Garden

A wall of burnished concrete block protectively isolates their indoor and outdoor living areas from the busy road.

At the basement level, the home opens to a sunken courtyard that makes space for reading and contemplation.

After raising the rear patio to the level of the kitchen, the team reused the original redwood decking and supplemented it with recycled pieces from other projects. Recessed planters punctuate a garden wall. Scott and Regina warm themselves by a Solus fire pit on chilly evenings.

The first thing landscape designer Laura Cooper asked Devis and Purdy was to recall childhood gardens and outdoor play. In that spirit, she designed their backyard, integrating the high ground with the low just outside the “kids’ wing.” The resulting series of outdoor rooms on this quarter-acre is full of memory and play.

Because of the property’s incline, Jeana’s design space on the lower level is partly subterranean but still opens to the outdoors via large glass sliders.

On a trip to Naoshima, Japan, the Houston newlyweds behind Robertson Design fell in love with Tadao Ando’s concrete-composed museums. This led the couple to create a residence of their own comprised of a low concrete wall, concrete cube, and box clad in Siberian larch. The indoors are rounded out with white oak, marble, and leather-finished granite.

Another water-saving project in Menlo Park includes a rock bed with succulents.