This eco-luxury retreat in Laguna Beach offers a sustainable escape from the everyday

I wasn’t prepared for the abrupt transition. There was tedious, stop-and-go traffic on Coast Highway before the turnoff onto Country Club Drive. Then, for half a mile the road parallels Aliso Creek, a gurgling source of clear mountain water that runs west and gently dribbles into the Pacific Ocean. When you can’t go any farther on Country Club Drive you’ve arrived at The Ranch at Laguna Beach.

The 97-room property is spread out over 89 acres at the base of the steep Aliso Canyon. Before checking in, I paused outside the main campus building to get in alignment with the natural splendor. Minutes ago, I was inside a motorized metal cage, inching along on a choked freeway. That magically melted away into an otherworldly, vibrantly green oasis. Remember when the protagonists in the streaming series Westworld escaped through a portal that appeared as a crack in the fabric of reality? They called their lush new world a “Virtual Eden,” and the “Valley Beyond.” The Ranch at Laguna Beach is a Valley Beyond.

New ownership took over The Ranch late in 2016 aiming to operate a luxury resort and be earth-friendly stewards. In addition to resort-specific accolades from the major national travel publications, last year The Ranch was named the first “Ocean Friendly Hotel in California” by the Surfrider Foundation. That’s a big deal in eco-conscious circles. Surfrider pointed to The Ranch’s elimination of single-use plastics from all operations, replacing them with eco-friendly alternatives. For starters, there are reusable wooden room keys and toiletry bottles. Aluminum water cans instead of plastic bottles. Steeped coffee and tea bags are fully biodegradable. The property also uses reclaimed water for irrigation, saving 20 million gallons annually.

Much of that water keeps a nine-hole executive golf course (mostly par-3 holes) fresh and verdant. I don’t play golf (there, it’s in print), but touring the course did make me want to smack some balls around. The history of the course is fun. It’s the site of the annual Three Clubs Barefoot Canyon Classic golf tournament. The title is self-explanatory. Typically used as a fundraiser for causes like area schools, participants play sans shoes while utilizing just three golf clubs.

But here’s another reason for the Surfrider designation: All the “sand” in the traps is made of crushed glass. The Ranch has a Bottles to Bunkers Program. They pulverize all their wine and beer bottles, along with any glass that gets broken in the restaurant, in a crusher made by a New Zealand company. The crusher sifts the glass to create perfect sized grains, so a golf ball won’t sink into it. The practice reduces the hotel’s carbon footprint and saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in importing regulation golf course sand.

At the far end of the golf course, I toured the property’s intensively planted, half-acre working farm. Under the eye of farm manager Leo Goldsmith, and without the use of any machinery or chemicals, the farm produces flowers (some for show, some that are edible) and vegetables incorporated into the menu on the property’s Harvest restaurant. 

“We have a lot of different salad mixes, some that are really mild and easy for the chef to adapt,” says the affable Goldsmith, who’s been holding a beautiful bouquet of just-picked flowers during our entire conversation. “Other salad mixes have a real personality. It’s something people are going to notice in the restaurant — the freshness, and not having traveled on the interstate in a box.” 

Hotel guests are always welcome to stop by and check out the farm’s garden, greenhouse, and a sizable compost pile, created in part by kitchen scraps, which is then incorporated into the garden’s soil. There’s also a hen house, which usually pens about 30 chickens. Eggs from the birds are used to make the dough that becomes Harvest’s daily fresh pasta.

Harvest is located in the resort’s main building, and the best seats in the restaurant are in the enclosed patio room. Floor-to-ceiling windows allow diners to look out over part of the golf course and to the top of one of the canyon walls. 

Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Harvest was also named an “Ocean Friendly Restaurant” by the Surfrider Foundation. If the ingredients can’t be grown on the farm, they’re sourced locally for seasonal menus (fish are sourced according to the James Beard Foundation’s sustainable seafood standards). My wife and I were delighted with a pair of entrees: a special seared salmon with garden greens and the Double ‘R’ Ranch prime dry aged New York strip steak paired with a Hasselback potato and
crème fraîche. 

For lunch the next day, we walked back out on the entrance road along Aliso Creek. A tunnel under Coast Highway allows access to Salt Creek Beach and the Lost Pier Cafe, also operated by The Ranch. It’s a cheeseburger-and-fries kind of menu, but a juicy burger on a sunny beach with waves crashing nearby is on my list of top dining experiences. And yes, the Lost Pier Cafe, with its wooden cutlery and sustainable offerings, also owns a Surfrider Foundation stamp of approval.

For such a green enterprise, from beach to canyon, it’s fitting that the resort’s premier suite is called The Treehouse. It is not, however, lashed into a tree. The Treehouse is a two-bedroom, two-floor, hexagonal-shaped house with a wraparound balcony. The property owners used to live here. One design highlight on the first floor is an amazing copper chimney in the middle of the room. The house is like a private retreat inside an already secluded resort, which has drawn the interest of celebs.

A weekend at The Ranch, with The Treehouse as your home base and options like barefoot golf, deliciously sustainable meals, and easy beachfront access, might as well be billed as “Virtual Eden.” theranchlb.com