Color and light help transform a yard into a picture perfect landscape
by Sandra Barrera

Scott Cohen awoke on a recent morning, amazed at the sight of a giant rainbow bending over the San Fernando Valley. Cohen's appreciation of the ribbons of color is no surprise, given his professional interest in harnessing light. The award-winning landscape designer, licensed contractor and president of The Green Scene incorporates a variety of materials to evoke that sense of magic in each project.

Cohen has been creating what he calls lightscapes since expanding his garden design business into high end residential landscaping and construction 15 years ago. An accomplished ceramicist and sculptor, he's regularly featured on the HTV series Get Out, Way Out! And this month he'll be shooting a new A&E series with the working title Lawn and Order, in which he'll be given a week to rejuvenate the kind of over-run yard that vexes neighbors everywhere.

Although his landscape design and construction business is headquartered in Northridge, Cohen's television appearances have drawn clients from around the country. As a result, he is doing more design work using a peer-to-peer computer program that allows him and his clients to collaborate from any distance.

Here he shares some of his insights:

How do you decide what colors to use in a landscaping project?

I go through a four page landscape design questionnaire with clients on the initial design consultation, and one of the questions I ask is: What are your favorite colors? Some clients want a really colorful garden and come clients don't.

No color at all?

I recently built a moon garden for customers in Calabasas. A moon garden is all dark greens, with some variegated foliage for color and all white flowers. During a full moon, these colors really glow. Certainly white is a color, and white and green are two of the favorite colors we have in gardens. But it's not a real busy colorful garden. It's really clean and classy.

What are some of your favorite drought tolerant plants?

Lantana is a low growing shrub that creates a lot of nice color. My favorite variety is called "confetti" which is a blend of yellow, orange, and red all on the same flower. English lavender is drought tolerant, fragrant, and has vibrant purple flowers. Another favorite - because purple is one of my favorite colors- is static or sea lavender. We see that used pretty commonly in the San Fernando Valley because it's drought tolerant, dog tolerant, and smog tolerant. It's a hard plant to kill.

Static is a great cutting flower, too

You can cut the flower and spray it with a little hair spray to set the petals in place and it will stay as a dried flower for a year before having to be tossed.

Do you have any other favorites?

A floss silk tree has a green trunk for color, with thorns to give it some architectural interest. It also has a cool hibiscus like flower that is real vibrant. It works well in either a xeriscape or drought-tolerant garden or a tropical garden. And it's not particularly root invasive, so it is a good choice all around.

How do you bring color to the rest of the outdoors?

Color comes from the finishes we use in the interior of the swimming pools, what we're reflecting in the water, and the tiles that we choose. I'll use Colorquartz™ chips that actually color a swimming pool shell. We'll use different Pebble Tec® to create different effects of color in the swimming pool. Color is a big deal when it comes to swimming pools. And, in fact, we use a lot of color changing lights. This used to be done with moving parts and they didn't work well. But now there are LED lights that have no moving parts and we can create deep cobalt blues, purples, greens, and colors like that. We'll also use colors and materials to create some impact.

"Color is a big deal when it comes to pools. In fact, we use a lot of color changing lights. They used to be done with moving parts and they didn't work well. But now there are LED lights that have no moving parts and we can create cobalt blues, purples, and greens."

Could you give us an example?

We used a really vibrant reddish-orange on a fireplace. that color creates a bold statement in that back yard where we used a lot of neutral greys and charcoal tile materials. We got some pop by using that color.

You also use colored glass in some of your projects.

We cast our outdoor kitchen countertops out of concrete and recycled glass, so we're able to introduce color there. On a recent project, we placed fiber optic lights under larger chunks of glass so at night it glows green and blue and red. Then as you move your cocktail glass across the countertop, the glass itself changes color. It's a really cool effect.

Your Web site features a countertop embedded with bottle shapes glass tiles. How did you create those?

My garage is set up as a ceramics studio. I melted wine and scotch bottles flat in my kilns to create the tiles that we used in this countertop. So, it's all been cast in place out of concrete and then we ground, honed, and polished it with granite finishing tools so it's smooth on top. Then when the fiber optic lights shine through, they light up the bottles and the chunks of glass. We recycled almost 300 wine bottles to create the blocks that we used to create the barbecue counter.