You could call Brad Lefkowits’ award-winning home landscape a demonstration garden.

Lefkowits, a landscape designer who owns Waves Landscape Design, lives with his family in Encinitas. He received first place in the 2023 WaterSmart Landscape Contest from the Olivenhain Water District.

The property has a complex landscape filled with 170 varieties of plants, interspersed with swales and decking that he built, a fireplace and even a “mud kitchen” Lefkowits created for his kids — all for their benefit, of course — but also to show clients who’d like to see how the plants he suggests for them actually look in an established garden. Take a look and learn some cool lessons from him in my new story for The San Diego Union-Tribune.