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Eye of the Day and Vecchio Trees at the Landscape Industry Show in January 2014.

Carpinteria, CA (PRWEB) February 05, 2014

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center, the leading importer of authentic European terra cotta, and Vecchio Trees, provider of fine specimens, are partnering to create a stunning entry garden at the Landscape Architects’ Expo in Long Beach, California, on February 13th and 14th.

This partnership is part of an ongoing collaboration between the two companies, who together designed the entry garden at January’s Landscape Industry Show at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

“This a huge opportunity for us to show our most important clients what we offer and how combining our two products together make for a powerful environment and design statement. The landscape design community will see first-hand the finest garden containers offered in the market today along with the most stunning display of olive trees available,” says Eye of the Day owner Brent Freitas.

The Landscape Architects’ Expo (LA Expo) is a regional trade show and educational conference at which landscape architects and designers can be educated, explore new products and technologies, and establish business relationships.

The expo will feature over 130 exhibitors, thousands of design elements, 7 major associations, nearly 30 seminars, a panel discussion by landscape firm MIG, the CLASS Fund Senior Student Showcase, as well as a charity reception that will benefit the Landscape Architecture Foundation and honor landscape architect leaders.

Admission to the exhibit hall is free with Pre-Registration, which can be accessed at LandscapeOnline.com via the LA expo homepage (http://www.landscapeonline.com/research/LASN-Expo/PR-1.php). All Pre-Registered attendees will receive their EXPRESS Badge in the mail prior to the expo.

For more information about Eye of the Day Garden Center and to browse the website, visit eyeofthedaygdc.com.

About Eye of the Day Garden Design Center

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center is a retail showroom featuring more than an acre of high quality garden products, including Italian terra cotta pottery and fountains, Greek terra cotta and French Anduze pottery, as well as products from America’s oldest pottery manufactures Gladding McBean, EOTD also carries premier concrete garden pottery and statuary manufacturers. Eye of the Day is a leading importer of fine European garden décor, and caters to private consumers, as well as landscape and design professionals around the world.

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STOCKBRIDGE — For world-renowned landscape architect Louis Benech, designing a garden is more a science than an art.

“Gardening is said to be an art, but I think there is no way I am an artist,” Benech said in a recent telephone interview from his Paris office. “Artists are more free.” Designing a garden “is too technical to be an art.”

Finding that balance between freedom and responsibility in garden design will be the topic of Benech’s lecture at Monument Mountain High School on Saturday, Feb. 8. Benech will speak at the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s winter lecture, which is expected to draw more than 400 guests.

A reception will follow, where Benech will sign copies of “Twelve French Gardens” a book by author Eric Jansen and photographer Eric Sander, which shows some of his work.

Benech is known for his work on more than 300 public and private gardens across the globe, including the historic Tuileries Gardens and the Elysee Palace Gardens, both in Paris, Pavlovsk’s rose pavilion in St. Petersburg and the Gardens of the Archilleion in Corfu.

“I am very happy when the garden is gentle enough that somebody is not thinking that someone is working there,” Benech said . “I am not into the vision of exotic-looking gardens.”

Benech is currently working at the Palace of Versailles on a contemporary garden for the Water Grove Theatre.

In his speech, Benech will share the methods and attitudes to adopt when approaching a garden, whether it is located in France or abroad, historical or untouched by history, with a view to restoration or to pure creation.

“We are very, very lucky to have him and we are honored he has chosen to come and speak,” said BBG Communications Manager Brian Cruey. “Louis brings a great mix of new and old. He is considered very fashion-forward in the world of gardening, but still traditional,” he said.

Benech’s work includes elements of geometry, making bold statements in the landscape, Cruey said. At the same time, his gardens fit in and look natural, he added.

While Benech denies having a signature style, he said that the basis of most of his gardens are plants that are native to the area where he is working and that he likes maintenance of his gardens to be “unfussy.”

Creating a garden, he said, involves understanding the feeling of a place and what people are looking for in that space. “I love to act differently according to the place where I am,” he said.

Despite all the planning involved in designing a garden, Benech said, “I am very confident that a garden will never be exactly the same as I plan. That’s the wonderful thing about nature,” he said, explaining that he can plant two identical trees just a few feet apart, and minor differences in the light and the soil, even the hole that was dug, can cause them to grow differently.

“What I love is that things are not totally written,” Benech said. “There is something stronger than me that will act on a garden.”

Benech has made a successful career out of a childhood fascination with plants.

“When I was a child, I loved plants because they took me places,” he said, explaining that none of the trees that lined the streets of Paris were native; They all told a story of where they were from.

His fascination with plants continued through law school, which was his second choice to studying forestry, and where he completed a major project on plant protection before graduating with a degree in international law.

Although he took a job at a law firm straight out of school, Benech said, “I just wanted to put my hands in the soil.”

He added, with humor, that he would have studied forestry in the first place, but he did not have the grades needed in math and science to complete that course of study, which was really a type of engineering degree.

So, after a short-lived career in international law, Benech moved to England to become an agricultural worker at Hillier nurseries, and he has had his hands in the soil ever since. From there, he went to work as a gardener for a private property in Normandy before breaking into the field of garden design in 1985.

Five years later he was commissioned, with Pascal Cribier and François Roubaud, to redesign the historic part of the Tuileries gardens.

Asked about projects he is most proud of, Benech said he could “name drop” on some of the bigger projects he has accomplished, but he added truthfully, “I have a bit of pride in every one. There are some tiny places I am very proud of.”

If you go …

What: Berkshire Botanical Garden hosts ‘Freedom and Responsibility’ by landscape architect Louis Benech

When: Saturday, Feb. 8, 2 to 3:30 p.m.

Where: Monument Mountain High School, 600 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington

Admission: $35 for BBG members or $45 for non-members. The Winter Lecturebenefits BBG’s educational programs.

Information: (413) 298-3926, www.berkshirebotanical.org

The award-winning garden at the Montpelier Nursery, run by Camden Community Nurseries

Published: 4 February, 2014
by ALINA POLIANSKAYA

A NURSERY in Kentish Town has won an award for its designer garden. The Montpelier Nursery in Brecknock Road collected the award from the Society of Garden Designers for its outdoor space.

The garden includes vegetable patches where produce has been grown for the children’s lunches. The garden, developed using mainly sustainable materials, was designed by Jackie Herald of The Extra Room.

Camden Community Nurseries chief executive Rachel Youngman said: “Jackie Herald has brought to life the opportunity for generations of children to have the freedom to explore, learn and use their imagination in play.”

 

The London College of Garden Design

Students from the London College of Garden Design have once again succeeded in winning honours at The Society of Garden Designers’ 2013 Awards and completed an award double for the first two years of these awards. Nick Morten, a 2013 graduate won this year’s Student Designer of the Year Award following hot on the heels of 2012 graduate Jon Sims who won the award in 2012.

Leading garden designer and award judge Sarah Eberle said that competition was tough but Nick’s sympathetic use of space coupled with great communication won the day. Nick said ‘It hasn’t quite sunk in that I’ve won this award but it’s a great start to my career in garden design and thanks go to the support of tutors and the training I received at the London College of Garden Design.’

College Director Andrew Fisher Tomlin said ‘We are very proud that London College of Garden Design students have won the majority of awards from the Society of Garden Designers over the past 3 years. It’s a tribute to our great tutors and the hard work that students put in.’ He added ‘Over the past 5 years since the College launched we have aimed to be the best place for anyone wanting to launch a successful professional garden design career. The number of awards and recognition for the high quality of student work is representative of how we are sending out our graduates well prepared for that career’.

A number of College lecturers and tutors won Society of Garden Designers Awards including Jo Thompson who won the Future Designer Award and Andrew Wilson, Director of Garden Design Studies at the College who won three awards including the People’s Choice Award supported by Homes Gardens, and the Grand Award which is the ultimate accolade.

About the London College of Garden Design
The London College of Garden Design aims to offer the best professional garden design courses available in the UK. The College is one of Europe’s leading specialist design colleges and offers professional level courses including the one year Garden Design Diploma which is taught from the Orangery Conference facilities at the world famous Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew and Regents College in central London. The college also has a partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society offering short courses at RHS Garden Wisley.

The London College of Garden Design’s short course programme is available at a number of locations. To find out more visit http://www.lcgd.org.uk/

A garden designer from Storrington has taken one of the two most prestigious awards at the Society of Garden Designers (SGD) annual awards ceremony.

Amanda Patton received the Judges Award in front of an audience of more than 300 guests.

The accolades were presented at a ceremony in London on January 24 where 18 awards were announced including recognition for community garden projects, international schemes, excellence in public and commercial outdoor space and a special lifetime achievement award.

The Judges’ Award was given to Amanda for a private garden in Somerset, a project that the judges felt most successfully achieved one of the central foundations of good design – a sense of place.

The garden, which also took the award for best Medium Residential Garden, was described by the judges as ‘a simple idea expertly integrated into its surroundings’.

On presenting the award, judge Richard Sneesby said: “The beautiful planting, creative use of traditional materials and craftsmanship, and an intelligent and judicious nod to the 21st Century, remind us of where we are now and where we have come from.”

Amanda is a multi-award winning garden designer with awards from the RHS Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Shows as well as industry awards including Best Garden £60,000-£100,000 in the 2010 Association of Professional Landscapers’ awards and the SGD’s Planting Design award in 2012.

The Society of Garden Designers has been championing excellence in garden design for more than 30 years.

It is the only professional association for garden designers in the UK and counts some of the UK’s leading garden and landscape designers among its growing membership.

It is active nationally and internationally, promoting its aims of supporting and maintaining the highest quality of standards within the membership through its journal, workshops, seminars, conferences and links with the construction industry.

Amanda has been a Registered Member of the Society, the highest membership category within the SGD, since 2006.

She founded her practice at the beginning of 2000 following on from a 20 year career as a professional illustrator, and has created more than 130 gardens for a diverse range of clients.

Describing her style as natural and modern, her work focuses on creating gently contemporary gardens, using predominantly natural materials and with a naturalistic planting style.

Based in Storrington, Amanda works throughout the south of England.

You can view more of her work on her website: www.amandapatton.co.uk

In densely populated San Francisco, newly built single-family homes are an uncommon commodity. Much of the city’s booming construction centers around high-rise luxury condominiums and restoring older homes. But at 107 24th Ave. in West Clay Park, a tri-level contemporary home with classical design has sprouted from a previously vacant lot next to Lobos Creek.

Teak and stone floors grace the residence, which features a variety of ceiling types, intricate millwork and peekaboo views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Located near Sea Cliff, West Clay Park is a compact community of mostly level streets where moms jog with strollers and dog walkers line the sidewalks. Set in a gently sloping lot is a four-bedroom tri-level home replete with classical designs and custom finishes. The various ceiling types play off the teak floors and large windows to create a lavish space that’s both elaborate and practical. The chef’s kitchen includes marble counters and a hot water tap above the cooktop, while the master bathroom includes a jetted tub looking out at Marin and a walk-in shower with a Rain Head showerhead and multiple body sprayers.

The newly built luxury residence is set between the childhood home of famed photographer Ansel Adams and a public right-of-way to Lobos Creek. The Presidio is essentially steps away, as are the upscale and picturesque homes of Sea Cliff. Jogging and bike trails winding alongside the Pacific Ocean are nearby, and the Golden Gate Bridge is but a few streets away.

The exterior of the home is highlighted by expansive banks of windows, copper gutters and a windowed garage door crafted from carved wood. The covered entryway leads to double entry doors adorned with intricate carvings of scallop shells and geometric shapes. Stone floors with radiant heating line the entry level, which includes a family room and the fourth bedroom. The family room includes a wet bar, as well as access to the lowest level of the terraced patio. Though staged as a home office, the room opposite the family room includes a closet and could be used as a bedroom.

Up the staircase with teak steps and a detailed banister is the second floor, which hosts the public rooms and a spacious library that could easily serve as a fifth bedroom. The 18-foot by 20-foot dining room includes a coffered ceiling, and the moldings along the entryway to the room resemble details found on simplified Corinthian columns. Sliding doors off the kitchen open to the highest point of the tri-level terraced yard and provides a place for al fresco dining.

Outside, the backyard includes a small reflecting pool with waterfall feature, and the lot beside the home is currently open land.

On the opposite side of the main level is the living room, which overlooks Lobos Creek and includes both bay and transom windows, teak floors and a gas fireplace with hardwood mantel.

Three bedrooms, including a master suite with sitting room and fireplace, complete the top level. All three bedrooms on the top floor offer en suite bathrooms and the two smaller bedrooms are separated by the laundry room. A spacious dressing room in the master suite is set against one of the bedrooms, ensuring none of the top-floor bedrooms share a wall.

Crowning the home is a finished attic that spans the length of the house. Partially illuminated by skylights, the space could act as a storage area or child’s play place.

The Society of Garden Designers awards are the industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, bestowing accolades upon the very best of UK garden design. This year the proceedings featured a stream of images of domestic dream gardens, revealing the wealth of creativity that designers apply in sculpting private plots, to realise owners’ aspirations through finely honed hardscape and inspirational planting.

But a more social sensibility was also in evidence, in the newly-introduced designing for community space award, which acknowledges the importance of design in creating places to accommodate diverse communal needs. The award is a timely recognition of the pressures put on public space by the inexorable rise of urban density, and the benefits that sensitive placemaking can offer, in bringing people together with nature, and with each other. As SGD chair Juliet Sargeant commented, “Regular access to nature increases health and wellbeing, reduces crime and fosters community cohesion. It is essential to protect and develop the green spaces in our towns and cities in order provide a sustainable future and make places where people want to live”.

The award went jointly to Gibbon’s Rent, a neglected alleyway in London Bridge transformed into a colourful and much loved urban oasis by landscape designer Sarah Eberle and Australian architect Andrew Burns, and the Montpelier Community Nursery garden in Camden, a playspace by garden designer Jackie Herald, which embraces and compliments a small wooden nursery designed by AY Architects.

Montpelier Community Garden Nursery in Camden, London. Photograph: Daniel Stier

The significance of the prize was apparent in the winning designers’ responses to it. Eberle, a multi-RHS medal and best in show winner at the Chelsea flower show, was especially thrilled “to get recognition for a ‘gritty’ and relatively low cost urban project, particularly such a small space that directly improves the lives of the immediate community”. Herald found it “extremely rewarding to receive accolades from professional peers for a garden that has community cohesion, enjoyment, and a green agenda at its heart”.

Obviously community gardens are nothing new, but considered design has all too often been conspicuous by its absence. While many community gardens have undoubtedly proved successful employing a pragmatic hands-on approach, a more strategic design can take things a step further, providing an opportunity to create maximum user flexibility, reduce maintenance, ensure sustainability and future proof places against unforeseen, potentially resource-draining circumstances.

It’s something that I am acutely aware of, and actively engaged with, as a director of Cityscapes, a garden festival dedicated to transforming public spaces through temporary and permanent urban garden design interventions. It is pleasing to see the SGD’s new award puts design firmly to the fore, especially as we were one of the delivery partners of Gibbon’s Rent, along with The Architecture Foundation Team London Bridge and Southwark Council.

The flexibility of Gibbon’s Rent shows just how design can be employed to create an engaging environment. The design features a series of large concrete drainage pipes, which Eberle has utilised as planters filled with an exotic array of plants, providing a year-round sensory experience. Surrounding these are various sized plant pots, placed and moved around by local residents, continually modifying the site according to their horticultural needs and seasonal interests.

Since opening in June 2012, the garden has become fitfully inhabited by local residents and businesses for a wide variety of uses, including food growing, sunflower competitions and carol singing. St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots gardening project for the homeless, provides further community interaction by ensuring quality year round maintenance.

The project took a fresh approach to creating public spaces, cultivating not only a garden in a previously barren urban space, but also a community of gardeners, with funding from both public and private sectors, and collaboration between cultural organisations, international designers and local residents.

Such new models of multi-stakeholder engagement offer opportunities for both designers and communities to work together, responding to specific sites and local needs, to create places that are both aesthetically appealing and functionally flexible. The very kind of well designed spaces that the SGD will certainly be looking forward to celebrating with their award in the future.

• Darryl Moore is a landscape designer, garden writer and director of Cityscapes.

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Jo Thompson’s stunning coastal garden, Sea Gem, at Camber Sands, has won the Society of Garden Designers’ Future Designers Award.

The judges agreed Sea Gem was a “beautifully simple and confident design that has a natural picturesque quality.

They said: “This is a very comfortable space that has a good sense of place and a perfect balance of private and public for the location.”

Jo, based in Cranbrook, said she was ‘delighted’ to receive the award. She said: “The client was specific about what was required and then let me get on with it. That was the secret to this success!”

Cedar boardwalks, curved seats, a firepit, timber bollard lights, oak groynes, dunes, footwash stations, salt-and wind-tolerant planting and woodcarving combined to complement the modern beachfront property.

Mum-of-two Jo has a busy year ahead during which she will be building a 3D miniature garden at the Strand Gallery, London from March 5 to March 8.

She will also be designing two gardens at RHS Chelsea from May 20 to May 24.

For the Strand Gallery March event see www.lcgd.org.uk.  For RHS Chelsea see www.rhs.org.uk.