Fearless color in Keeyla Meadows Garden: San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling
Our 3rd stop on the final day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was the garden of artist and garden designer Keeyla Meadows, a scene of riotous, exuberant color in both plants and structures.
Keeyla is the author of Fearless Color Gardens, which I reviewed here at Digging in 2010, preparing me for a house as Crayon-colorful as the garden, with plenty of one-of-a-kind sculptural accents that serve as focal points, like the pot at right and the woman-with-flowers at left.
Keeyla does a great job of matching flower and foliage color to her sculptures and to the flamboyant colors she uses on her two-story bungalow.
After the foliage-centric Ruth Bancroft and Dudan gardens, which we’d seen earlier in the day, Keeyla’s garden presented an unapologetic explosion of floral extravagance, and felt softer and more homey to some of the bloggers who’d felt put off by the foreign spikiness of the earlier gardens.
Keeyla’s open gate invited us into the back garden…
…where your eye is first drawn to the raspberry-colored house with green trim. Ahead, a work-of-art garden arch beckons you forward.
Rounding the back of the house, you see a marvelous tiled bench and hand-painted tiled patio, color-matched with the plants on either side.
Tile patio detail
Lilies, gold and rich red, pick up the colors as well.
An outdoor sink and grilling patio are tucked into a sheltered corner of the house.
Behind the house, Keeyla’s art studio beckons with blazing red doors, but you have to pick your way carefully around and over several boulders, which seem to form the banks of a dry stream. The boulders — including a small mountain of them in the center of the garden — were brought in by Keeyla to sculpt her flat lot and give it hilly topography.
Potted plants mingle with in-ground plants, providing adding elevation.
Hot flowers
To the left, a sculptural “window” reveals a glimpse of an outdoor shower.
Here’s a side view. The middle panel of sculpted clay appears to be folded down — or melted a la Salvador Dali?
Keeyla’s art permeates the garden as gateways, windows, flooring, paths, pots, and sculpture. The overall effect is rather overwhelming, as your head swivels this way and that trying to take it all in.
Keeyla opened her studio to us as well, and it was fascinating to traipse through and see the pieces she’s put on display.
I particularly liked this sculpture of a dress bedecked with flowers, which stands gracefully as if worn by an invisible woman.
A cheery yellow door leads to the rear of the garden…
…and a garden room adorned in shades of acid yellow and purple.
Looking back at the door you get a preview of the color scheme.
Artful paving continues it.
The plants are perfectly coordinated.
So are the pots.
As I recall, Keeyla explains how to construct colorful concrete posts and corrugated walls and benches like these in her Fearless Color Gardens book.
She uses concrete form tubes to make these columnar accents and then paints them in eye-popping colors. Notice how carefully she chose her plants for this shady section, with Japanese forest grass echoing the chartreuse yellow and purple flowers for contrast.
I had trouble photographing the center of the garden, a crazy-quilt of tropical foliage and flowers atop a small boulder-built hill.
However, this sculptural brugamansia arch caught my eye, placed perfectly beside a living brugmansia in full, trumpet-shaped bloom.
Zinnias
Lilies match the hot hues of the studio.
Keeyla generously opened her house to the blogger paparazzi as well, and I enjoyed her bold color choices for her living room and kitchen.
Climbing the stairs to the second-floor master bedroom, you’re rewarded with a bird’s-eye view of the back garden. There’s the “dry stream” path to the studio in the center, with the folded-window sculpture and outdoor shower on the left. On the right, just out of the frame, is the hilly central mound of the garden.
Fun painted chairs sit atop the studio roof. An enormous pink cordyline matches the color of the building.
A hair-raising sculptural piece
Heading back toward the front garden, two more pieces of art caught my eye: a verdigris-colored sculpture of pears…
…and a spiral snake patio — fun!
Along the street a Crayon sculpture, bleached to beige, stands amid colorful flowers. It’s as if the garden absorbed all the color — sucked it right out — and left the Crayon an ironic neutral — just one more playful element in a creative garden bursting with color.
Up next: The enchanting Nichols Garden, my absolute favorite of the tour. For a look back at the hilltop-with-a-view Dudan Garden, click here.
All material © 2006-2013 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Fun tour of Keeyla’s garden, I enjoyed all of it. The Brugmansia sculpture is especially cool as they are favorites of mine. It’s impressive how beautifully she has matched plants and art yet kept it fun.
It was delightful to come across that brugmansia sculpture with brugmansia flowers in bloom alongside it. Fun surprises like this abound in her garden. —Pam
I have enjoyed all the garden tours, but this one with the wild and wonderful selection of plant colors and art I especially appreciated. I would emulate it if I could.
Question: Your photos are always wonderfully framed from great angles. That takes talent, but how do you manage to get the saturated color in your photos when taken in glaring sun?
Ragna, I would like to take credit for that, but my camera does a good job with full-sun photos. I have a knack for framing images, but I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I have almost no technical knowledge of photography, relying instead on my camera’s dialed settings for outdoors, indoors, etc. This serves me pretty well with my Nikon D5000 except in shade gardens, where I have difficulty getting decent color (it all wants to go gray). I really must take a technical course one day. —Pam
Absolutely spectacular, Pam! Grateful for your polished artist eye to capture and share!
Thanks, Kathryn. I’m glad you enjoyed the tour! —Pam
Great shots of this fun, funky, fabulous collage of a garden. It’s great fun to see & hear a variety of perspectives on the same places! You’re far ahead of me as I’ve just finished blogging abut day one.
Well, now I know I have more to look forward to, Peter. I will be interested to read your Day 2 and Day 3 posts as they arrive. —Pam
I loooooove the tiled and mosaic paving in this garden, especially that snake patio. I’ve been dying to do something more creative than mulch paths in my narrow side yards, and if I can figure out how to manage the technicalities, I would love to do something this artistic and fun!
While I find your mulched path quite attractive, especially since you’ve planted it up along the edges, I bet you’ll come up with something creative and fun if you pave it! —Pam
I’ve been following along and this is by far my favorite garden so far.
I’m glad you enjoyed the tour, Laura. —Pam
You called it, Pam: That garden was hot! But hot in such a woven mix of color, it didn’t burn at all. I’m so enjoying all these different views of the same garden. Each post gives me something new to see and consider.
Yes, that’s a lovely aspect of the Fling. Attended by bloggers who post about it afterward, it’s a tour that you get to enjoy twice. —Pam
I didn’t think I would enjoy Keeyla’s garden as much as I did. It was wonderful! Still I think I was on a bit of overload when we got there (I was on the other bus and it was our last stop before Flora Grubb) combined with a bit of dread that the weekend was almost over, you caught many details that I missed.
This was a day packed with so many differing styles of gardens, wasn’t it? I can see why you felt overloaded by the time you got to this one. Well, especially after seeing the Nichols garden. I saw that one last, and it blew me away. —Pam
I’ve seen Keeyla Meadows’ garden in magazines and blogger posts and I have a copy of her book. I’ve always found it a little overwhelming when looked at as a whole but, when taken in pieces, there are a lot of good ideas there. I particularly like the tiled bench and patio with coordinating plant selections. Thanks for sharing your visit!
My pleasure, Kris. I’m glad you enjoyed the vignettes. —Pam
Pam, Thanks for the photo tour of Keeyla’s garden. I have her book, and have been wanting to see MORE MORE MORE! I especially loved the shot of the inside of her home, since I’m in the process of designing a backyard studio apartment cottage now. best, bobbi c.
I’m delighted to have been able to share more of her garden with you, Bobbi. How awesome that you’re designing a studio apt. cottage too. —Pam
blown away! and I feel like there is a whole other world of hard scape out there that I look forward to exploring more after drooling over coooool San Francisco bloggers gardens! this is my favorite tour yet!
She has a real sense of playfulness and creativity in her garden, doesn’t she? —Pam
Her garden amazed me with all the details at every turn of the eye, and I took a few too many photos, but hardly any the same as yours’! What I noticed, though, was a careful design, that allowed randomness to happen, and she pulled it off with so many elements and in a small space. You nailed the color overload!
This garden must have seemed over-the-top to someone with a spare desert aesthetic like you, David. —Pam
Two things I missed, the invisible woman dress and the crayola crayon…there was so much to see. I loved this garden.
I missed things too, Janet, which I’ve seen on other blog posts about this garden. It was a carnival of color and plants, wasn’t it? —Pam