Natural Highlights
Go to Art Luna for a haircut and you might leave with a plant list, pruning tips and a sense of peace you’ve never received from a salon before. Where else but Luna’s West Hollywood shop, an unmarked 1940s bungalow, can you nod out under a hair dryer in a rustling garden, breathing in the perfume of gardenias?
“People need to be surrounded by living things, natural light, rich color,” Luna says. Which is why, four years ago, instead of opening for business on Rodeo Drive, he chose a quiet residential spot where he had space to start gardening. His concept was simple: take California’s indoor-outdoor lifestyle and apply it to his workplace, turning a tiny rear court into an open-air extension of the shop.
Well-known for his star-studded client list--which includes Anjelica Huston, Candice Bergen and Melanie Griffith--Luna is a 20-year veteran of the style trade. But until recently, he was a horticultural neophyte. Unsure of how his garden room should look, he put his faith in what he liked, mostly large-leafed tropical greens such as palms, ferns and philodendrons that were ideally suited to his shady space. Given the stand of old bamboo that crowded its edges, he had to grow his plants in pots, a limitation that became a blessing. “I learned,” he says, “as I went along. With the pots, I had the flexibility to try things and then move them.”
It wasn’t until a year ago that Luna’s garden came together. The catalyst was a trip to Lotusland, the eccentric Montecito estate that dates from the 1940s and features decorative clamshells, giant palms and lots of succulents. “I had the ingredients,” Luna says, “but Lotusland gave me the recipe for the pie. It’s a real California garden, an incredible, uninhibited mix of what works here without the constraints of any imposed, imported style.”
In the wake of his visit, Luna reorganized his plants, massing them for greater drama, and he recast a dull, existing fountain by encrusting it with shells. Next, he began to learn about succulents, collecting and mounting them on a garden wall like bits of scenery in small, one-of-a-kind pocket pots. “A garden is such an outlet for creativity,” he says, pointing out the gardenias he has added for scent, the wind chimes for sound and orchids for their splashy, otherworldly blooms.
Clients, he says, have responded to his efforts with interest as well as gratitude. They come in stressed, they leave calm. In between, they want to know what Luna feeds his plants (bat guano), how their leaves stay so shiny (he mists them), where he gets his pots (Mexico, Hawaii, local flea markets). And though, early on, some people hesitated to venture outdoors with their hair in foil, they now vie for choice chairs and linger drinking coffee or eating impromptu lunches. “It’s like a party out there!” Luna says. “I can’t get them to go home!”
