The garden arrives by crossing—over a narrow span of precast and steel that feels less like a bridge than a threshold. On the far side, the East Bay forest closes in: redwood trunks rising like columns, inland oaks twisting low and wide, their shadows pooling across decomposed granite and moss-dark stone. The design doesn’t clear the woods so much as edit it, carving rooms out of duff and root flare, letting carex, ligularia, and volunteer bay laurel remain as co-authors. Hardscape is sparse and deliberate—bluestone and brick, edges lost to leaf litter—so that the garden reads as a quiet interruption in a much older narrative. There is no ornamental bravado, only a calibrated humility, an understanding that in a place like this, restraint is the most radical move.

Seating is heavy and grounded—reclaimed timber perched on weathering steel—objects that seem to have always been here, waiting to be uncovered rather than installed. The palette is green-on-green, bark and shadow, punctuated by the occasional steel edge that holds a line just long enough before it softens back into forest logic. This is a garden that doesn’t compete with the redwoods; it concedes to them, finding its identity in the spaces between trunks, in the damp air, in the long memory of the land that predates the bridge by a century and will outlast it by many more. Photos by the amazing Caitlin Atkinson.