Backyard Getaway
A coastal backyard getaway in Newport Beach — pool, covered fireplace lounge, and a sculpted paver-and-turf garden that lives on a single level above the hillside view.
Newport Beach, CA
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What the homeowner wanted.
Create a resort-feel backyard in Newport Beach that uses the hilltop view without cutting into the slope — keeping the whole outdoor program on one usable plane next to the house.
Site conditions and constraints.
A hillside lot where the easy answer would have been to terrace down. The homeowners wanted the opposite: every outdoor room — pool, lounge, kitchen garden path — held up at house level so the view does the work, not the grading.
How we resolved it.
A single-level paver courtyard ties the pool, the covered fireplace lounge under a timber pergola, and a striped turf-and-stone garden walk into one continuous outdoor room. Planting is layered for privacy at the edges and kept low through the center so the view stays open from every seat.
How the project actually unfolded.
The Newport Beach homeowners had a hilltop lot and a backyard that wasn't using any of it. The first instinct from previous designers was to terrace down into the slope. We pushed back — cutting into the hill would have meant retaining walls, drainage engineering, and a backyard split into rooms that never talked to each other.
Instead we kept the entire program on the upper pad. One paver plane runs from the pool coping past the striped turf-and-stone walk to the covered lounge, so the family moves between the pool, the fireplace, and the kitchen door without ever changing elevation. The 3D renderings let them stand at the lounge at golden hour and confirm the sightline back across the pool before a single paver was ordered.
Planting is the privacy layer. Agaves, lavender, and ornamental grasses hold the pool edge and the perimeter; everything in the middle stays low so the hilltop view is never interrupted from a seat.
What changed for the homeowner.
A true backyard getaway that uses the hill instead of fighting it. The family hosts on a single level, the covered lounge gets used year-round under the pergola and fireplace, and the planting palette has held its form through two coastal seasons with no replacements.
Inside the backyard getaway.
Renderings, plans, and finished views from the Newport Beach, CA project — each captioned with what it shows and why it mattered.
More outdoor living work.
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