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First Time’s a Charm: Helen Jupiter and Matthew Cohan

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Cohan and Jupiter working on a potting project, click here for instructions.
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“I knew I wanted to achieve two things in our yard: Puppy Paradise in the back, and Garden of Eden (or at least a kitchen garden) in the front. Of course, I’d never so much as owned a potted basil plant, and I didn’t know the first thing about gardening.” —Helen Jupiter
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Relaxing in the backyard.
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The large, sunlit kitchen with a view was a selling point.
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These stepping-stones were made from broken-up concrete.
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Apply for any state rebates before you start your low-water-use landscaping.
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Found bricks will one day outline new planting beds.
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Staking tomatoes in the front yard.
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Inside, Helen and a pup play in front of the beautiful tiled fireplace.
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Open shelving shows off the couple's collection of glassware.

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Written by Helen Jupiter
Photography by John Francis Peters, Illustration by Ho-Mui Wong

Helen Jupiter, Matthew Cohan, dog Aeneas, and assorted foster pups
1930s Spanish Revival bungalow, approximately 1,850 square feet
Los Angeles, California

After renting an apartment together for about a year and a half, my husband and I casually started house hunting. The duplex we’d been living in was in Miracle Mile, a Los Angeles neighborhood that’s home to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the La Brea Tar Pits. Neither of us was very familiar with the area when we first moved in, but we quickly grew to love its exceptional walkability—museums, boutiques, markets, restaurants, bars, and parks were all reachable on foot. As an added bonus, it was centrally located, quiet, and green. Barring winning the lottery or inheriting a ranch, we knew we wanted to stay put.

When a house went up for sale in the summer of 2008 on the same street, I was convinced that we had found our home. We made an offer, but it was a short sale, and the bank ultimately foreclosed. Disappointed, we withdrew. We spent the next year diligently visiting open houses. Ample yard space and a roomy kitchen were among our greatest desires, but as the months passed, we discovered that most of the houses in the neighborhood were built in the 1920s and ’30s, with narrow galley kitchens and slightly claustrophobic floor plans. It was like house hunting with Goldilocks: Nothing was “just right.”

Finally, with more than a year of open houses behind us, we found our home—just five blocks from our apartment. We knew it the moment we walked through the door. It needed a lot of work, but the straightforward, welcoming floor plan, large kitchen, and sizable yard had us spellbound. We made an offer, wrote an enthusiastic letter introducing ourselves to the seller, and the rest is housing history.

For tips on starting a garden, see page 2.