1997 Western Garden Design Awards - Cover Story

Sunset, March, 1997 by Lauren Bonar Swezey

16 winning gardens reveal bold new directions in landscape design

Welcome to Sunset's first-ever Western Garden Design Awards. On the following pages, you'll discover a spectacular array of gardens from around the West - from the high desert of Santa Fe to the mild Southern California coast to the verdant Pacific Northwest - that are bold, distinctive, and well suited to their sites and regions. These gardens represent the best of several hundred entries submitted by landscape architects in six categories - Outdoor Living, Regional Gardens, Water Conserving, Decoration, Small Space, and Problem Solving. Five jurors (listed on page 74), all landscape professionals, chose these gardens during a two-day judging last April at Sunset's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. These jurors were impressed by the quality and inventiveness of the designs and by the exceptional use of regional plant material. Each garden tells its own tantalizing story. And each contains great ideas you can use in your own garden.

Outdoor Living: St. Helena

Out of Tuscany

Excellent craftsmanship made this Mediterranean-inspired garden in St. Helena, California, a unanimous choice of the jury. The 1920s home had spectacular views but little usable outdoor space. At the request of the owners, Yountville landscape architect Jack Chandler updated the front entry and created space for entertaining and games. Family and visitors can now relax around an expanded terrace, enjoy an outdoor dining room with kitchen, and indulge in chess, table tennis, tennis, swimming, and horseshoes.

"The Tuscany-inspired hillside pergola with its accompanying sculptured chess terrace invokes images of grand afternoons spent amongst the oaks," exclaimed one juror. Another juror thought the "scale and proportion of the steps, walls, and pergola are particularly elegant, but the grand chess game keeps the garden from taking itself so seriously!"

Outdoor Living: Sacramento

Poolside plantings recall history

"Charming and functional," the jurors said of this backyard in one of Sacramento's oldest neighborhoods. Owners Robin and Tom Guistina wanted the garden to reflect a sense of history. So landscape architect Gary Orr chose design styles and plants that might have been used in the 1920s, when the house was built. Boxwood hedges establish "a historical planting framework," and the pool appears to have been an old reflecting pond. The curved concrete patio is chemically stained to look aged. Square columns support passion vine.

"This designer really responds to the clients' needs," one juror said of this garden and the one at right, also designed by Orr.

Outdoor Living: Carmichael

"Ruined walls" define the garden

"Playful and provocative" is how one juror described this landscape in Carmichael, California, created by Sacramento landscape architect Gary Orr. The owners of the garden wanted an untraditional landscape with traditional amenities: a patio for entertaining, an arbor with a removable fabric shade cover, a lawn, and a pond. The "ruined walls" are designed to represent the remnants of a building or another structure whose lower level was flooded to become the decorative pond. Great attention to detail keeps the deep-blue plastered walls from looking too artificial: they are streaked with a variety of concrete stains to make them appear old, and the "broken" tops were hand-tooled from mortar.

Regional Gardens: Santa Fe

Stonehenge hillside, Southwest-style

"Really, really daring," an amazed juror said of what he called the "exploded Stonehenge hillside" designed both for erosion prevention and for effect. At its pinnacle is a hot tub with fabulous views. This Santa Fe hilltop garden, designed by landscape architect Faith Okuma of Design Workshop, reflects the native New Mexico terrain. Surrounding the house is a wild, colorful, natural-looking planting of native and drought-tolerant shrubs, perennials, and grasses. Off the back patio, the landscape is punctuated by a small green oasis of lawn and lush plants - an allusion, says the designer, to New Mexico's heritage of enclosed courtyard gardens.

Regional Gardens: Tucson

Inspired by a cool desert canyon

A wonderfully inviting desert space created on a small, barren Tucson lot was a natural winner from landscape designer Jeffrey Trent and Oasis Gardens Landscaping. "Soft textures of bamboo muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa) and horsetail harmonize with the bold forms of cactus and granite boulders," said a juror. This garden demonstrates that even a very small space can be appealing, and can contain regionally appropriate materials. The lot was transformed by Trent and Oasis into a landscape reminiscent of a desert canyon with steep slopes, granite boulders, and a small pool with trick ling water.

Regional Gardens: Seattle

Celebrating the Northwest's wild landscape

"Precise and well tailored," a garden that "blends perfectly with the Northwest environment," jurors said of this Seattle garden. Landscape architects Randall Allworth and Tom Berger integrated Northwest and Asian plant materials to create a sequence of seasonal color and fragrance. Fullmoon maple, Japanese snowdrop tree, and mountain hemlock form the understory for two huge existing bigleaf maples. Basalt columns are a sculptural counterpoint to the massive maple tree trunks. Although the garden is well tailored, it's not intended to be formal. Deer fern, hellebores, and trillium soften the ground plane; blue star creeper, woolly thyme, and Corsican mint fill gaps between the pavers.