Tree growth shaped through pruning.
Summer.
At dawn.
View context
Location
Raised garden area opposite the pond with the waterfall.
Vegetation
Phillyrea latifolia, known as broad-leaved phillyrea.
Date and time of photograph
Photograph taken on 14 July 2026 at 7:56 a.m., in the first rays of sunlight.
It’s impossible to see it looking exactly the same every time.
Someone who observes it in winter discovers one set of colours.
Someone who looks again in spring finds others.
And if they return a few months later, they’ll probably be surprised once more.
La Casa Verda changes.
It happens slowly.
Almost without anyone noticing.
Some changes become noticeable in just a few days.
Others take years.
But they all have one thing in common.
They arrive quietly.
Of course, the one responsible for all these changes is none other than…
The vegetation.
Surrounding ourselves with vegetation was a choice.
You can build a house without a single plant. You can add a few. Or you can decide to fill it with greenery.
We chose the last option.
But why so many?
As with the curves, the desire to blend into the surroundings played a big part.
La Casa Verda is surrounded by vegetation. To make it look as though it belonged in the landscape, perhaps painting it green would have been enough.
But we wanted more than appearances.
Can you imagine a world without plants?
Would painting everything green be enough?
We preferred to have real plants.
And whenever possible, simple, low-maintenance native species.
To help the house blend into its surroundings, but also because these plants adapt more easily to the local environment.
When we planted the first species, we thought their main purpose would be to help the house blend into the landscape.
Over the years, we discovered that every new plant brought something more than a little greenery.
Some of those benefits were obvious from the beginning.
Others took us years to discover.
And many ended up going beyond anything we had imagined.
Perhaps that’s one of the things La Casa Verda has taught us.
Plants rarely limit themselves to doing what you expect of them.
They almost always end up doing something more.
And the longer we lived alongside them…
…the harder it became to imagine the house without them.
Until one day, we stopped seeing them as just plants.
We began to see them as part of the house.
As very special residents.
They aren’t mentioned in the deeds.
They don’t pay rent.
And yet, they’re there every day.
Changing the landscape with every season.
Filling certain corners with fragrance.
Becoming part of a herbal tea.
Adding flavour to a dish.
They are probably the quietest residents of La Casa Verda.
And also some of the most important.
Over time, they came to occupy such a special place in our lives that sometimes we caught ourselves wondering.
What if, deep down, we had never built La Casa Verda just for ourselves?
What if we had built it for them too?
But the story doesn’t end there.
Because, without knowing it, they prepared the house for the arrival of new residents.
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