Jack Messina’s first encounter with wine was when he walked into his grandfather “Nonno’s” little 4-by-6-foot winemaking room at the back of their home in Staten Island, N.Y.

A child then, Jack remembers the smell to this day, “a beautiful smell,” he says with a smile. His grandfather and his young family had emigrated in the early 1930s from a little town in Sicily.

Jack grew up as a city boy in Brooklyn, but he never forgot that fragrant smell of wine. Years later, after becoming a successful heart surgeon in Tampa, Fla., Jack followed that scent and began looking for olive oil and vineyard properties in California.

He had never heard of the Paso Robles wine region, but when his real estate agent introduced him to a 100-acre farm planted in barley in the Templeton Gap, he “fell in love.” That was 1999, and Jada Vineyard and Winery began. The name Jada goes back to that little fishing village in Italy, where the fishing boat “Jada” was one of grandfather Nonno’s favorites.

The winery operates as a family partnership, with Messina’s son, Josh, and daughter, Ryan, now living onsite and managing the wine and olive oil business. With their award-winning estate wines, tasting room and view patio, shipping, and 2,000 wine club members, they keep busy. Jack is able to spend about six weeks throughout the year at the vineyard property, especially during planting and production times. Also, according to Josh, “My dad is the landscape guy — he loves trees and has planted lots of them wherever he has lived.”

“If I hadn’t become a surgeon, I would have been a landscape architect,” Messina says. It was in 2006 that Messina began fulfilling his dream of adding landscaping to create a setting where the wine would reflect the vineyard’s beauty. He envisioned a flowing combination of vines, grapes and trees that would create an artistic portrait reminiscent of wine regions he visited in Italy and France. He hired landscape architect Steve Caminiti to create a welcoming and artistic entrance with a “statement” on Vineyard Drive. Steve started by planting more than 75 flowering plum trees the entire length of the property, adding rosemary, lavender and trimmed boxwoods underneath. As the trees with their pink blooms, then red foliage, follow the undulations of the road, they create a flowing design that is quite eye-catching.

For the gate, Caminiti used rich earthy hues of natural horizontal sandstone slabs to create curving entrance walls, locating a wide planting space between layers. In this space he placed the low-water California native “Howard McMinn” manzanita, bringing color in its red bark and small white bells. He added yellow yarrow with gray foliage and daylilies to provide strong summer color. Two varieties of rosemary, groundcover and bush, bring purple-blues the palette.

In order to create an established look to the entrance, Caminiti imported six mature Italian olive trees from the Central Valley. Inside the gate, 24 more producing olive trees were planted to line the sloping drive up to the tasting room.

Messina has researched the importance of the olive tree in different countries throughout history. As a heart surgeon, he is interested in the new findings that unrefined olive oil is a major ingredient for good health. “The unrefined phenol-rich virgin olive oil helps blood vessel function.” Messina and son Josh have now added 200 more Italian olive trees and are currently preparing for the next pressing.

After driving up the incline through the olive trees and vineyard, the guest enters a forest of oaks, conifers and coast redwoods surrounding the tasting room and patio, which, by the way, offers a spectacular view across the hills. Because of the property’s higher and cooler location that catches the ocean breezes, Messina can grow coastloving selections such as Grevillea under the shaded canopy. His next proj ect is to add the low-water Grevillea “Noelli,” with its curling red bloom, between the olives.

In gardens near the tasting room, bright pink redbud trees and yellow forsythia, rosemary and yellow-orange Euphorbia all bloom in the early spring, while the iris and then roses and daylilies will provide color as the days grow longer.

As Messina says, “This is a work in progress, and we are learning more each year. Our focus is on excellence and attention to detail.” As the visitor enjoys the landscaping and blooms among the vines, that attention to detail is on display.

Published: Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Denny and Sam Johnson’s garden is a comfortable arrangement of cactus and planters. But not every garden is just about the flora.

Tour their garden, and you’ll see a collection of outdoor art and artifacts that ties it all together.

And all these things have their story.

Take the brick wall that encloses a front patio. It curves around large planters, some fan palms and a shade tree — blocking out the street and creating a quiet place to relax.

The wall is made of Mexican brick, Denny said.

The secret ingredients are horse manure, cow manure and, he added: “A little bit of clay.”

The result is an unpretentious wall accented in muted earth tones. It blends in with the comfortable Santa Fe-style home the Johnson have lived in for nearly nine years. They have spent those years building a garden that extends that comfort to the outdoors, with many talking-point touches — like the wall.

They will share their stories from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, as their garden is one of seven featured stops on the third annual Casa Grande Garden and Landscape Tour. Six homeowners and Seeds of Hope will open their gardens to the public.

It’s free, but you have to provide your own wheels.

The Pinal County Cooperative Extension Office and Casa Grande master gardeners sponsor the tour.

The Johnsons’ home backs up to the second hole of Dave White Municipal Golf Course. Denny is a retired Minnesota game warden. Until recently, Sam — that’s her nickname — ran a business designing and creating faux walls.

When they moved in, they started with something of a blank slate. They didn’t call in landscapers for an instant makeover. They built up their garden almost piece-by-piece during the years. Some of the projects, in fact, were a little more hands-on than they anticipated.

The wall, for instance.

“We hired a couple of guys, but they didn’t show up,” Sam said. “And we ended up doing it ourselves.”

Denny suggested they had to do something with the bricks.

“We had pallets of them in the front yard,” he said.

The wall, it happens, fit in with their plans to create a patio with a southern exposure.

“The main focus in having this in the front like this was in the winter, you get the sun,” Denny said.

Sam added they’re from Minnesota, so they often receive guests from their home state. All could appreciate the winter warmth of an Arizona southern exposure.

And while their guests soaked up the sun, they probably asked about the bell. It’s mounted on a wooden frame and looks about half the size of a Mini Cooper.

“It came from Cactus Dan,” Denny said.

Cactus Dan, it happens, is Dan Sudnick. His garden is part of Saturday’s tour. Denny got a lot of cactus from him, too. He’s not called Cactus Dan for nothing. His own garden is like the cactus wing of the natural history museum. He labels his cactus.

But the Johnsons’ cactus garden is a delight as well. It’s in the back. To get there, you walk along a narrow path between the house and the wall on the property line. This in itself is part of the tour. The passageway leads under a grapevine clinging to an overhead trellis.

Then it opens up to the backyard. And here is where nature meets creativity.

And the cactus is a big part of that. In what might be called the backyard’s northeast quadrant are cacti from Arizona to Argentina. The Arizona portion includes a large two-armed saguaro. The Argentine example is the Argentine giant. It’s all arms, spreading out and reaching up.

“The flowers are the size of dinner plates,” Sam said.

Right now, the plant is just sporting small fuzzy buds. But maybe just one of them will open up to full dinner-plate mode by Saturday. The Johnsons enjoy the cactus garden, in part, because arranging cactus is something of an art form in itself.

“When you put them all together, it’s a very creative process,” Sam said.

Both Johnsons can appreciate art and the creative process. Sam paints landscapes and Denny paints portraits.

Even the cactus garden, though, is not without its artifacts. Somewhere back by the prickly pear rise steel shoe forms, the kind once used by cobblers. They’re embedded in the ground. The Johnsons picked them up at antique sales.

West of the cactus garden is a fountain. Nearby seating brings weary souls within the soothing sounds of a babbling spring.

The fountain itself looks like it was carved out of a granite cliff. And, in a way, it was. Water spills from the top of two large pillars of granite.

When the Johnsons saw a fountain just like it at the home and garden show in Phoenix, they made up their minds. That’s the kind of fountain they wanted. They contacted the fountain maker and arranged for the boulders to be installed.

They had a crane lift them over a wall from the golf course.

The rest of the back patio is green with planters and flowers and ground cover. Flagstone connects the fountain area and cactus garden to a covered patio. And, here and there, metal sculptures add art to nature.

Many were made by Jerry Parra, a sculptor who runs a trading post in Oracle.

“He does it all out of mining equipment,” Denny said.

Another sculpture worth noting stands by the front door. It’s a full-size bronze of a warrior in full headdress, poised with a shield in one hand and a lance in the other. Denny and Sam spotted it on the way to art class, near the Holiday Inn.

“The whole street was filled with life-size bronzes,” Denny said. He told his wife: “I’m skipping art class.”

They pulled over. He came home with the bronze warrior that now guards the front patio. And the story behind it.

Just ask. He’ll fill you in during the tour.