Japandia

The owners came home from Japan with a feeling, not a mood board: fewer rooms doing more, a garden that is part of the plan, joinery you notice with your hand. Translating that onto a wet Edgemont lot is building work as much as design work. Screens have to slide after they swell. The maple has to be a real tree. Robert Blaney’s drawings were exacting; our job was to make them hold up in cedar. Western Living published it. What we remember is a Tuesday in November, rain on the glass, the garden still doing its job.