As soon as local landscape architect Elisa Read Pappaterra and her team visited the Pasadena Showcase House of Design’s Arroyo Vista Garden, they were taken by the walled patio “with an antique fountain reminiscent of Tudor royalty,” she recalls. But it was chipped, leaky, and in disrepair, so it was clear that they wouldn’t be able to make the two-tiered, cast-stone beauty “into the bubbling, exuberant water fountain it originally was.” Buoyed by the garden soirees magnified on Bridgerton, they turned to the head gardener at Hampton Court Palace outside London for advice on how best to restore the structure.
The solution? Planting a slew of hardy succulents that mimic water, including echeveria, string of bananas, and sweet alyssum, “which, from a distance, looked like churning froth glistening in the sunlight,” points out Read Pappaterra. Eager to pair the heritage fountain with an active water feature that would attract wildlife, Studio Pappaterra inverted a large concrete planter that called to mind the formal shape of the Hampton Court Palace’s Pond Gardens, built a reservoir underground, and installed a pump to recirculate the water. “A ceiling medallion in a metallic matching hue gave the fountain a finished look,” adds Read Pappaterra, “and provided a shallow pool that serves as a birdbath.”
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