For the AJC
As it has for more than 20 years, this Mother’s Day weekend will find Atlantans planning their route for the Gardens for Connoisseurs Tour, the annual spring fundraiser for the Atlanta Botanical Garden. This year’s tour features 11 private gardens of many sizes and styles from a lush woodland retreat in Buckhead to a cottage garden in Decatur.
Some tour goers are gardeners seeking inspiration for their own yards. Others will never put trowel to dirt but consider the tour a chance to do a little sightseeing in Atlanta, enjoying beautiful gardens created by others.
Several of the gardens have been on tours before, offering visitors the chance to see how the gardens have evolved in the intervening years.
One of the gardens is brand-new, completed less than a year ago but as luxuriant as any mature landscape. It’s the formal French-style garden of Livia and Scott Hostetler, designed by the couple to complement the chateau-style home on their property.
Scott Hostetler, 46, is a partner in HZS, an international landscape architecture design firm whose work includes hotel resorts and high-end residential development. Hostetler spent years living in Hawaii and Asia, and while based in Hong Kong, he executed the design contract for the hotels of Hong Kong Disneyland. Project finished, he formed his own business.
Looking for a home base for the new company and a place to raise their two daughters, he and Philippine-born Livia, 36, decided on Atlanta.
Their home on Harris Trail was built in 2000 for a player for the San Francisco 49ers. For many months the Hostetlers eyed the property with its 15,000-square-foot French chateau-style home and 2 acres of flat, open land. “It was the perfect empty canvas for me to create something I needed to do, design a show garden for my business that also worked for my family,” Scott Hostetler said. A year of negotiations led to the purchase of the property.
In preparation for their move to the house, the Hostetlers made several visits to France, taking more than 6,000 photographs at classic French chateaus to document the layout of the gardens. They took measurements and noted details such as the use of arcs rather than 90-degree angles for the corners of garden beds.
Once they moved in, Livia Hostetler renovated the house so it works as a set for the film and television industry. They named the house “Chateau de L’imaginaire,” and their first shoot was an episode for VH1’s “Single Ladies” series.
Scott Hostetler tackled the garden. Installation was done in 10 weeks. “That might be a record,” he said. Tradesmen worked seven days a week with as many as 20 people on site every day.
Hostetler estimates he put in 6,000 plants in 100 varieties. One of his goals was to use a family of plants that was familiar to Atlanta gardeners, but in new and interesting ways. One example is the collection of 20 spiral topiary white pines ranging from 11 to 14 feet tall that punctuate the landscape.
“What I like to do is what some might call design backward,” Hostetler said. “I procure really distinct plant material and then strategically place it where it can best be showcased.”
In classic French garden style, there are parterre gardens formed of low boxwood hedges in curving patterns. Color comes not from flowers, but from variation in foliage color and from a variety of stone mulches, carefully separated with metal borders to keep the pattern distinct.
The parterre gardens turned out to be a surprise draw for his daughters and their friends. The low hedges form a sort of children’s maze that the girls love to run through.
Whimsical touches include a topiary living room just off the house with a boxwood sofa and topiary lamps. “These little fun touches are unique and creative,” Hostetler said, “and you don’t need 2 acres in Buckhead to do something like that in your own garden.”
Hostetler finds that sitting back now and looking over the landscape, he feels a sense of relief. “I was my hardest client, my worst critic,” he said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself.”
Opening his garden for the tour allows him to share his satisfaction with the landscape he’s created.
Tips from the some of the designers of gardens on this year’s tour:
Mark Reaves of Mark of Excellence: Dwarf mondo is a great but expensive alternative to turf that does not tolerate heavy foot traffic without the use of steppingstones. The expense of the mondo is offset by the reduction in costs for treating, mowing and edging a lawn, and it makes a nice evergreen alternative.
Alex Smith of Alex Smith Garden Design: A nice technique to use for climbing roses is to plant a clematis or other self-twining vine at the base of a rose. The clematis uses the rose to climb on, and you can create a beautiful combination of flowers since they will bloom simultaneously.
Alec G. Michaelides of Land Plus Associates: One of the best ways to add color to a garden is through the use of decorative containers. Color can be added and changed to highlight, frame and accent specific areas.
Event preview
Gardens for Connoisseurs Tour
11 gardens from Buckhead to Decatur
Date: Saturday and Sunday, May 12 and 13
Time: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. both days
Tickets: $25 in advance, $30 day of tour, children under 12 free
For more information: www.atlantabotanicalgarden.org and click on “Events”
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