Marlow Garden Studio
Gardens for steep, dry plots
Marlow Garden Studio designs and builds gardens on the hillsides above Santa Barbara and Montecito. Most of our gardens are on slopes that were hard to use: too steep to walk, too dry to plant, or washed out every winter.
We start every project with a site visit and a soil test, and we design for the plot you have, not a flat one. That usually means low stone or timber terraces, deep mulch, drip irrigation on a timer, and plants from Mediterranean climates that need little water once they are established.
Our crew of six builds and plants everything we design. We keep a short list of local stonemasons and electricians for the parts we do not do ourselves.
The studio is on Garden Street, with a small planted courtyard where you can see most of the plants we use before you choose them.
Studio at 1120 Garden Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101.
From customers
The slope behind our house used to slide every winter. Two years after the terraces went in, it has not moved, and the garden needs watering once a week.
The consultation alone was worth it: a planting list we could buy ourselves and a sketch our builder followed.