I always look forward to the Conservancy garden tours.
This past Saturday several San Francisco city gardens were open to view and delight.
Below are some images :
My favorite of the bunch was designed by Dat Pham , the garden is called Boyd’s Passage to India.
The garden had pre-existing formal english styled parterre bones . Dat turned it on its head by infusing the rigid boxwood outline with lush subtropical plants that obscured the rigidity and brought a sense of sensuality.
His use of plants and ornament are outstanding.
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| From AIA garden tour 2009 |
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| From AIA garden tour 2009 |
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| From AIA garden tour 2009 |
Bromeliads Galore, Alcantarea , Aechemas, Vrieseas and Neo’s with coleus, beschonaria, clivia and colocasia.
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| From AIA garden tour 2009 |
Planters on the upper deck
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| From AIA garden tour 2009 |
The second garden that I visited was very precious , a bit too sweet for me with all its miniature vignettes, cherubs and overly diabetic planter beds. It was extremely well done for those who like fairies and lots of tiny Hummel like sculptures.
Pictured is a planter :
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| From AIA garden tour 2009 |
Back to some solid Landsape Architecture ,( which is where my tastes lay) and to the garden that Surface Design Inc. designed.
They took a very steep hillside garden and sculpted into a aesthetically pleasing multilayered space that is easily traversed and offers nice views within and beyond the garden.
The use of concrete incised with wood grain is very Skidmore Ownings , which makes sense ( one of the principals worked for Skidmore) but none the less it was a very effective way of softening the facade of the concrete.
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| From AIA garden tour 2009 |
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| From AIA garden tour 2009 |
Next door to this house was this front yard garden. I don’t know who it was done by but I think it was done very very well. It shares many of the same design attributes as the Tour House, so it could have been done by the same firm, Surface Design
From AIA garden tour 2009
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6 comments:
Hey, Thanks for posting these interesting Garden photos. Yummy!Makes me wonder why am I living on the other side of the country in zone 5...
What inspiring photos! I love the overlapping foliage, bright colors and nontraditional use of gazing balls. Very nice.
Beautiful gardens, and I like your assessments. Very instructive. I wonder how much time is invested in maintaining them.
Love Dat Pham's take on the European parterre. Thank you for sharing these.
As always the tours are always fun.
Some of the gardens are gorgeous and others leaving you scratching your head in wonderment .
There were 3 other gardens on the tour this day.
Maybe someone else from the bay area will find something interesting to say and show a photo of them.
The textures and juxtaposition of unexpected elements makes this so quirky and gorgeous. I will be sure to visit when I find myself in SF!
Christine
Publisher, Anarchist Potager
http://anarchistpotager.blogspot.com/
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