Philip Carey home: Turning dreams into reality

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• The Gutzmann garden in Atascadero is an inviting, verdant hillside garden

  The Gutzmann garden in Atascadero is an inviting, verdant hillside garden

  One hundred is the magic number for Ed Gutzmann of Atascadero. Gutzmann built more than 100 theaters in Southern California and throughout the West before he retired to west Atascadero. But retirement wasn’t part of the plan once he got busy landscaping his hillside property. Friends marveled at the result and asked him to “help” them with their yards.

  That “help” turned into a full-on landscaping business resulting in more than 100 projects throughout the area. Gutzmann both designed and did much of the labor on his projects, each one capturing the vision of what the owners wanted to “see” from inside their home.

  Landscaping wasn’t new to him, as his father was a landscape architect in Orange County, and Gutzmann remembers tagging along as a boy to the project sites. He’s always loved creating, and with an engineering and design background, landscaping was a natural. As he says, “I have a P.E. (Practical Experience) degree in landscape.”

• A Gardener's Notebook: Oh no! Not another gardening book!

  A Gardener's Notebook: Oh no! Not another gardening book!

  Sunset Western Garden Books and I go way back. I remember leafing through my mother’s old “First Edition” 1954 publication. It covered about everything one needed to know about gardening.

  Of the newer Sunset Western Garden Books in my library, the 2001 seventh edition was my bible during Master Gardener training. I didn’t think the 2007 edition had enough new material, so I passed on that one. But what gardener can resist the newly released ninth edition?

  “Not another garden book,” you say. Here’s my rationale for buying it. This edition is the first to feature plant photos exclusively. Not that I didn’t enjoy the illustrations of the older versions, but a color photo, well, they’re in color. The plant encyclopedia of the new 2012 edition has been updated and includes 1,000 more entries. There is a “Gardening, Start to Finish” section for beginning gardeners.

• Dream on: Philip Carey plumbs the depths of his subconscious for the grist of his art

  Dream on: Philip Carey plumbs the depths of his subconscious for the grist of his art

  Sigmund Freud and others involved with dream interpretation could have a field day with Philip Carey’s current exhibits at two venues. His work largely consists of sketches and stories about his bizarre dreams.

  Carey himself is not curious about their meaning. “Dream analysis doesn’t matter to me at all,” he said.

  The dreams that stem from his unconscious amuse and fascinate him and provide fodder for his art.

• The Olivero garden in Paso Robles

  The Olivero garden in Paso Robles

  Mike and Therese Olivero’s two-acre property in rural Paso Robles is just plain fun. Starting with bare treeless dirt in 2000, the Oliveros have transformed their backyard into a showcase of interesting garden art amid a vibrant color palette of reds, pinks and purples.

  It all started with a flat shovel, used for skimming off weeds, and then creating curving pathways throughout the property. Therese was the main builder of the paths, with Mike bringing her wheelbarrows of rocks to define the edges after decomposed granite had been tamped down. Busy during the day running their family business, Therese would often work on the project at night, wearing a headlamp to light the way.

  As the pathways developed, Mike and Therese started planting trees and shrubs, carefully selecting them for their pink or red colors. They chose the multi-trunk pink dawn chitalpa, western redbud, petite red imp crape myrtle and royal red butterfly bush for their flowers and the Chinese pistache, red-tip photinia, nandina and barberry

• Edible gardens will pay for themselves in produce

  Edible gardens will pay for themselves in produce

  Does your home landscape deserve the time, water and money you put into it? Consider increasing your rewards by developing an edible landscape — incorporating plants that can be eaten, with or without plants that are purely ornamental.

  The ongoing scarcity of water on the Central Coast, the rising cost of grocery store produce and the importance of conserving energy make it difficult to justify spending resources on gardens that do not pay their way in some fashion.

  Having a variety of beautiful, edible plants, trees and shrubs among the ornamental ones can add an element of beauty, functionality and fun to your landscape.