Virtual garden tour: A frontyard vineyard in Pasadena

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Robin Stever had long dreamed about owning a vineyard, and lo and behold, one day she returned to her Pasadena home to discover son Marco Barrantes cutting down trees and digging up their frontyard.

Barrantes’ surprise effort, made during the summer break from his landscape architecture and urban planning studies at UC Berkeley, was the first step in transforming a nondescript 1-acre property into Rancho LaLoma, a romantic homestead that evokes early California, complete with a vineyard, orchard, vegetable garden and chickens.

Now the original brick staircase, circa 1937, leads up past grapevines closer to the house. See the results of seven years of revising the landscape which includes a small waterfall, a desert garden, and a rustic vegetable garden made of drainpipes.

-- Anne Harnagel

Photos: The terraced vineyard at Rancho LaLoma, top, and the drain pipe garden. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times