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As you stroll along a prosaic crushed rock itinerary in Sydney Baumgartner ’s fragmented - grade garden , you descry a patch of grass through an opening in a solid fleeceable slab of hedge and think : garden - variety lawn . Then you step through the “ door , ” and a outstanding wide - slant sketch stops you in your tracks . What had looked like a postage mould of sward dead unfolds to become an enormous oval carpet , emphasise by romantically grumble orchard apple tree trees and ringed by masses of plant .
edge a little closer to these borders — sweet and traditional at a distance — and the combinations jump out and seize you by the eyeballs . consider tall , spiky cardoons paired with squat echeveria . Deep , red - black ‘ Sea Jade ’ phormium gives mode to soft grayPlectranthus argentatus , which is counterbalanced by the superman chartreuse ofHelichrysum petiolare‘Limelight . ’
And these are only a few of the surprise that Baumgartner , a landscape architect , has bundle into her 100- by 150 - foot Santa Barbara backyard . Everywhere , privy way take to hidden room . It all seems coolly elegant — until you stumble upon a ramshackle chicken pen tuck behind a projection screen of trim escallonia or fascinate a coup d’oeil of a stone pass plantation owner that shoot a stipa ponytail . “ A ripe garden , ” Baumgartner explain , “ is a three - dimensional experience , not just a savourless picture . There should always be far more to it than meet the eye . ”
Ironically , no one was more shocked by this peculiar garden than Baumgartner herself . “ When I locomote here in 1986 , ” she call up , “ there was nothing but invasive Chinese juniper , a mountain range - link fence , and weeds . ” Clearing the gigantism revealed an awing Harlan Fisk Stone stairway , which , Baumgartner afterwards discover , had been install by Ralph Stevens in the mid-1950s . Stevens , one of Santa Barbara ’s master garden - makers , had designed countless local landscapes during the other twentieth hundred ( most famously the Lotusland estate of the realm ) . Now he is mostly forget , his bequest of formal garden overshadowed by the study of his rival Lockwood de Forest , whose more casual outdoor rooms and broader plant mental lexicon vibrate more strongly with today ’s gardeners .
And here ’s where the plot thickens : Baumgartner , now the unwitting possessor of a Stevens garden , happens to be a heartfelt de Forest disciple . Though she never met Lockwood himself ( he died in 1949 ) , she did become friends with Elizabeth de Forest , his horticulturist married woman , in the ’ sixty ; over the year , Baumgartner has adapt many of the twosome ’s idea to suit her own vision . So , as she recast this garden , a bit of local landscape painting history repeated itself in her yard — and de Forest once again eclipse Stevens .
Since nothing of the 1950s layout survived except the staircase and the walls that embrace it , Baumgartner felt free to shape the relief of her pace for the undetermined - air lifestyle the de Forests espoused — which meant separate it into elbow room , each with a unlike intention . “ I did a plan in the first few months , ” she say of the process , “ then as I had metre and resources , I ’d carve out another surgical incision . ”
Today the small garden lie of a spacious patio , which Baumgartner use for parties . Intimate meals are serve upstairs , beneath a sequoia pergola . And that vainglorious lawn is idealistic for croquet and bocci . The lick parts of the garden — a compost heap , lathe house , storage area , chicken penitentiary , and vegetable and cutting beds — are hidden offstage left , behind huge hedges ofEscallonia bifida , Luma apiculata , andDuranta stenostachya .
barrack by de Forest ’s belief in take over scene , Baumgartner decide to pass the back of her property in Hope of exposing the Santa Ynez Mountains . But when the task was carry out , she realized she ’d uncovered the samara to Stevens ’ architectural plan : a position of a bell shape towboat that line up with his staircase to take form a primal axis through the yard . “ Those steps lead me to create a garden more schematic than any I ’ve had before , ” she says , “ but once I look the tugboat , I understood why he put down it out this fashion . ”
peculiarly enough , she found the exacting symmetry freeing . “ If you ’ve get strong structure in place , ” she explains , “ planting can be more of a premix . ” In summation to composing the striking combination surrounding the main lawn , Baumgartner has line a route with unusual South African plants , including genus Sparaxis , ixia , and crocosmia — many of them grown from Elizabeth de Forest ’s bulbs or cuttings .
“ When I started out in the ’ 70s , greenhouse run only about 20 plant , ” Baumgartner says . She ’s help change that by encouraging area growers to propagate specimens from her garden , includingEscallonia bifida , Babiana stricta , andLonicera confusa , a meeting house that was a endowment from Elizabeth , who choke out in 1984 . “ These plants remind me of my old friend , ” Baumgartner says , “ and how we traded so many things back and forth . ”
Which is not to say that Baumgartner ’s garden is some static , slavish homage to the past . She never hesitates to make change . When a neighbor ’s barking wienerwurst interrupt meals under the arbour , for instance , she erected a Oliver Stone wall . of late , a aggregator champion gave her a pair of vintage column , which she fashioned into the foundation of a new archway .
“ This place is so personal , ” Baumgartner says . “ I ’m use what I see from the de Forests , but I ’m still larn newfangled thing . Often , I ’ll wonder , What would they cerebrate of this plant ? or Would n’t Stevens be beguiled to see his program so flesh out ? My garden is an ongoing talks with a whole history of voice . ”
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