getty center garden in winter

John and I spent the hol­i­days at his aunt’s house in the Los Ange­les neigh­bor­hood of North­ridge. Christ­mas at her house is a fam­ily affair, but with fam­ily dis­persed around the coun­try, it’s not always as rau­cous as it some­times has been. This year we were thrilled to have a big con­tin­gent of imme­di­ate fam­ily, includ­ing Jenny and her mad sci­en­tist hus­band from South Car­olina. Past read­ers of this blog might rec­og­nize Jenny’s name as a some­times con­trib­u­tor of pho­tos and com­ments. It was great see­ing you, Jenny! (And Joe too!)

Fri­day, on our return home, John and I stopped by the Getty Cen­ter for an exhi­bi­tion of the pho­tographs of Car­leton Watkins (more on that show in a future post). To visit the Getty with­out tak­ing in its gar­dens would be unthink­able, and we spent more time out­doors than we did in the galleries.

gettywinterclearday

gettywinterclearday2It had rained the pre­vi­ous two days, clear­ing out the garbage in the air. The views from the hill­top were spec­tac­u­lar. Here you can see the sky­lines of Cen­tury City in the fore­ground against down­town in the distance.

gettywinterclearbay

This is the view to the south­west, across Santa Mon­ica Bay. The dis­tant land mass (straight ahead and to the right) is Catalina Island, forty-plus miles away.

The visit last Fri­day was the first time we’d vis­ited the gar­dens of the Getty Cen­ter dur­ing the win­ter. The Robert-Irwin-designed Cen­tral Gar­den adver­tises itself as “always chang­ing, never twice the same,” so this would be a good chance to see it dur­ing a time that was less porno­graphic with flow­er­ing plants.

gettywintercentralazaleas1Still, there were flow­ers. This is the core plant­ing of clipped aza­leas in the cen­tral water fea­ture. In fact this was the first time I’d been there when the lit­tle mazes were show­ing any flow­ers. In addi­tion to the blooms, the foliage of one of the two aza­lea vari­eties dark­ens and red­dens in the cooler win­ter weather, mak­ing the plant­ing appear to be com­prised of inter­lock­ing rings of dif­fer­ent plants.

gettywintercentralazaleas2If you click on the image to enlarge it, you’ll see that the plants could stand a lit­tle bit of clip­ping. The aza­leas are lit­tle float­ing islands in the water, so keep­ing them trimmed involves a lit­tle more than strolling over them with hedge clippers.

John’s aunt vol­un­teers at the museum, and once she’d asked one of the groundskeep­ers how they trim the plants. At first he mimed get­ting in a boat and row­ing to the aza­leas. Then, after paus­ing for effect, he grinned and said that the water was really shal­low, and that they actu­ally just donned some waders to do their work.

gettywintercentraloverview

Aside from the aza­leas, there were just a few other things in bloom: bougainvil­leas, brug­man­sias, roses, eryn­giums (sea-hollies) and some win­ter bloomers. Most of the inter­est came in the form of foliage and stems.

gettywintercentraldetail7blacksHere are some details from the plant­i­ngs that empha­size color, form and tex­ture, most of it best appre­ci­ated at close dis­tances. Some of the color com­bi­na­tions rant toward the mono­chro­matic. Here gray suc­cu­lents con­trast with the black leaves of Ophio­pogon planis­ca­pus.

gettywintercentraldetail5yellows

This one fea­tured yel­low and green.

gettywintercentraldetail9bronzes

The foliage here tends more towards the bronze end of things.

gettywintercentraldetail4oxalisdichondra

In this com­po­si­tion, the silver-leaved Dichon­dra argen­tea is being slowly out-competed by the red oxalis (prob­a­bly a red-leaved form of O. pupurea). Once the weather warms, the oxalis will die back, let­ting the dichon­dra regain its dominance.

gettywintercentraldetail6mixedcolors

Some of the color com­bi­na­tions were more varied.

gettywintercentraldetail8chaoticSome plant­i­ngs ran towards the chaotic. Like, don’t you think the blue aster-ey bits in this plant­ing (lower right) are a lit­tle too over the top? I think the light gray leaves would have added a nice con­trast to this com­bi­na­tion. But the flow­ers… Gild the lily, why don’t you?

But, hey, it’s all taste isn’t it?

gettywintercentralgrasses2

gettywintercentralgrasses3

gettywintercentralgrasses4

In a nod to the sea­son, sev­eral spec­i­mens of browned late-season grasses moved dra­mat­i­cally in the strong mid­day winds. Before you go get­ting any ideas that this was a plant­ing in the height­ened nat­u­ral­is­tic style of the New Peren­ni­als gar­den design­ers like Piet Oudolf, the grasses were sin­gle plants of con­trast­ing species, placed in pots placed along the walkway.

gettywintercentralwalkingIn this last photo, in con­trast to the pre­ced­ing pic­tures of win­ter grasses, two plants with some­what grass-like forms belie the fact that it’s win­ter. To the left is the restio, Chon­doropetalum ele­phan­ti­num, and the right is var­ie­gated soci­ety gar­lic, Tul­baghia vio­lacea.

Some gar­den design­ers would like you to be able to know exactly what sea­son it is by look­ing at the plants in the gar­den. Fol­low­ing this phi­los­o­phy you should be able to set your cal­en­dar by look­ing at the gar­den. But what gives away the fact that it’s win­ter in this photo are the two vis­i­tors, bun­dled up against the cold. Looks like win­ter to me!

December 28 2008 07:18 pm | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • • • • •

6 Responses to “getty center garden in winter”

  1. Philip on 28 Dec 2008 at 11:47 pm #

    Now, That is the view I like to see in LA!
    So clear!
    Sounds like fun with Jenny and the mad sci­en­tist!
    My part­ner Ric, my twin brother Patrick and his spouse Jerry spent a won­der­ful hol­i­day with my par­ents.
    I think that we could be the poster fam­ily for mar­riage equal­ity.
    I like how your pho­tos become proges­sively sepia, and the the last one is win­ter in LA.
    Happy New year you two!
    Philip and Ric
    :)

  2. dana on 29 Dec 2008 at 12:31 pm #

    I really like your blog, very inter­est­ing and beau­ti­ful pic­tures… I added you to my links, con­grat­u­la­tions and good 2009
    dana

  3. lostlandscape on 30 Dec 2008 at 12:20 pm #

    Philip (and Ric)–Sounds like you had a ter­rific fam­ily gath­er­ing! I’ll be look­ing for­ward to those poster-family posters all around town. Hope­fully the city coop­er­ated with some spec­tac­u­lar city views!

    Dana–Thanks so much for the com­ments and the add. I enjoy your posts as well and will be adding you to my side­bar as well. Spain and Cal­i­for­nia have so many things in com­mon with the sim­i­lar cli­mate and sim­i­lar plant opportunities!

  4. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » some of my favorite photographs on 03 Jan 2009 at 1:34 pm #

    […] visit after Christ­mas to the Getty Cen­ter had as its main des­ti­na­tion an exhibit of pho­tographs by […]

  5. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » a visit to the l.a. county museum on 12 Jan 2010 at 6:32 am #

    […] of what will be a large instal­la­tion of palms by Robert Irwin. Irwin is the design force behind the Cen­tral Gar­den at the J. Paul Getty Museum, but here the trees will read less like a sep­a­rate gar­den than plant­i­ngs inte­grated into the art […]

  6. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » garden designer, artist on 11 Apr 2010 at 6:33 am #

    […] Getty Museum on their list of places to visit. I’ve writ­ten about it a few times, includ­ing [ here ] and [ here ], and so have a lot of other blog­gers. Robert Irwin is also involved in an […]

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