Jennifer Garner at Home

• The garden-a spectacular mix of English rambling roses and California fruit trees-encircles the house and has been specifically modified by Mom and her landscape architect, Christine London (who created the original garden for Crawford a decade ago), to enable Violet to have a place to roam and blossom. "It's just about what's good for a kid and what can stand up to dogs," says Garner.
  
  
  

  Patrick Demarchelier

• The main lawn was expanded by cutting back the riotous rosebushes (sherbet-colored, they have wonderful names like Climbing Lady Hillingdon, Climbing Dortmund, Jude the Obscure); fruit trees (plum, kumquat, apple, Meyer lemons) were planted everywhere, and the old pomegranate tree was rescued from a tangle of shrubbery so Violet and her mother could pick its fruit.
  
  
  

  Patrick Demarchelier

• A vegetable patch was added near the kitchen; Garner likes nothing better than to harvest her own cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuces, and herbs and to serve them up with something from the outdoor grill. For a recent dinner party-guests sat at the long wooden table on the patio that is warmed by a large outdoor fireplace-Garner ("I've watched enough Food Network to cook") also baked her own bread and a glazed cake.
  
  
  

  Patrick Demarchelier

• This is a star determined to create a healthy, down-to-earth domestic environment and overcome the "maddening schedules" that a two-actor family must endure. In the past year, they've lived in Boston (while Affleck directed Gone Baby Gone) and in Scottsdale (for Garner's role in Peter Berg's The Kingdom). Later this year the family hopes to decamp to New York City, where she will be treading the boards with Kevin Kline in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac. ("Theater is what I'm meant to do," says Garner, who studied drama in college. "It's what I grew up doing.")
  The L.A. house, though, is home-and feels like it, from the childproof staircases to the throw pillows embroidered with the mottoes and symbols of West Virginia and Massachusetts, where she and he were raised, respectively. Working with Dunham, a Brit who famously takes inspiration from India for his line of textiles and soft furnishings, Garner has conjured a highly patterned yet visually soothing series of spaces and objects: a grand piano, a grandfather clock, hand-painted astrological charts from the seventeenth century, a circular sixties table wrapped in rattan string, and a beautiful tufted armchair in plain tea-colored linen.
  
  
  
  
  

  Patrick Demarchelier

• Violet's room (if such a demarcation is possible, since she, of course, lays claim to the whole house) was formerly Garner's "supergirly room, my get-ready room. I had just bought this house by myself, so why not?" These days the walls are padded with Dunham's Jaipur Poppy fabric, and the furniture is ballerina pink. "You can see I wear jeans a lot," Garner remarks with a laugh, pointing out the blue stains she's left on the armchair in which she spends hours watching her daughter play.
  
  Garner's a casual soul who admits to being "intimidated by clothes." Her stylist for big events, Rachel Zoe, advises her to "be in a little Derek Lam or Chloé," and when shopping she feels comfortable at Elyse Walker, where the staff leads her to Balenciaga dresses, Christian Louboutin shoes, and Marc Jacobs bags. But nothing beats being at home, and loved ones, and Scrabble, and books. Thus, one afternoon in July, Affleck was glued to the new Harry Potter (the couple has somehow managed to buy four copies), while Garner got on with things: "He sat all day and read while I watched Violet. But that's the benefit of being the guy," she says, entirely happily.
  
  
  
  

  Patrick Demarchelier

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  Patrick Demarchelier