Santa Barbara Archives

Explore Story

3 minute read

Featured

William Hefner Restored | Romero Canyon California Dreaming

ByAbigail Stone
January 12, 2022

Located on Romero Canyon Road, this William Hefner property has two buildings, a 900-foot bungalow and a separate stable were relics of the 1930s, slender and careworn, and sits on an acre of land that had long been neglected.

Explore Story

2 minute read

MDR Beachfront Living & Bringing the Mediterranean to Montecito

ByKarine Monié
October 28, 2021

3111 Ocean Front more than 52 feet of boardwalk ocean view, and 1039 Cima Linda situated on more than 2.5 meticulously landscaped acres.

Explore Story

36 minute read

DIGS Influencer Podcast — Titans of Real Estate

Santiago Arana: The Real Estate Agent That Turned $120 into $4 Billion from Scratch

ByDIGS
October 1, 2021

Santiago Arana of The Agency grew up in Bolivia, moving to Los Angeles starting as a waiter to become one the areas most influential and highest producing Realtors in the nation, working with A-List Celebrities and the worlds most popular figures including LeBron James and Lady Gaga.

Explore Story

2 minute read

Mar Monte Hotel: Beleco Reviving a Santa Barbara Icon

ByKarine Monié
September 29, 2021

Los Angeles-based interior design firm Beleco recently revealed the result of an ambitious task consisting of remodeling a Spanish revival beachfront hotel, which opened its doors along the coast in 1931.

Explore Story

2 minute read

A Montecito 10-acre Estate with Historical Pedigree

ByKarine Monié
August 4, 2021

Very few properties have such a rich history as “Far Afield,” an approximately 20,000-square-foot residence with seven bedrooms and 14 bathrooms, offering views of the ocean and the Santa Ynez Mountains.

Explore Story

3 minute read

Chris Adlam’s 909 Via Coronel: Preeminent Palos Verdes

ByConstance Dunn
July 21, 2021
14 shares

Drive along scenic Palos Verdes Drive and swing onto Via Coronel, a peaceful street sweeping along a green hillside on the Peninsula. Duck onto a secluded side street and through a gated entrance, shrouded with old-growth trees, leafy palms, and trim green hedges and you’re at 909 Via Coronel.

Explore Story

2 minute read

A Wallace Neff Original in Santa Barbara

ByWendy Bowman
March 22, 2021

4347 Marina Drive, Santa Barbara situated on a 1-plus acre of land—atop the crest of a bluff, with unobstructed views of the Channel Islands—the gated, hacienda-style manse offers 14,000 square feet of living space on a single level designed by Wallace Neff.

3420 Brinkerhoff Avenue, santa ynez, aaron kirman, aaron kirman group, Neyshia Go, compass, Rancho Latigo, Jean-Claude Brouillet, David L. Leavengood, Spanish Colonial, Fred Steck, Goldman Sachs, equestrian, wine country, Santa Barbara,

Explore Story

2 minute read

Aaron Kirman & Neyshia Go Show off Historic Santa Ynez Property

ByWendy Bowman
August 7, 2020

Offered by Neyshia Go & Aaron Kirman of the Aaron Kirman Group at Compass, known as “Rancho Latigo,” the estate previously listed for $45 million in 2017 now is a veritable bargain at $24.5 million with the large scale of the land, masterfully crafted home and picturesque setting abutting the Los Padres National Forest.

Explore Story

2 minute read

Where to Stay in Santa Barbara? This 106-Acre Seaside Ranch Maybe?!

ByWendy Bowman
May 31, 2022

This coastal ranch estate is where to stay in Santa Barbara and affords a refuge from the noise and stress of the city

Uncontrived, lush with exotica and featuring ponds and porticos, stonework and sculpture, “garden” actually seems too provincial a term for the hybrids of function and fantasy that Grace creates. Hers is a fine eye and a remarkable hand. “As a licensed landscape contractor, I build what I design,” she says. “That’s when my work took a big leap forward. There is no separation between design, installation, and maintenance, it’s all one and happens on a continuum. Unless it’s integrated, it doesn’t work—period.” This is how she thinks too, both pragmatically and painterly. Much like an artist, she uses “broad and fine brushstrokes” to transform a two-dimensional canvas into a three-dimensional work of art. And in a systematic fashion; first is attending to infrastructure beneath the ground, then to its surface with the layering of elements. Rocks, for instance, are not so much placed as they are selected and then worked such that their shadows will cause additional depth or bring color forward. From there the garden grows. One also sees this artistry in Grace’s exquisite new tome Private Gardens of Santa Barbara: The Art of Outdoor Living (Gibbs Smith), a rapturous showcase of her elegant outdoor Edens, from rustic to coastal to modern. Each of the book’s made-to-age milieus represents a temple of residential garden know-how and is illustrative of nonderivative design that reflects the character of the native landscape. “The Art of Outdoor Living” idea certainly accounts for the substantial exterior living rooms and heated floors of our era. “About 10 percent of outdoor living comes down to ‘my fort is cooler than your fort,’” Grace refreshingly confesses. But at the root, “it is a way to describe a lifestyle connected to nature.” For Grace, who went from toiling in the family garden to forsaking a career in medicine after a 13-week stint as a park ranger proved she’d long lost her heart to the natural world, this is the point. “Step outside and you hear birdsong, you smell water evaporating. It’s a rich and simple experience, but relaxed and comfortable. We take a deep breath and feel better. It’s so automatic we don’t even think of it, but it is a very profound thing. It’s experiential, there is intentionality to it.” Landscape as soul, nature as a relief—what a thing of beauty. gracedesignassociates.com Photos: Grace Design Associates And Holly Lepere Johnson (Home).

Explore Story

3 minute read

A Lush New Tome: Margie Grace Cultivates Exquisite Gardens

ByJenn Thornton
May 31, 2022

Landscape designer and author of a lush new tome, Margie Grace cultivates exquisite gardens with singular flora and flourish.

Wanna join our list?