By Bruce Curtis

(Photos courtesy of Jeff Powers, used with permission)

Landscape designer Jeff Powers is California casual when he talks about his work, but the layer of cool professional competence is never far from view. Like a Hitchcock cameo, little touches of 'aw-shucks' whimsy show up even in his most upscale landscape designs. Make a quick tour of his website, www.earthscaping.com and you'll detect it, there among the latest direct-x animated leaves and lines. Just when you think the folks at Earthscaping are a bunch of serious business folks, a ladybug jumps out and zigzags up the screen. It is the sort of touch that describes Jeff Powers, himself. Given a choice, he'd probably be out there digging and planting something in the dirt outside his office.

"My folks tell a story about when I was five years old. They bought a house at Newport Beach, I took them to a nursery and bought plants and told them where they ought to go." Eventually fed up with young Jeff tearing up their landscaping and putting in his own, he was given a plot of ground by the garage so he could dig up and replant undisturbed.

"My dad wanted me to be an attorney, so I signed up for pre-law, but then right before, I moved to Aspen for a couple of years." His dad cut him off. Later, Jeff returned to Orange County California, then just embarking on an upscale boom. He began designing landscapes for customers who came to him on the strength of positive referrals.

"I was doing pretty good and it sort of occurred to me I would rather be doing this than dealing with a lot of low-lifes in the legal system." Powers' decision turned out to be the right one, and by 1971, he'd turned his passionate hobby into a business that grew into a multimillion dollar, 140 employee landscape design and construction firm with clients like the California Speedway and Los Angeles' Staples Center Sports arena. After 30 years, however, Powers was looking to make some quality-of-life changes and the first step was to right-size Earthscaping.

"We were always known for doing high-end, attention-to-detail, quality projects," then in 2002, after experiencing a series of collection headaches -- not uncommon in the construction business -- Powers decided narrow his focus on high-end and large project clientele. Today, Earthscaping builds turnkey landscape projects for upscale residences, corporate headquarters and large-scale apartment developments, doing things the way Jeff Powers has always done it; word of mouth.

"We don't take on probably two thirds of the calls, we don't advertise and that makes a difference," says Jeff.

The best advertising though has to be all the awards, dozens of them. A homeowner commissioned Powers, whose final creation, a mysterious and private hedge cove paved and curbed in blue slate, received an industry association award. Other awards included a Lesco-sponsored hillside stabilization and landscape project, a regal gated residential drive and entryway, and a restaurant that overflows outside in a riot of colorful hedges and Asian canopy themed dining tables. All seem to say the same thing: we can be serious but still have fun. His peers often recognize that fact, and the plaques stack up inside Earthscaping's OC south coast offices.

"I am always delighted, I love to share earthscaping's work," says Powers. "Our carpenters, our plantsmen, it's a huge effort and to pull it off is gratifying and it's a release." Even after 34 years, Powers finds satisfaction in the logistical dance of details, coordinating crews and hardware installation, a myriad of details. But when a project is done, it looks so simple. "It looks like, 'wow, how could that have been such an arduous process, it's beautiful'."

Powers is pleased that his work, which has already drawn the attention of Los Angeles Times architecture writers, is soon to be feted in several luxury living and lifestyle books. Earthscaping work will be the subject on the cover of at least one book highlighting house building architects, interior design and furniture. Even the Wall Street Journal hasn't overlooked Jeff's work, and he's gained attention for upscale coastal residences he's helped transform, in a book called, Secret Gardens of Laguna.

Travel south of the Los Angeles area's coastal plain, past surfer-chic Newport and you enter the hillsides of Laguna Beach, a former bohemian counter-culture mecca that has since moved upscale. On the site of a former artist colony steps Laguna's exclusive, top rated Montage Resort & Spa, where Powers' team found a way to visually funnel the panorama of a jade-colored Pacific coast cove into the five-star resort's center grounds. Horseshoe shaped formal gardens frame a classic rectangular swimming pool, while walls of stacked stone hide spa fountains designed to help guests escape as they unwind. Imagine luxuriating at deserted Baja beachfront hot spring where cell calls and cares fade.

Never far from its roots, the resort features colorful ceramic wall dioramas and other touches of art that reveal themselves unexpectedly as guests stroll the extensive pathways. An easy traverse descends to a surreal-sculpted art deco balcony overlooking the cove's iridescent waters. In 34 years, Powers hasn't tired of creating such spaces. He won't let himself be confined to any single design signature, either.

"I just like building; the strength of our company is that we don't have just one style," says Jeff, "lots of architectural companies have an identity that when you drive by you say, 'oh, that's so-and-so', but the thing about us is that we really listen to the client and are sensitive to the site. Powers says the end result of that sort of collaboration is always a unique experience of both hardscape and greenscape. "Whether they're California Natives or Tropicals, ornamental gardens, or we mix a combination, the patterns, textures and colors are the clients."

The design process at Earthscaping takes in both the client and the architect, and like many other successful landscape designers, Powers punches up the need for good communication, and developing close working relationships with his clients and project architect.

"We're very sensitive to the architect and his plans and strive to draw out and develop in a way what can't be worked out on paper," says Jeff, noting that still ultimately in each case the intangible quality of artistry shapes the project, as Power's lends the finishing touches.

Things are changing along the California Coast; population growth and prosperity have caused coastal home prices to soar and that means a lot of remodeling work as homes move upscale. Jeff says about half his work now consists of remodels, some are nearly clean sites, where old homes have given way to waves of wealth and gentrification. Powers is enjoying working on a huge makeover of actor John Wayne's former Newport Beach digs, and he's giving a lot of thought to how outdoor living is changing the shape of Earthscaping's focus.

"Clients are asking me to create these outdoor rooms, pizza kitchens," he explains. "People are moving outside more than I have been seeing in previous decades."

At the same time, landscaping customers are becoming more discriminating.
"Clients expect even a higher degree of quality, not only in construction but materials. They're much higher grade in terms of granite, travertines and finishes. Before, a client asked for a concrete retaining wall, but today it's going to be faced with stone; themes are much more enhanced and developed."

Which leads Powers to the subject of high tech environments; how electronic features and computers are finding their way into landscape design.

"The best example is a project we are involved in an irrigation controller, although there are similar types, this type of timer takes no human interaction, we installed some for Orange County in Yerba Ranch Park." The system, Powers says, works like a computer. Program in type of landscape, lawn or shrubs, site location, shadow, water use and transpiration rate and you have a watering system that operates completely without human involvement. Plug in address, soil type, whether sandy, loam, clay, etc, and the system measures everything else, even taking daily weather data from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric satellite to change watering schedules or duration.

Powers is excited by such technology because it virtually eliminates runoff, saving precious resources in the arid west.

"The satellite decides this lawn should be watered three days from now for three cycles, but tomorrow it may get foggy, so it will push it back even farther. The next day there may be Santa Ana winds, so it will come on earlier."

According to Powers, an orange county area study projected water savings of 50% if property owners switched to intelligent irrigation. "I think that's enormously huge, as populations are on the rise across the southwest."

And, though Landscape creator Jeff Powers has downsized his business, the boy who was always planting and digging at home is still inside and he isn't even close to retiring, at least not as long as clients come forward with requests for innovative landscape designs.

"The thing about Earthscaping is that we love gardening," and that, says Powers, "sums it up perfectly."