Scott Cohen awoke on a recent morning, amazed at the sight of a giant rainbow bending over the San Fernando Valley. Cohen's appreciation of the ribbons of color is no surprise, given his professional interest in harnessing light. The award-winning landscape designer, licensed contractor and president of The Green Scene incorporates a variety of materials to evoke that sense of magic in each project.

Cohen has been creating what he calls lightscapes since expanding his garden design business into high-end residential landscaping and construction 15 years ago. An accomplished ceramicist and sculptor, he's regularly featured on the HGTV series "Get Out, Way Out." And this month, he'll begin shooting a new A&E series with the working

High-tech lighting systems add mystery and elegance to a Southern California backyard. (Paul Jonason)
title "Lawn and Order," in which he'll be given a week to rejuvenate the kind of over-run yard that vexes neighbors everywhere.

Although his business is headquartered in Northridge, Cohen's television appearances have drawn clients from around the country. As a result, he is doing more design work using a peer-to-peer computer program that allows him and his clients to collaborate from any distance. Here, he shares some of his insights:

How do you decide what colors to use in a landscaping project?
I go through a four-page design questionnaire with clients on the initial consultation, and one of the questions I ask is: What are your favorite colors? Because some clients want a really colorful garden and some clients don't.

No color at all?
I recently built a moon garden for a customer in Calabasas. A moon garden is all dark greens, with some variegated foliage for color and then all white flowers. During a full moon, those flowers really glow. Certainly white is a "color," and white and green are two of the favorite colors we have in gardens. But it's not a real busy colorful garden. It's really clean and classy.

And when somebody wants color

Container plants are a drought-tolerant method for adding color to landscaping.
in the garden?
We're a little more careful of how we use color nowadays because we're dealing with a drought. So, to create focal points of hot color, I use a lot of perennial materials because they're a bit more drought tolerant than annuals. I'll use pockets of seasonal color, but primarily in little areas-along walkways or in containers.

What are some of your favorite drought-tolerant plants?
Lantana is a low-growing shrub that creates a lot of nice color. My favorite variety is called "confetti," which is a blend of yellow, orange and red all on the same flower. English lavender is drought tolerant, fragrant and has vibrant purple flowers. Another favorite-because purple is one of my favorite colors-is statice or sea lavender. We see that used pretty commonly in the San Fernando Valley because it's drought tolerant, dog tolerant and smog tolerant. It's a hard plant to kill.

Statice is a great cutting flower, too.
You can cut the flower and spray it with a little hairspray to set the petals in place and it will stay as a dried flower for a year before having to be tossed.

Do you have any other favorites?
A floss silk tree has a green trunk for color, with thorns to give it some architectural interest. It also has a cool hibiscus-like flower that is real vibrant. It works well in either a xeriscape or drought-tolerant garden, or a tropical garden. And it's not particularly root invasive, so it is a good choice all around.

How do you bring color to the rest of the outdoors?

Color comes from the finishes we use in the interior of the swimming pool, what we're reflecting in the water and the tiles that we choose. I'll use Colorquartz chips that actually color a swimming pool shell. We'll use different Pebble Tec to create different effects of color in the pool. Color is a big deal when it comes to pools. And in fact, we use a lot of color-changing lights. This used to be done with moving parts and they didn't work well. But now there are LED lights that have no moving parts and we can create deep cobalt blues, purples, greens and colors like that.
An LED system and nuggets of recycled glass create a unique backyard countertop. (Paul Jonason)
We'll also use colors and materials to create some impact.

Could you give us an example?
We used a really vibrant reddish-orange on a fireplace. That color creates a bold statement in that back yard where we used a lot of neutral grays and charcoal tile materials. We got some pop by using that color.

You also use colored glass in some of your projects.
We cast our outdoor kitchen countertops out of concrete and recycled glass, so we're able to introduce color there. On a recent project, we placed fiber-optic lights under larger chunks of glass so at night it glows green and blue and red. Then as you move your cocktail glass across the countertop, the glass itself changes color. It's a really cool effect.

Your Web site features a countertop embedded with bottle-shaped glass tiles. How did you create those?
My garage is set up as a ceramics studio. I melted wine and scotch bottles flat in my kilns to create the tiles that we used in this countertop. So, it's all been cast in place out of concrete and then we ground, honed and polished it with granite finishing tools so it's smooth on top. And then when the fiber-optic lights shine through, they light up the bottles and the chunks of glass. We recycled almost 300 wine bottles to create the blocks that we used to create the barbecue counter.
Green Scene Landscape
19431 Londelius St., Northridge
818/280-0420
greenscenelandscape.com