[ Lost in the Landscape ]

on the road: cornerstone sonoma (more)

These are the last of the pho­tos I took at the gar­dens at Cor­ner­Stone Sonoma. Look­ing through this sec­ond batch it seems that the gar­dens below rely heav­ily on hard­scape details and less on plants. None of them are gar­dens with­out plants, but the green stuff def­i­nitely plays sec­ond fid­dle to the more engi­neered parts of the gardens.

Yoji Sasaki’s The Gar­den of Vis­ceral Seren­ity fea­tures this ter­rific walk­way: a cen­tral, solid strip that alter­nates with hor­i­zon­tal stripes of vary­ing widths.

Topher Delaney has this strik­ing instal­la­tion made up of a very short menu of ele­ments: a blue-and-dark-gray striped wall, birches, three balls made of rope, white shade cloth sur­round­ing the space, a bor­der­ing hedge and white crushed stone beneath your feet.

The color palette is reduced down to white, gray, black, green and the insis­tent blue of the back­drop and–today, anyway–the sky.

Most peo­ple plant birches because the trees have strik­ing white trunks. But with the ground and walls being white, the birch trunks almost dis­ap­pear, leav­ing a sense of green shel­ter­ing foliage float­ing overhead.

At mid-morning, the shad­ows of the trees draw strik­ing forms under­foot, and shad­ows of the plant­i­ngs next door make soft pat­terns on the white shade screen.

I liked this detail at Wal­ter Hood’s Euca­lyp­tus Mem­ory gar­den. Gar­den design­ers often use sin­gle chairs or long benches to sug­gest a point of repose in the land­scape. Here, Hood has used two chairs next to each other in the fore­ground and three in the dis­tance, next to a pond, instead of the more expected bench. I won­der, is the fact that you have a chair to your­self meant to rein­force your sense of inte­rior con­tem­pla­tion, even when there’s some­one sit­ting next to you?

The rest of Hood’s instal­la­tion con­sists of very few mate­ri­als. Most dom­i­nant are two tall mesh pan­els that frame a view to a dis­tant pond. One side is empty, the other con­tains euca­lyp­tus branches and leaves. After a few moments of look­ing at the gar­den, what hits you next–and hits you hard–is the smell of the dry­ing euca­lyp­tus in the one panel. This is a gar­den for more senses than just sight.

Another sense, that of sound, is rein­forced in David McCrory’s and Roger Raiche’s Rise gar­den. A steel tube runs through it, the kind that you see used for drainage under a road. As you walk through it you feel a sense of shel­ter, and the sounds of the sur­round­ing world change as they echo gen­tly through the chamber.

Pamela Bur­ton designed the last of the spaces that I wanted to share. Her Earth Walk bur­rows into the land, and requires that you descend into the gar­den to fully expe­ri­ence it.

The earthen color of the hay bales and the adobe mud walls reminded me of the desert.
Once you pass a big, solid of Mex­i­can feather grass and approach the bot­tom, you’re sur­prised with a long rec­tan­gu­lar pond with waterlilies and fish. It felt like an oasis.

By the time you drop the eight feet or so into the bot­tom of this instal­la­tion you can’t see any of the gar­dens around it. What you expe­ri­ence is reduced down to the walls, the grasses, the sky above, and the water below.

My final reac­tions to vis­it­ing Cor­ner­stone were sim­i­lar to going to a lit­tle museum and see­ing a col­lec­tion of sin­gle works by a num­ber of artists. There’s a lit­tle bit of ten­sion, a bit of com­pe­ti­tion going on between the pieces. Some land­scape archi­tec­ture can work well this way, where the designer makes a state­ment and you can appre­ci­ate what’s being said. You then move on to the next piece and try to fig­ure out what’s going on with it. But if you want a land­scape archi­tec­ture that’s deeply rooted in the sur­round­ings and its his­tory, you might leave here want­ing more than many of the works deliver.

In the end, one thing Cor­ner­stone did very well for me that a lot of other land­scape archi­tec­ture doesn’t comes from the inti­mate scale of most of its gar­dens. These are gar­dens the size of many res­i­den­tial lots. These are spaces that tell you that inter­est­ing land­scape design doesn’t have to be scaled to mas­sive pub­lic works or some gonzo pallazzo.

For more looks at Cor­ner­stone Sonoma, check out Alice Joyce’s post­ings on her blog, Bay Area Ten­drils Gar­den Travel.

August 24 2009 05:35 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: CornerStone Sonoma • McCrory-Raiche • Pamela Burton • Topher Delaney • Walter Hood

15 Responses to “on the road: cornerstone sonoma (more)”

1. Benjamin on 24 Aug 2009 at 8:15 am #

   I really enjoy these types if inter­sec­tions in gar­dens. I spent most of last year research­ing gar­den his­tory and design for part of a book, and although I think most peo­ple would find your images uncom­fort­able (right word?), it’s sim­ply the nat­ural evo­lu­tion of the garden–even resem­bles / con­tin­ues so much of the con­ver­saton of the Vic­to­ri­ans, Greeks, Per­sians.… I enjoy Burton’s work bove espeially and would love to some­day have this sort fo ele­ment in a larger gar­den of my own. For now, I set­tle for a few sculp­tures here and there. Thanks for let­ting me stum­ble my way here!

2. Country Mouse on 24 Aug 2009 at 10:24 am #

   I like these — and in a fire-prone land­scape, use of such archi­tec­tural ele­ments helps to give a ver­ti­cal dimen­sion dis­al­lowed for veg­e­ta­tion close to the house. Just I would avoid the total min­i­mal­ist aes­thetic — some of them are a bit bare bones for me.

   The last exam­ple put me in mind a lit­tle bit of Andy Goldsworthy’s work. I’d love to do some things here like he does — his sculp­tures use nat­ural and some­times quite ephemeral mate­ri­als in the landscape.

3. lostlandscape on 24 Aug 2009 at 6:53 pm #

   Ben­jamin, thanks for stop­ping by. Designed gar­dens and ver­nac­u­lar gar­dens can seem poles apart. I could see that com­fort might not be people’s first reac­tions to these spaces, and I think the design­ers were aim­ing for some­thing else. It’s a tough one since early gar­dens do seem to play up the com­fort factor–does a gar­den suc­ceed if it doesn’t have a com­fort fac­tor? I’ll answer yes, but these gar­dens might not read as gar­dens to some people.

   CM, I think your view­point in gar­den­ing cel­e­brates the nat­ural world in a state that comes close to nature itself. Some of these might seem to kow­tow more to human intel­lect than nature. (Besides, what gar­dener would be sat­is­fied with a gar­den of ONE kind of plant?) Your Goldswor­thy exam­ple is a beau­ti­ful one that shows a won­der­ful way to bal­ance the two seem­ing poles.

4. Alice Joyce on 24 Aug 2009 at 7:19 pm #

   James, It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to get your per­spec­tive on these instal­la­tions, after study­ing and respond­ing to them since they pre­miered. I love see­ing your pho­tos — what your eye selected, and how it’s framed. Your take on Wal­ter Hood’s gar­den seems par­tic­u­larly insight­ful. Burton’s is my favorite, and here again, your images allow me to see it afresh.
   Thank you for the link! btw, I’m in Marin County, adja­cent to Sonoma. A pretty quick trip from here to there. But no cows nearby :~)

5. Benjamin on 24 Aug 2009 at 7:25 pm #

   Yes, they won’t read as gar­den to some peo­ple, but after a few moments, I hope they would read as such to most if not all peo­ple. What is a gar­den? That hard-to-nail-down philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion. A place to con­nect to some­thing hire than yourself–perhaps con­scious­ness, per­haps an a-ha moment–a place that bridges the gap between you and every other phys­i­cal and emo­tional and spir­i­tual impulse. I work on a uni­ver­sity cam­pus where gar­dens and sculp­ture are exhaus­tive, and all my stu­dents appre­ci­ate it (so they say). We go out­side and write in the gar­den spaces on the sculp­tures, and time and again the stu­dents say how they left see­ing and think­ing in a new way, felt peace­ful and connected–I think that’s the gar­den, the art, the out­doors, and the writ­ing, all in har­mony. Per­haps the gar­den is such a moment. (for­give me for going on and on here!)

6. lostlandscape on 24 Aug 2009 at 7:43 pm #

   Alice, quite frankly at first sight I wasn’t pre­pared to love Pamela Burton’s space. But as I’ve had some dis­tance from my visit, it’s the one that res­onates with me the most. I think it was the bravest, least garden-like of all the instal­la­tions, one that is hard to cap­ture in pho­tos and has to be expe­ri­enced directly.

   Ben­jamin, it sounds like you’re argu­ing for a gar­den being as much a door as a des­ti­na­tion itself. We’re used to that door open­ing onto some sort of approx­i­ma­tion of nature, and I dearly love gar­dens of that sort. But it can be so much more mem­o­rable when the door leads to some­thing else mag­i­cal and unex­pected, some­thing that as you say knits together so many kinds of thoughts and expe­ri­ences. Some of my favorite writ­ing I’ve done has been in the driver’s seat of my car, parked in a camp­site, after the sun has gone down and the space comes alive again in my mem­ory. Spaces are ter­ri­bly important.

7. Town Mouse on 24 Aug 2009 at 8:25 pm #

   Much as I admire the clever design, I do won­der what the wildlife value of these gar­dens is. But maybe there are a few bloom­ing plants tucked away out­side the photo.

   It’s inter­est­ing how these gar­dens con­trast with the green roof of the Acad­emy of Sci­ences, also very cut­ting edge but hum­ming with insects enjoy­ing the flowers.

8. susan morrison (garden-chick) on 25 Aug 2009 at 8:41 am #

   Inter­est­ing post James and one that obvi­ously gets peo­ple think­ing. The ques­tion “what is a gar­den?” is one that comes to mind often for me, as I am sure it does for every gardener/designer/blogger eventually.

   I had the plea­sure of hear­ing Topher Delaney speak recently and she is a dynamic, engag­ing and amus­ing pre­sen­ter. I’m par­tic­u­larly intrigued by the use of color and space in her gar­den. As a designer, I enjoy gar­dens like these, whether vis­it­ing them myself or brows­ing your excel­lent pho­tos and com­men­tary, because it helps me think out­side of the box when employ­ing basic design prin­ci­ples for my own more tra­di­tional designs. But I must admit, I can’t imag­ine choos­ing a gar­den like this to live in — as you said, it’s more like vis­it­ing a gar­den museum. Yet based on the pho­tos of pri­vate gar­dens Topher shared at her pre­sen­ta­tion, peo­ple do.

9. Alice Joyce on 25 Aug 2009 at 2:29 pm #

   James,
   Bur­ton cre­ated a gar­den that hear­kens to the earthworks/earth art move­ment: She sculpted the earth. And I believe it must be expe­ri­enced to get it.
   Spare mod­ernist spaces such as Topher’s design at Cor­ner­stone, their ‘je ne sais quoi’ — not for all tastes, but each has its own par­tic­u­lar assets.
   After years of being immersed in plants, a part of me yearns for the clar­ity found in a mod­ernism where the ele­ments of plants and hard­scape add up to more than the stated design. A design that res­onates. Like a work of art.

10. Alice Joyce on 25 Aug 2009 at 4:01 pm #

    Per­haps Andrea Cochran’s work demon­strates what I refer to above. (once Topher’s part­ner in Delaney / Cochran ).

    A new book out on Andy’s designs & beau­ti­ful images is reviewed on L + U
    Link to Jason King’s review:

    http://landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/08/reading-list-andrea-cochran-landscapes.html

11. Pomona Belvedere on 26 Aug 2009 at 1:15 pm #

    Very inter­est­ing post and dis­cus­sion. I won­der if designed gar­dens such as these aren’t like high fash­ion: very few peo­ple actu­ally wear the clothes, but their design influ­ence trick­les down to clothes that are actu­ally wear­able (and affordable).

    I really enjoy the way you look at design ele­ments, and how you think about their effects. You’ve got a MeMe award await­ing you (http://www.tulipsinthewoods.com/cataloguebookwebsite-reviews/beautiful-blogs/), should you decide to accept it. If all the link­ing and writ­ing doesn’t appeal, know you are appre­ci­ated and leave it at that.

12. James Golden on 26 Aug 2009 at 6:53 pm #

    I think you have to be there. My expe­ri­ence look­ing at the lit­tle pic­tures on my com­puter screen is more like vis­it­ing a gallery of art­works than vis­it­ing a gar­den. I don’t deny these may be mean­ing­ful uses of space and mate­ri­als, but I can’t tell from here. Who or what orga­ni­za­tion spon­sors Cor­ner­stone Sonoma? Does it/do they have an agenda?

13. ryan on 30 Aug 2009 at 7:52 am #

    I haven’t been there, but it seems like the flower and gar­den show, a place to see hard­scape and design ele­ments rather than plants. It’s a reminder of how many land­scape archi­tects are for­mer art stu­dents. My par­ents, non-gardeners, have been to it, and it seemed like they needed to make a big effort to appre­ci­ate it. They kept call­ing it “inter­est­ing.” I’ll have to check it out some­time. Thanks for the photos.

14. lostlandscape on 31 Aug 2009 at 7:32 pm #

    TM, there was an inter­est­ing pod­cast by James Hitch­mough as part of the BBC Gar­dens Illus­trated Vista lec­tures: http://www.gardensillustrated.com/podcast_vista.asp One of his points was that inver­te­brates don’t care if their plants of choice are in a wild-looking gar­den or in a mock-Versailles plant­ing. Of course, that’s assum­ing that the bugs will find plants at all, some­thing a few of these gar­dens I looked at lacked in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers. There WERE a few gar­dens at Cor­ner­Stone that were brim­ming with greenery.

    Susan, there’s def­i­nitely inter­est­ing gar­den design that’s being done that might do a bet­ter job of push­ing the but­tons for a gar­dener. A lot of these spaces seem like they’d feel me deprived of all the cool plants I love. I agree that they’re on the spare side. Although that pushes my but­tons that appre­ci­ate a cer­tain amount of order, in the I’d like to live with some­thing that is more effusive.

    Pomona, I like how you view these as haute cou­ture gar­dens ver­sus the ready-to-plant ones that most pub­li­ca­tions seem to present.

    James, some of the spaces look quite a bit like their pho­tos, oth­ers slide into the totally unpho­tograph­able. The Pamela Bur­ton gar­den in par­tic­u­lar. I get a sense that Cor­ner­stone is an ambi­tious pri­vate venture–You have to pass through the mul­ti­ple shop­ping oppor­tu­ni­ties to get to the gar­dens. I got a sense that it’s been a some­what hard sell.

    Ryan, the one way these spaces dif­fer from a typ­i­cal gar­den show is that some have been in place a while so that the plants aren’t just fresh out of a can. “Inter­est­ing” is a good word for it, and in the end for me it’s a com­pli­ment: Bet­ter to fail in a provoca­tive way than suc­ceed at some­thing that’s easy to do. Yah, maybe it’s my own art bias com­ing through here…

15. DryStoneGarden » Blog Archive » The Late Show Gardens at Cornerstone Sonoma on 24 Sep 2009 at 8:32 am #

    […] lead­ing land­scape archi­tects.” Lostinthe­Land­scape has pho­tos from a recent visit here and here. The Late Show Gar­dens, “the lat­est in design every fall,” is the new fall gar­den show […]

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