Konrad Gauder has an article in the August '94 issue of Fine Gardening on building a scaled-down "alpine vista" in his yard in Berkeley - just perfect for the mountain cabin-esque Craftsman home that shares the site on Woolsey Street. Plenty of images of the project (and the absolutely beautiful fences and gates built by the Gauders) are also up on the site.

Konrad and Denise Snaer-Gauder own Landsculpture, a Berkeley-based firm known for "naturalistic stone placements, mosiac-like stone flatwork, curvilinear brick work, as well as furniture-quality gates, fences, decks and arbors."

In 1982, my wife, Denise, and I moved into her childhood home. It was a run-down, Berkeley Craftsman-style house, vintage 1910. The house had been unoccupied for seven years, but it held out lots of promise. What garden there was consisted of a strip of Bermuda grass sloping to the street in front of the house. Old bottlebrush, hibiscus and an invasive flowering quince decorated the foundation. Overgrown roses gave an unkempt appearance to the narrow strip of side yard, and in back of the house was a poorly constructed concrete-brick patio surrounded by shrubbery, a Japanese maple, and plum and mulberry trees. We kept the maple.

Some of the Gauders' other projects are equally impressive - a garden, fencing and stonework on Oakland's Crofton Street; beautiful fairy-tale stonework in paths, walls and steps on Skywood Way in Woodside, and more.