It has been terribly busy in the last few months since we are moving to a bigger home. We have put up our old home for sale and it is almost certain that it will be sold in the next month or so. When we first bought it in 1999, the backyard was 1000 square feet of bare dirt. My wife and I spent most of our leisure time for more than a year to get it into shape. About eight tons of bad soils were hauled out before new soil, new pavers, and new plants all came in. It seemed like every week there was a pile of something on the driveway, and it was very exciting to see all the changes and progresses. That experience was a major factor for me to make the decision of becoming a landscape designer. It was so much more rewarding than working hard on an engineering project for several months only to see it getting cancelled for some other reasons.
Here are some photos of our garden in the beautiful and wet spring of 2010:
1. One of the frontyard beds completed in 2008 after removing a boring Bradford Pear tree and a small patch of lawn. The big shrub with blue spikes of flowers is Echium candicans ‘Star of Madeira’ and the giant-leafed plant in the back is Tetrapanax papyrifer ‘Steroidal Giant’. Both are extremely fast growers.
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Right before the beginning of this week-long barrage of storms, I went on a tour to see a Persian fruit tree nursery (Pars Produce in Alamo, CA) and a hilltop garden in Lafayette. Even though the nursery was messy and had exorbitant prices, they do stock some unique fruit cultivars from Iran. I ended up getting a Saveh Pomegranate and a tart Cherry of Esfahan.
Our next garden, however, is a total gem that covers nine acres of a south-facing slope studded with native oaks. The homeowners are young and energetic, and one of them owns an exotic plant nursery. Naturally his garden has become a trial ground of some of his favorite plants. Here are some snapshots of that wonderland.
Garden Gate with flanking Chamaedorea radicalis
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Sorry if there is any confusion, but my topic today is a new garden of ancient plants at the San Francisco Botanical Garden near its north entrance . I happened upon this garden after I took my brother to the California Academy of Sciences last month. Even after a tour that is too brief, I can strongly recommend this little gem to all gardeners for not just its nice collection of exotic plants, but also for its very well designed layout and beautifully constructed hardscape. Here are some of my photos:
Dinosaur foot prints set the mood!
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As the capital of China for the last six hundred years, Beijing is blessed with many huge and elaborate royal gardens. Surprisingly, it can not lay claim to the largest surviving royal garden. The 1380-acre-plus Imperial Summer Villa is in a small city called Chengde about 160 miles to the northeast of Beijing. Since I have never been there even though I lived in Beijing for over ten years, I made sure to include this garden on my trip back to China in October. (more…)
A good way to get over jetlag is to follow the local time schedule with lots of physical activities, and I did just that by going to the 7th China Flower Expo the next day after I landed in Beijing. This once-every-four-year event is the Olympic Games of the Chinese horticultural industry. A brand new exhibition center was built for the show with many green features such as these membrane roofs doubling as rainwater collection system.
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I went back to Beijing, China for almost three weeks in October to both visit my parents and to see one particular Imperial garden that I have never been to before: The Summer Villa at the city of ChengDe. The weather was very nice with many clear days, although air polution is still an issue and it would probably be a problem for quite some time since there are already 3 million cars in Beijing. The local government has a new policy of limiting cars on the road by their license plate numbers, but I heard many callers on a radio program complaining that their civil rights were violated by these executive orders. I think it is an encouraging sign that with prosperity people are demanding a society of law and people do have much more freedom in openly criticizing the government.
Here is a street scene near my in-laws’ home in Beijing. Because of the high population density, there are lots of stores that cater to people’s daily needs. I think it is not only good for the environment but also for personal health since people walk instead of drive for their haircuts. Even excluding all the gardens I went to, I probably walked more in those three weeks than I normally do in three months here in the American suburbs. (more…)
My son had a play-date last Sunday afternoon (5/24) and my wife said that we have not visited a garden together for quite some time. I guess I must have been really good in my previous life to be this blessed, so we decided to go visit Filoli.
For those of you who do not know, Filoli is a 650-acre country estate built in 1917 in the city of Woodside. The main house is 36,000 square feet and the garden covers 16 acres. It is open to the public with an extremely capable crew of gardeners. This is probably the finest example of formal style garden in the Bay Area.
The name Filoli is a shorthand of the first owner’s credo: “Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.” I mentioned this as an example during my talk about Classical Chinese Gardens in Suzhou where most gardens have meaningful and unique names. It is a poetic way of declaring the intention and it just sounds more interesting than Huntington Garden, for example.
Here is a signature view of the pond and Yew columns in the distance:
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A local APLD (Association of Professional Landscape Designers) officer asked me to put a garden on their joint garden tour with Foothill College. Since the theme this year is small gardens, I just volunteered my own garden. Last Wednesday (5/27) was the day and about 50 people came for the tour.
First benefit for me is the extra motivation to finish up a few neglected projects such as this garbage can enclosure that my wife thought I over-engineered. I am a little disappointed that no one commented on the white-on-blue Tree of Gondor pattern that I spent many hours to paint on the side wall. I guess either The Lord of the Rings trilogy is not very popular with my mostly female visitors, or I am the odd one who is too obsessed with these details. I really like a lot of the set designs in those movies.
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In the evening of April 20th I gave a talk to the California Horticultural Society about Classical Chinese Gardens in Suzhou, China. I thought it would be nice to show a local garden at the end of my talk. Unfortunately we do not have a public Suzhou style garden in the Bay Area, even though we have one of the largest oversea Chinese population in the world. Portland and Pasadena are the nearest cities with authentic Suzhou-style Chinese Gardens.
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With the only un-interrupted cultural development in the world for 4000 years, China has a great heritage of magnificent gardens and garden building techniques. Unfortunately, few people in the western world are aware of this treasure. As China is prospering again under the current economic boom, its gardening traditions are generating new interests worldwide. A few years ago, there were only a handful of Chinese gardens in North America. Now two high profile ones are under construction at the Huntington Library in Southern California and the National Arboretum in Washington D.C.. However, from what I have seen so far, the Portland Classical Chinese Garden is still the best Chinese garden in North America. (more…)
