents and citrus decorate the space.

A curved stone staircase leads you up to the pool area. Tuscan-style molded brick columns support the long pavilion framing the pool. Taking a swim in the pool is a musical experience where you can listen to your favorite songs…underwater. Sigis cut glass tile compliments the spa and waterline, and colored pool lights transform the water into a kaleidoscope at night. The ipe hardwood deck ties to the railings which mimic the turned wood railings of the home’s balconies. Interestingly, the use of ipe was the only specification from the homeowner for this project. Everything else was left to Harper’s creativity and expertise.

“I wanted it to feel like it had all been here from the start, so bringing the turned railings onto the deck was a natural choice,” explains Harper.

Chisel-cut Santa Barbara Stone walls hold olive trees and sycamores on the upper slope as a lazy hammock swings between the trees. Three small ancient church windows from Eye of the Day’s antique collection inspired the changing room with outdoor shower. The pilaster planters are purposely understated with simple succulent plantings so as not to crowd or overshadow, just to compliment the space.

About the Designer:
Wendy Harper is a landscape architect based in Moorpark, California. To view more of her work, visit the Wendy Harper Landscape Architecture Facebook page. 

…from the Travel Journal of Brent Freitas, CEO/Owner of Eye of the Day

 

Over the last few years we have focused on survival and have been importing only products that have become our staples: Italian terracotta, French Anduze pottery and hand-thrown Greek terracotta pots.   Pre-Recession, Eye of the Day traveled throughout the world and brought back some amazing things for our customers.  These one-of-a-kind items coupled with our large inventory of antique oil jars from Italy, Greece, Spain and France have helped see us through slow times.  We often hear that our customers are amazed with our large inventory and what a pleasure it is to be able to find items for their projects.

Many of our special finds have been sold so now it is time to begin exploring the shops and fairs throughout Europe looking for old jars, pieces of stone, architectural iron and funk that just seems to work in a garden.  I look forward to keeping you updated with my wanderings and great finds over the next few weeks, and hope that you may find something to tickle your fancy that you just can’t live without.

Many who know about my wanderings comment that I am lucky to travel around the world and that you wish it were you.   I sometimes wish it were you too and that I could just stay home, read, give Suzi a wish list for each meal and try to burn through a cord or two of oak in our fireplace.  But reality is different, and I find myself with an emptiness in my stomach, feeling homesick before I ever leave.

The ambivalence of arriving in Rome with a cold and my luggage still somewhere at Heathrow keeps me from going to my favorite dive in the ghetto for baby artichokes fried in olive oil.  Instead, I sleep for eight hours and have a marginally decent pizza in the hotel bar (how bad can a pizza be in Rome?).

Finally I catch the last train to Chiusi and meet up with Marcello, owner of Terrecotte San Rocco.  We drive to his home in the hills of Siena where his wife and mother, Nona, have a pot of pesto al Genovese ready and tonight a platter full of prosciutto and a variety of salumi.  It could definitely be worse.  After dinner Nona brings out a small bottle of deep amber liquid, a Christmas gift from an old friend.  There are no labels or foil and it looks to be hand-corked.  My mouth begins to water.  I hope it is a local Vin Santo.  The pruny, sherry-like liquid makes me almost forget the three dozen oysters and magnum of champagne we had with our daughter in Brooklyn on Christmas morning.  Almost.

New Years Eve day we are off to a nearby town for a big antique fair.  It is sparsely attended which gives me a little breathing room to adjust to my antiquing personality.  Walking up and down the steep cobblestone streets of the ancient Tuscan hill town is hard work and makes me hungry.  There is not time to sit down to the wonderful food in a local restaurant, but I find a nice salumeria and a sandwich of excellent prosciutto, pecorino and to my friend’s surprise, a few thin slices of lardo.  A glass of local vino rosso in a plastic cup and I’m back pounding the cobbles.  I find many interesting, but highly priced items, and then find a dealer who wants to bargain…

Below are some photos of some beautiful antiques that I found during my trip to the antique fair.  More to come!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On New Year’s Day I wake up late but I’m glad that the house is quiet.  It allows me to organize my week ahead at the factory.  My partner, Marcello, is the most progressive manufacturer in Italy.  In the afternoon he shows me a new factory he just started with a partner to produce quality terracotta for large garden centers.  While older, traditional terracotta manufacturers are going out of business, Marcello is buying their factories and their molds and working to develop new items.  Our association with this man and his business is becoming to be the backbone of Eye of the Day.

Next week:

Bologna and a little spaghetti.  After that I’m off to France to pick up a special order for a new landscape architecture firm wanting pots from Anduze that we don’t have in stock.  It will be an experiment renting a truck in Italy, driving to France for the pots and take them back to Italy to put on the container.  We are about to find out if this will be less expensive, faster and more productive than shipping by truck from France to Italy or shipping by pallet from Marseille.

Eye of the Day will be exhibiting at the Association for Landscape Architects (ASLA) Expo next Monday and Tuesday, October 31^st and November 1^st  at the San Diego Convention Center.  We are very excited to show everyone our beautiful handcrafted Italian terracotta from Terrecotte San Rocco.  We have planned long and hard to make this show a success, and we are excited to be there and see the outcome.

Brent Freitas, owner, and Megan Foster, Marketing and Sales Director, will be working the booth, along with Larry Walling, from Bellissimo Architectural Finishes, who has over 43 years of experience in the applied coatings industry, ranging from industrial/commercial to custom residential.

In our booth we will be showing the diversity and depth of the Terrecotte San Rocco product lines, with pieces ranging from contemporary shapes and forms in the standard terracotta and colored clay, to very classic Italian ornate pieces.  The broad range of product styles and colors that Terrecotte San Rocco produces is what makes it very unique, along with the fact that the clay quality is like none other.

We also look forward to showing our clients and the other expo attendees our various service capabilities.  We will have pieces on display that show the diversity of Eye of the Day’s services, such as the conversion of a contemporary terracotta pot that has been glazed in state-of-the-art acrylics and epoxys into a beautifully flowing fountain (see some of our fountain conversions on our website here).  In addition, we will have examples of our NEW “vintage finishes” which give an old, antiqued appearence to new containers, pots, statuary, etc.

We hope you will stop by our booth if you are at the show (Booth #3131)!  If you aren’t yet signed up to attend but would like to, please contact us at trade@ to get a FREE pass!

 

Below are some articles regarding the show that may be of interest:

“Biggest EXPO Ever Offers Wide World of Products and Services”

“Top Five Reasons to Register for the Annual Meeting and EXPO”

 

 

 

While spring may be a wonderful time to get plants in the ground, fall is the perfect time to begin designing your garden, and a time at which landscape professionals are available.
To encourage you to get started this fall, Jennifer Voss of Gardefacts Landscape Design () and Arianna Jansma of Dramatically Different Landscape Design have a special offer for Eye of the Day customers.  For the months of November and December these designers are offering a 25% discount on their design and consultation fees.

Jennifer and Arianna are a talented duo who collaborated to transform a portion of our Garden Annex into delightful outdoor garden rooms, creating four small courtyards to display our merchandise, and enlivening it with interesting and unusual plant material.

If you haven’t been to Eye of the Day to see the display gardens, now is a great time to check them out and find inspiration for your own garden.  Whether you have a small patio with potted
plants or a large estate, Jennifer and Arianna can help you create a magical environment.

 

Jennifer can be reached at: gardefacts@ or at 805-450-1096

Arianna can be reached at: ariannajansma@ or at 805-689-1562