Cinder Terrace

The lot was a narrow sandstone shelf above the water, already more geology than garden. We kept the existing grade, rebuilt the retaining walls in the same stone, and planted only what the salt wind would allow.

Silver grasses, low succulents, and a single long bench face the horizon. There is no lawn. Paths are the width of a person. In summer the terrace reads as a pale wash against the sea; in winter it holds rain in shallow basins cut into the stone.

The work was mostly subtraction. We removed a timber deck that fought the cliff and let the geology speak. What remains is a place to sit, and the weather.