Landscape architect Rhett Beavers’ Los Angeles garden

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)By Paula Panich Landscape architect Rhett Beavers’ Los Angeles garden is a compelling argument against what so many people do when they buy a home: Rip out the existing landscape and start over. Instead, Beavers has spent years pondering what to keep and what to change. Today the backyard is a natural beauty, filled not just with new terraced plantings but also remnants of the land’s past, which includes a 1920s communal orchard. …A quiet seating area is surrounded by low-water plants and paved in river rock. Beavers is slowly adding California natives to create habitat for animals, including raccoons, opossums, skunks, squirrels, blue jays, mockingbirds and lizards. A number of older, existing plants and small trees — agave, citrus, sapote and a Western redbud — stayed while Beavers added garden rooms, including one with sages, artemisia and lion’s paw. Seasonal greens flourish on the upper terraces, where arugula serves as an edible groundcover …Beavers spent the first year hauling things out — trees, rocks, dead plants. But he left terraces built by a succession of owners as well as a patio at the house level, trellised by grapevines.…http://www.latimes.com/la-hm-tour-landscape-architects-mission-photos,0,2428820.photogallery