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Patrick Lannan has over 35 years experience in the garden industry. Educated at UCLA in horticulture and botany as well as fine arts, Patrick’s career spans from working in the rose garden at the Huntington Botanical Garden in Pasadena to establishing his own landscape company in Los Angeles with designs featured in Los Angeles Magazine.

He has also owned his own retail flower shop where his creations were seen daily on the Johnny Carson Show and The Late Show with Arsenio Hall. He was the horticulturist for the Manchester Country Club in New Hampshire for many years, and responsible for preserving the native flora of the golf course landscape.

Now as a garden designer at Flora Grubb Gardens, he feels he has truly found his home and thoroughly enjoys living in the Bay Area.

If you’d like to learn more about our design services, contact us at design@floragrubb.com / 415-694-6454.

Our designer Patrick Lannan transformed a back garden on Potrero Hill in San Francisco into a warm, chic space for hanging out and entertaining.

ABOVE: Lush Borinda fungosa bamboos on the lee wall contribute opulent green leaves and chocolatey-red culms to the vivid palette of silver, cream, black cherry, and olive. On the far wall, a pair of black-cherry-color Agonis flexuosa ‘Jervis Bay Afterdark’ rustle in the afternoon breezes over silvery Moroccan blue Mediterranean fan palms (Chamaerops humilis var. argentea) and the pearly blooms and ferny leaves of Grevillea ‘Moonlight’. At the base of the sunny left wall are clumps of large Cape rush, Chondropetalum elephantinum, with wiry stems of olive-green and chestnut brown. These will ultimately grow to match the height of the fence.

ABOVE: The dark patio retains warmth late into the day, encouraging people to linger till the skyline view begins to twinkle. A long rectangular planter containing grassy Juncus ‘Quartz Creek’ and flanked by show-stopping Aeonium ‘Sunburst’ divides the dymondia-edged gravel square from the “Midnight”-pigmented concrete patio.

ABOVE: Intriguing staghorn ferns (Platycerium bifurcatum) keep diners company from the east-facing lee wall. Below grows a bed of the grassy West Coast-native rush Juncus effusus ssp. pacificus ‘Quartz Creek’. A neighboring giant bird of paradise, Strelitzia nicolai, harmonizes with the subtropical-modern atmosphere.

ABOVE: Seen from the top of the house, the garden borrows beautiful greenery from neighbors.

ABOVE: A dusk view from the pea-gravel terrace encompasses the home aglow. We hope to get a repeat peek in a year or so, as plantings mature.

How gorgeous is this plant combination by Patrick Lannan – two different aeoniums, a cloudforest oxalis, a South African bulbine, and one of our sculptural favorites, Furcraea macdougalii, in back?

This Friday, October 26, Patrick will be presenting  at the Garden Conservancy seminar at the Gardens at Heather Farm, Walnut Creek, California. The topic is Putting It All Together: Creating Great Plant Combinations.

The Conservancy has lined up some superstars for this event, including author and plantsman extraordinaire, Ken Druse, succulent wizard, Robin Stockwell, California native-plant expert, Katherine Greenberg, and eco-designer Eileen Kelly.

You can register online or by calling 415.441.4300.

Photo by Caitlin Atkinson

Patrick Lannan’s design for this Forest Hill garden does the double work of creating a beautiful view of a flowing, textured hillside while simultaneously preventing erosion.

The “walled” city garden opens up possibilities for an intensity of design that’s rare in a country garden. A small back yard can become a capsule of essences. Our designer Patrick Lannan’s strongly succulent palette and the graphic simplicity of the constructed elements by Sculpt Gardens give you the feeling of discovering a secret, nearly extra-terrestrial, realm.

ABOVE: A pattern of fence boards placed at incrementally wider intervals enhances this garden’s sense of enclosure. Neutral materials on the ground plane levitate the planting bed. The exuberant spirals of cream, pink, and green at right are Aeonium ‘Sunburst’. At far left is the sword-like foliage of Phormium ‘Sea Jade’, with Aloe ‘Hercules’ just to their right. In the center are three Yucca rostrata specimens.

Our in-house designer Patrick Lannan’s recent design for an urban container garden in San Francisco has grown into a luscious retreat full of citrus and succulents.

ABOVE: Patrick’s plant palette in this garden includes simple, harmonious foliage in vibrant green and deep rose, with a scattering of tiny gold flowers. Glassy orange and jade pottery glazes shimmer year-round, while the plants increase and change subtly with the seasons.

The result of Patrick’s efforts is a garden with luscious, harvestable color, ease of care, and an inviting, loungey spirit.

If you would like to talk to one of our designers about working with you on your garden, please give us a call at 415-694-6454, or email us at design@floragrubb.com.

Our staff designer Patrick Lannan helped spruce up existing plantings for this entryway, adding verve to its elegant bones.

ABOVE: Arbutus ‘Marina’ were under-planted with Asparagus ‘Meyers’ for a simple, lush, and low maintenance solution.

How exciting to be a part of creating a beautiful workspace for one of the Bay Area’s fastest growing tech start-ups. Patrick loved helping the folks at Square green up their offices!

ABOVE: A kentia palm looking smart with the Square logo.