Monday, July 28, 2008

A David Feix designed garden - in the Oakland Hills

On Sunday July 27 the San Francisco Bromeliad Society hosted their annual Garden Tour and pot luck dinner.
There were 4 spectacular gardens on the itinerary this day.
I took a lot of photographs on this inspirational day and will do an individual posting on each garden.
I’ll start with a garden that landscape architect David Feix designed .
It is located up in the Oakland hills.
I was told that the garden had a great view of the San Francisco Bay but I was so captivated with the gardens that I never looked out to the bay views.

As one does a street side ‘drive by siting’ , this is the view that you see from your car :



There are two entrances to the garden. One is from the street and the other is from the motor court.
The photo below shows the path leading up from the street.
Lots of aeoniums, succulents, rare trees and palms , agaves and bromeliads.






There were several secondary paths criss crossing across the sloping site that interconnected the garden together.







A cluster of bamboo along one of the paths.




A Chinese banana in bloom - Musella lasiocarpa - this bloom will last 8 months.


This vignette is located directly off the front brick patio adjacent to the house.


In the back yard was another brick terrace where we found more great horticultural delights to view and discuss.



This is the first sight that you see as you enter into the side garden.


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Michelle,
I wasn't expecting to see these photos when I visited your blog today! Glad you enjoyed the tour, and it surely was a great time for everyone. I look forward to seeing the photos you took of the other gardens as well, I didn't get a chance to take any photos myself, too busy talking...

Deviant Deziner, aka Michelle said...

Thanks for stopping in "anonymous' !
We had such a wonderful time at the gardens and the pot luck dinner.

I'm a little bit disappointed in the image reproduction on this blog.
I'm using new photo compression software and I'm not too pleased with the quality .

The camera that I use is a huge mega pixel pig , so when I compress a photo to use on the web I lose a lot of detail.

Haven't found a good compression quality software that will easily work with my Mac.
If anyone knows of a good and efficient software program , I'd appreciate the tip.

Thanks Michelle

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for sharing these pictures of a beautiful garden. What an incredible spot.
I am looking forward to seeing the other photos!
BTW do you use a Mac for design work too?
Mine is partitioned, and I hate switching over to the windows side. I wasn't aware of any other options though.

Anonymous said...

I am looking at this outstandingly gorgeous garden while on my lunch break in Brisbane Australia, this garden has inspired me to include more succulents, broms and cannas into my sub-tropical garden. Your blog is wonderfully inspiring and I visit it in anticipation of what I will find you have been doing and creating, you are vey talented.

Anonymous said...

What a marvelous tour. You captured the feel of the gardens in each photo and description. Thanks for putting the link on DG, I know just the person who will love to see those broms as much as I enjoyed them.

chuck b. said...

Beautiful garden.