Photography by Rob Cardillo; Styling by Lisa Russell

Four decades ago, Liz and Ralph Schumacher bought their “starter home” for a song because it backed up onto a vertiginous hillside whose sole horizontal plane was a sewer right-of-way. Today, their ugly duckling is an award-winning plot that spurred Liz to open her own garden ornaments shop, and the house nobody wanted became the home the Schumachers can’t bear to leave behind.

See their garden here.