Garden Diaries: A Lifetime of Antique Collecting Shaped Designer Stephen Block's Californian Garden in Unexpected Ways

Over the last 20 years, landscape designer and antiques collector Stephen Block has carefully curated a lush, tropical escape in his Californian backyard. With a passion for wabi-sabi and finding beauty in imperfection, his garden is a treasure trove of collected antiques, each with a history of its own.

Through his design company, Inner Gardens, Stephen approaches his clients' garden ideas with an open mind, allowing the space, plants, and collected pieces to shape his creation. He applies the same philosophy to his own garden, where horticulture and antiques come together in the form of oversized plants, timeworn vessels, one-of-a-kind sculptures, and garden furniture sourced from flea markets across the world. Nestled beneath breathtaking foliage, each piece feels as though it has always belonged among the planting, just waiting to be discovered.

Even as friends and family gather here to enjoy the space, Stephen's mind continues to work. As the plants mature, newly acquired antiques weave into the garden's tapestry and become part of its story. For Stephen, it's this continual evolution that gives the garden its sense of abundance, character, and soul.

I Built It From the Ground Up

We've been in this garden for 20 years now, and it looks very different from when we arrived. There was practically nothing here, just 9,000 square feet of dirt and Melaleuca trees. When it came to designing the garden, I really was starting from scratch.

I haven't got a green thumb inherently. There was actually an exact moment I can recall when I became infatuated with plants. I watched a new leaf unfurl from a little rubber plant and it just blew me away. I suddenly wanted to know everything, and ended up studying horticulture at the University of Florida.

I've always approached design from the perspective of the plant world, even indoors. I joke with my architect friends that where they see a wall, I see a hedge.

This way of looking at space has stayed with me, along with the influence of the great designers and landscape architects I've worked with over the years. I've learned a tremendous amount from them, and I recognize their influence as I walk through the garden.

It's a shade garden, so I planted large Philodendron selloum on the left side, with Ligularia beneath them – one of my favorite plants, with its beautiful, unusual round leaves.

I've also been collecting staghorn ferns since college, so hanging them from the trees was non-negotiable. Amazingly, they were only a third of their current size when I first brought them here. Now, they've become one of the garden's signature oversized features.

This sense of scale is one of the things I think makes the garden. It may be a smaller space than other gardens, but the plantings are huge. It sounds a bit counterintuitive, but if you have a tiny space, you don't necessarily want to plant small – you want to plant big to make the space feel grand.

Antiques Are at the Center

My love of collecting goes right back to childhood. My parents were in the junk and used furniture business in Florida, and my mother had a great eye. That instinct to find something unusual and see its potential has become the foundation of my work.

So when I started Inner Gardens, I wanted to do something different and began collecting things. I would literally find an old bucket in the Los Angeles River, combine it with an interesting plant, and lo and behold, people snapped it up.

Over time, this grew into one of the largest collections of garden antiques in the country, spread across two locations: our main showroom in Culver City and a nursery showroom in Malibu.

In my own garden, many of these collected pieces define the space.

The thing that actually sparked my vision for the garden was a fountain I bought in South Carolina. It's classical, but has great strength and character. It became the axis of the design, and then everything else seemed to follow.

I continue to travel to flea markets around the world in search of new treasures, particularly in the south of France, Paris and Italy, and sometimes southern Spain. I love finding odd and unusual pieces that I know can be transformed when they're paired with the right plants.

Whether I'm working in a garden or an interior, my inspiration can come from a singular tree or plant, just as easily as it can from a bench or a fountain. It takes just one piece to ignite my creative vision for a space.

Wabi-Sabi Inspires Me

The garden is split in two, with an entertaining area and pool divided by a 1920s iron gate I found. I built a wall and pilasters to complete this boundary, and two antique vessels sit on top either side. They don't actually match, and vines are growing all over them, which gives them a lived-in feel that I love.

Everything in my garden is a bit wabi-sabi – the Japanese concept of embracing imperfection and accepting impermanence. It's a principle that's really important to my design and the pieces I collect. I don't like things that are perfect. If they're too perfect, I don't buy them.

I'll never forget when someone sent me a pair of 18th-century terracotta busts from Italy. They were obviously really good pieces, but they didn't show their age at all. It was as if they'd been kept in a sealed container inside a house, and I really didn't care for them.

With any garden element, whether it's a table, a bench, or a fountain, I like the fact that the gardener has knocked it over 200 times and it's got marks, broken pieces, and old paint. The more of that, the better.

In my clients' gardens, I'm always seeking to bring a feeling of age and character. If something's too shiny, I feel like it's my job to knock it down a bit.

In terms of wabi-sabi in my own garden, the fountain isn't really put together perfectly. It's actually sinking on one side, but I'm not going to straighten it.

I also have three heart-shaped stones by the pool. Those were originally tables that I found in Texas. They had old, rusty iron bases, so I repurposed them here to pay homage to my three daughters.

The table in the garden is an old farm table that's halfway falling apart. Even the turquoise-blue chairs are a collection from the south of France. They're worn, and you can see where they've been sat on for years.

This idea of being worn and lived-in is really what I think of with wabi-sabi. It's not to everyone's taste, but I think it gives these items soul and a story.

Working with the Californian Climate

One of the most challenging things about gardening in the hot summers of our Californian climate is trying to maintain a perfectly manicured lawn. It's simply too difficult to keep up with the water demand.

I've been incorporating native grasses and drought-tolerant plants because, ultimately, you can't have an English garden here. I think embracing this is driving a shift in how Californian gardens look – you don't just have to settle for desert plants; with the right plant choices, you can create a lush, abundant green garden.

In fact, many of my shade-tolerant tropical plants (including the philodendrons and ferns) have not needed much water since becoming established.

I've actually become quite anti-automatic irrigation because I find it waters indiscriminately. The right way to do it is to stick your finger in the ground or use a probe to determine whether a plant needs water or not.

As gardens age, they need less water. The issue is that a lot of people don't turn the water down, so we're wasting a lot of water in our yards.

It's Never Really Finished

The garden is mature now, so I've been able to watch it through different stages. It was once very small and bare, now abundant and full of plants. It's taught me how dynamic designing a garden really is – you have to prepare for plants to grow and change.

And I'm really proud of what I've achieved. Our friends all have their birthday parties in our garden because it feels warm, nurturing, and full. It's not stark, and it's not so highly-designed that that you feel like you're sitting on the garden, not in the garden.

I'm an inveterate collector, so I'll always be seeking out new plants and antiques to bring together here. I'm actually planning to add more staghorn ferns. There are about 18 different species and I would love to have all of them in my garden. Any spot I have on a tree is saved for them.

For me, a garden should never feel finished. It should carry the signs of the life it's lived and leave room for new things to take root.

Garden Diaries is our series where we share inspiring stories of designing and cultivating a stunning garden space. We explore how creatives, designers and tastemakers have grown a deeply personal space, inviting creativity, learning and happiness in their gardens, and how they live in these spaces.

Love beautiful design ideas, expert advice, and inspiring garden trends? Sign up for our newsletter and get the latest features delivered straight to your inbox.