This Northern California design duo is known for creating outdoor spaces that feel deeply connected to their surroundings. From sweeping estates to intimate gardens, their work reflects the essence of California living: wild beauty, regional authenticity, and design that feels both grounded and elevated.

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A minimalist ADU blends with its Sonoma landscape.

For a busy San Francisco couple working in media — he from Northern California, she from Tokyo — the plan to build a simple ADU on his parents’ 50-acre olive farm in Healdsburg evolved into something far more ambitious: a luxurious, secluded retreat where their family could unplug and reconnect.

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With the lush green of the vineyards stretching in every direction, this home blends contemporary architectural details with sculptural artworks.

A charred bronze sculpture, three metres high, perches on the windswept tufts of a natural, green roof overlooking the vast, sweeping Alexander Valley within Sonoma in California’s wine country.

Inspired by the rugged countryside of north Wales, the striking artwork, designed by British artist David Nash, sets a contemporary tone for this modern house, which is crafted from poured concrete, timber and glass, and set amid acres of olive groves on a family farm producing biodynamic, organic oil.

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Explore a maximalist approach to gardening with this vibrant photography book that features 20 aspirational gardens that prove “more” is better. Having a maximalist garden is a bold aesthetic choice—yet it also brings vitality back to the earth, in an abundant expression of more. Garden to the Max celebrates gardens across the US that embrace maximalism through joy and wonder, nonstop blooms, and abundant layers — including a garden designed by Lucas & Lucas.

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With a new party barn and elevated pool area, a weekend home in Healdsburg is primed for entertaining.

Surrounded by rolling hills planted with acre upon acre of vineyards, the town of Healdsburg, with its historic town square lined with chic restaurants, boutiques and tasting rooms, is a go-to wine country getaway destination for many Bay Area residents. For San Francisco couple Thomas Ranese and Brian Jackson, Healdsburg has officially become a home away from home since they found their dream weekend property there a few years ago: a 1,950 square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath farmhouse-style house with a pool on the outskirts of town. 

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This idyllic retreat includes a new Californian Wine Country barn structure – a subtle addition to an existing property and winery estate for a family wanting to perfect their weekend home. The San Francisco firm working on the project, Malcolm Davis Architects (MDa), worked with the client's desire to spend more time outdoors and connect with nature, crafting a new structure containing a guest suite, covered parking and an outdoor kitchen and living space. The result was developed together with landscape specialist Lucas & Lucas. 

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With a new party barn and elevated pool area, a weekend home in Healdsburg is primed for entertaining.

Surrounded by rolling hills planted with acre upon acre of vineyards, the town of Healdsburg, with its historic town square lined with chic restaurants, boutiques and tasting rooms, is a go-to wine country getaway destination for many Bay Area residents. For San Francisco couple Thomas Ranese and Brian Jackson, Healdsburg has officially become a home away from home since they found their dream weekend property there a few years ago: a 1,950 square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath farmhouse-style house with a pool on the outskirts of town. 

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A new build on a fire-damaged lot in Sonoma County's Alexander Valley brings a couple and their grown children closer to nature.

Steve Lacy and Debbie Thomas spent three decades living and raising their daughters on the San Francisco Peninsula before building their dream home on a rural, undeveloped piece of property in the Alexander Valley. “What put us in San Mateo were our jobs,” says Thomas, “but this is more us.”

The couple, who both work in the pharmaceutical industry, purchased the land in 2008, drawn to sweeping views across Alexander Valley, and the quiet location not too far from Healdsburg and other small wine country towns they love to explore.

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Each project in Architectural Gardens includes a design narrative that addresses the interconnections between home and land, detailed captions, and a site plan. Readers will learn how to implement features such as landscape windows, breeze-catching grasses, cascading concrete waterfalls, and trees with thoughtfully cast shadows to transform their landscape. The book also includes a roundup of Lucas & Lucas design director Mike Lucas’s favorite plants— those best suited to different types of properties and for different purposes like drought tolerance or fast growth.

As Lucas explains in his introduction, “Architectural gardens create a union between the land and home, the indoors and outdoors, the natural and constructed. The goal of any designer should be to create a landscape that balances these elements in a beautiful and useful way.”

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This beautiful book includes three projects designed by Lucas & Lucas.

Through compelling narrative and stunning photography, the authors showcase the work of many of California’s top architects and designers, with styles ranging from modern farmhouse to refined rustic to updated agrarian to unapologetically modern.  This virtual tour documents a native, terroir-derived style that embraces the indoor-outdoor experience, with sublime views of the scenery from indoors and outside.

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Naked flames are an evocative addition to the garden, especially at night, when, as well as providing light, heat and the smell of woodsmoke, a fire will complement and enhance a romantic or convivial atmosphere.

The raised fire feature in this private garden in Sonoma, California, by Lucas & Lucas stands in its own garden room, on two sides of which are benches where one may sit and lose oneself staring into the flames. The fire is at the same time the foreground to the eyecatching planting scene of succulents and perennials elegantly framed by the Boston ivy-surrounded clairvoyée.

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Lucas & Lucas is a multi-disciplinary landscape architecture practice deeply dedicated to the integration of architecture and landscape.

With a service-oriented approach to residential design, we work closely with our clients to create highly individual custom projects throughout Northern California. Led by the husband and wife team of Jennifer and Mike Lucas, we bring together deep experience and well-honed skill sets in both land and structures to create holistic indoor-outdoor environments for very special clients.

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Jennifer and Mike Lucas, principals in Lucas & Lucas, an architecture and landscape architecture firm, met at Cal Poly Pomona, where each was pursuing a graduate degree in design. Their renovated home, where they live with their two children, represents their vision of the classic California indoor-outdoor lifestyle. And in the same way the the home flows between inside and out, the couple moves seamlessly across design disciplines. Often, Mike envisions the big picture, while Jennifer focuses on the practicalities of execution. “It’s important to both of us that the different fields work together, that the land informs the architecture, and the architecture makes sense in the landscape,” explains Jennifer.

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When Marilyn Stocke and her husband, Roland, purchased some 6 acres of farmland in the wine country of Sonoma, California, in 1999, most of the property's pear orchard had succumbed to neglect and fireblight, and a deep tangle of brush and poison oak entwined with native oaks and euca­lyptus rendered half the land inac­cessible. The Stockes had intended to build a country home there but didn't know where to begin. "It was daunting," Marilyn says. For 11 years they didn't build anything, but remained in Sausalito and just visited the property on weekends.

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Since founding her eponymous firm in 2016, interior designer Marea Clark has earned a loyal following throughout the Bay Area and California wine country. At Marea Clark Interiors (MCI), the designer balances her Southern roots with the cosmopolitan qualities of her adopted San Francisco, resulting in timeless aesthetics that honor tradition while accommodating 21st century lifestyles. “Clients appreciate the Southern, traditional flair that appears in many of my designs, but my work is also informed by 15 years of living on the West Coast,” reports Clark, who quips, “It’s kind of a South-meets-California vibe.”

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Patrick Printy Designed This California Home to Bring the Great Outdoors Into Every Room

The Olive groves that surround this Sonoma, California home are quite literally the stuff of legend. “I don’t know that it’s been officially substantiated,” cautions designed Patrick Printy, but supposedly his clients’ orchard was originally planted in the mid-19th century by local military hero and founder of Sonoma Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. “It was one of the reasons why the outdoor element of the house became so prominent: to capitalize on the that orchard.”

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Garden editor Thad Orr illustrates how outdoor windows - including an example in a garden designed by Lucas & Lucas - can let more light into outdoor seating areas, frame the best views, and showcase distinctive plants.

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A renovation finds new beauty in an old California farmhouse

Tear it down! Elizabeth Stevenson heard the advice. She saw the rabbit warren of tiny rooms and the floor-to-ceiling knotty pine paneling. But she also saw the potential in the down-on-its-heels 1940s home, set in an Eden of fruit trees on a bucolic Sonoma County hilltop overlooking the Russian River.

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Take a fresh look at this landscaping material to create paths and patios that match toughness with personality.

As a hardscaping material, flagstone has a solid reputation. It withstands all climates, lasts decades, and needs almost no maintenance. But these days its versatility is earning it increased respect.

Woolly thyme softens the straight edges of flagstones in a path Lucas and Lucas Landscape Architecture designed to draw eyes through a row of arbors.

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Landscape Architect Michael Lucas Was Inspired by a Western Wilderness in Sonoma, Where He Created a California Mission-Style Walled Garden.

“I DON’T MISS THE CITY AT ALL,” Marilyn Coon Stocke, a former schoolteacher who is now a bookkeeper in Sonoma, says. “I have a become a country girl.”

Her transformation began inadvertently nearly six years ago, when her architect, George Bevan, invited Healdsburg-based landscape architect Michael Lucas to help design her weekend garden.

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A changing light and color display captured in a couple’s Healdsburg retreat

Given the chance, most of us would enjoy experiencing a free light and color display in our gardens. Yet often, gardens are not planned around the casting of the sun's rays and the magical quality that the changing seasons can bring. These profound shifts of the environment during the year play an important role in the experience of a home and garden space.

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"Hanging up their suits for overalls was the perfect choice for Manny and Carol Diaz.

While many approaching retirement look to simplify, even (dare we say) downsize, Manny and Carol Diaz did just the opposite. In 2010, after raising their children in Windsor, the couple bought an 18-acre farm in rural Cloverdale adjacent to the Russian River.

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"This backyard project in Healdsburg, Calif., a small community a little over an hour's drive north of San Francisco in Sonoma County, was completed at the end of 2013. Landscape architect Mike Lucas calls it "a true jewel box of a garden" that creates a series of useable spaces in a snug backyard and responds to the Mediterranean architecture. The space features extensive retaining walls, a built in fireplace, a painted steel pergola that accommodates speakers, heaters, lighting and will eventually have a wisteria cover, a water wall with planted water trough, a bocce court and a discreetly fenced vegetable garden adjacent to the kitchen.

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REMODELISTA.COM

Rustic Yet Refined, Healdsburg Edition

BY CHRISTINE CHANG HANWAY

"Alison Davin of Jute is making a name for herself in the Bay Area with her “urban earthy” interiors, ranging from a small kitchen makeover in San Francisco to grander projects like this comfortable, subtly luxurious stone vacation house in Healdsburg, in Sonoma County, by Arc Design. Davin’s influences range from the pared-down baroque work of Copenhagen-based Malene Birger to the greenery-infused interiors of California designer John Saladino, and in this project, with its muted palette and skillful mix of textures and textiles, discerning the boundaries between indoors and out isn’t always straightforward..."

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MOOOOL

Old Meets New by Lucas & Lucas

This project represented a turning point for our firm as a premier commission. We were brought in during the final year of construction of the home and charged with making sense of the exterior spaces, which beyond the locating of the home’s main structures had not been convincingly conceived.

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MOOOOL

Modern Classic Estate by Lucas & Lucas

Upon first arrival at this inhabited property in 2012, the existing home was already under exploratory demolition and remodeling plans were underway. I was immediately taken by the well-established Olive Tree grove that resided directly adjacent to the home and occupied a major portion of usable ground on this 6 acre site abutting vineyards to the south and wild lands to the north. The place had an excellent sense of prospect and refuge, the ideal setting for true comfort.

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TRENDSIDEAS.COM

New rural home is designed to look like a renovated winery with a modern addition

BY PAUL TAYLOR

It's one thing to copy a traditional style, but something totally different to recreate a passage of time. That's the guiding principle and philosophy designer Julian Cohen brought to this home he designed in North California wine country.

For Cohen, it's important that clients first identify what's meaningful for them and, in this instance, he aimed to produce a home that tells a story and expresses a sense of history.

What emerged from early discussions was the influence on the owners of a stone building that was one of California's first wineries – and a haiku the owners wrote…”

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