COURTYARD · MESA COURT · 0.05 AC · 26 PLANTS · 2025

A concrete courtyard given a floor and a tree

This one is small enough to describe in a sentence and was harder than either of the others. Everything had to be carried through the house, and the slab could not be broken up.

A plain concrete courtyard with bare walls, a floor drain and a single plastic chair in flat light. — BEFORE
MAY 2025 · COURTYARD · EXISTING SLAB AND DRAIN

The same courtyard with a decomposed granite floor, a raised steel planter with a multi-trunk olive and climbing fig on the wall. — AFTER
NOVEMBER 2025 · SAME COURTYARD · SIX MONTHS ON

Detail of a weathering steel planter edge with rosemary spilling over it and hard wall shadows behind. — DETAIL
PLANTER EDGE · WEATHERING STEEL · ROSEMARY AT THE LIP

Site: Enclosed courtyard, three walls, existing slab on grade
Area: 40 by 55 feet
Planting: 26 plants, 11 species, one multi-trunk olive
Water: Drip to the planter and the wall vines; hose bib for the pots
Hardscape: Decomposed granite over the slab, weathering steel planter
Built: Autumn 2025, five weeks, crew of three

Keeping the slab meant building up rather than digging down. The planter is a welded steel box set on the concrete with its own drainage layer, deep enough for an olive that will stay at the size it arrived. Around it we screeded decomposed granite over the slab so the floor reads as ground instead of pavement, and so the existing drain still works.

Climbing fig went on the long wall because it holds without hardware and can be cut back hard when it gets ahead of itself. The rest is pots the owners already had. A courtyard this size does not need a plant list; it needs one thing with a canopy and enough floor to put chairs on.

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