What We Do

My husband and I own and operate Alatorre Garden Design, here in the lovely East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Lots of people look at me blankly when I say this, so I thought I'd provide a little sample of what it is that we do.

We meet with folks who want to create "native paradises" in their gardens: gardens that feature California native plants, encourage wildlife, and conserve natural resources. Rick is a walking encyclopedia of California native plants: his knowledge is impressive. He uses that knowledge, as well as his aesthetic sense and his love of Fibonacci numbers to create beautiful spaces for our clients.

Where do I come in? Having zero native plant knowledge but possessing some killer penmanship skillz, I render his ideas neatly on paper. He draws a rough draft of his designs, and then I come along and ink the drawing, adding all the features and notes he has crawled in his barely legible chicken scratch. Here's a sample of one of our designs in process. This one is quite simple -- some are more elaborate -- but it conveys the general idea of what we do:

And here are pictures of our own garden, our "showroom" if you will, where people can see Rick's beautiful ideas executed.

And that, my friends, is what we do. Aren't we lucky?

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