Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Timber Press
Portland, Oregon
FRONTISPIECE On the exterior kitchen wall of Carl D’Aquino and
Bernd Goeckler’s Hudson Valley house, ceramic wall plaques
created by Alexandre Bigot in the 1930s echo the style of the
interior’s furnishings and help obliterate the distinction between
the garden and the front porch.
Printed in China
ISBN 978-1-60469-826-8
9 13 51
INTRODUCTION SPACE STRUCTURE
91 129 163
MOVEMENT MOOD FURNITURE
197 242
TIME FURTHER READING
247
INDEX
INTRODUCTION 9
10
ear lightly pressed against a pillow of fragrant moss. In the Hudson Valley garden
owned by Patrick Sears and Jeffrey
William Morris, the nineteenth-century poet and textile designer who Williams, a cloak of Dutchman's pipe
believed in marrying a dwelling to its setting, coined the phrase “carpet garden- (Aristolochia macrophylla) and kiwi
(Actinidia arguta) softens the corner of
ing” to describe formulaic, non-site–specific landscapes, and you won’t find any a century-old barn the way floor-to-
of those in this book. What you will find are unique reflections of each gardener’s ceiling curtains add flowing lines to an
interior wall.
personality. Some gardens will invite you to sit and relax, while others will beg to
be admired from afar; each one is meant to be experienced and enjoyed with all In temperate climates, nature’s air-
the senses. When Harold Nicolson conceived of Sissinghurst, one of England’s conditioning (the shade of a tree) often
determines the location of an outdoor
most treasured gardens, he referred to the ten distinctive rooms he and Vita dining room.
Sackville-West created there as a “succession of privacies.” I insert “intimate”
and “passionate” into that phrase as I describe the projects in this book. Highly pruned hedges, a single chair, and
an armillary sphere create an al fresco
Neither a garden nor an interior is ever finished. One evolves because it is room in this Hudson, New York, garden.
alive, and the other evolves as long as it is lived in. Each reflects and is affected
by time in its own way. Textiles fade, lose their crispness, and become thread-
bare; flowers wilt and die. With the aid of skillful editing and time-lapse
11
INTRODUCTION
When Marjorie Skouras, a former movie
set designer, turned her eye to interiors,
she used artificial boxwood topiaries to
photography, television makeovers renovate and furnish whole houses within
transform this master bedroom’s generic a few days, when, in fact, an authentic living room, like a real garden, evolves
bed into a four poster.
and matures gradually. Because of time’s relationship to growth, buying a plant
and buying a piece of furniture are two very different propositions. Unlike a
tree canopy, a bed canopy will never spread its wings; a dining table doesn’t
seasonally shed its leaves; and a floral carpet would be ruined if it were given the
amount of water a carpet of real snowdrops and crocuses requires.
No scented candle or diffuser could ever duplicate petrichor, an obscure
term concocted to signify the distinctive fragrance arising from dry earth after
a downpour of rain. The word’s derivation alludes to the fluid flowing through
the veins of mythological gods arguably because the heavenly, intoxicating
smell of earth defies an everyday description. An entreaty in Frances Hodgson
Burnett’s The Secret Garden, “Might I have a bit of earth?” echoes a primal urge
to experience nature firsthand and be healed by its wonders. Every gardener
featured in this book knows exactly how that feels. •
SPACE
OPPOSITE The openness of designers approach new projects in similar ways. As they walk
landscaper Mark Streiter and
architect Tony Machado’s
through a house, apartment, or garden and study it from every angle, they
Hudson, New York, garden evaluate its structure and contemplate how to reinforce its strengths and
prompted them to invite
ninety friends for dinner and
downplay its weaknesses. As they consider the site, they assign a function to
dance one summer evening. each distinct area and envision paints, furniture, and textiles—or flowers and
shrubs—expressing its mood, attitude, and style. When the design of any small
A pair of side-by-side chairs space is resolved, it can serve as a valuable template, because, inside and out,
in Patrick Sears and Jeffrey
Williams’s upstate New York
the most efficient floor plans invariably break down the overall into a series
garden lends human scale of small spaces or rooms. Paradoxically, once it’s apportioned, a garden or
and intimacy.
an interior appears to be larger than it actually is because whenever it’s not
possible to size up its total dimensions or square footage in one fell swoop,
mystery sets in because there’s no telling what lies beyond.
A great room or loft is the indoor equivalent of a large garden, where no
structure exists beyond its perimeter walls. In an open-plan house, a carpet may
establish where a living room begins and ends, just as a lawn may define a play-
ground’s boundaries. A work island can separate a dining room from a kitchen,
just as a row of topiaries or a change in levels performs the same service outside.
The fresh air counterpart to an open bookcase defining a private corner of a
room is an arbor or trellis demarcating one section of a garden from the rest.
Whenever we cross a threshold, we instinctively scope out the proportions of
what we’re about to walk into. If it’s a confined area, we adjust our sight range
and move our bodies more efficiently. When we encounter an expanse, we search
for a scale we can relate to in human terms. One exception is if we are on top of a OPPOSITE In a garden close to
the beach in Corona del Mar,
mountain, beside the ocean, or in an open, rolling meadow. Then our compara- California, designer James
tive smallness can provoke awe, especially when we’re able to appreciate nature’s Magni positioned a ceramic
fire pit where it would cast its
majesty. Because our vision becomes more panoramic when we’re outside, the light onto an outdoor living
scale of traditional garden furniture tends to be on the large side. Wide stairs and area, much like an interior hall
SPACE
a ceiling of sky. Interestingly enough, psychologically there’s little difference The treads, risers, and railings
of interior steps have to
between actual and perceived spaciousness. They’re equally pleasing. comply with building codes,
It’s disconcerting to enter a building and not understand its floor plan, but but outside it’s invariably
a question of choosing the
not knowing a garden’s layout holds intrigue and adventure; when we imagine it proportions that work well
to be large, even when it’s not, the mind relaxes into exploration mode and the visually.
body follows suit. Knowing how to alter the way a space is perceived is basic to
A freestanding, antique set
every designer’s skill set. They know how to visually stretch a path or a hallway as of gates and a fence on Carl
it leads away so it appears to be longer; they can play with our notions of depth D’Aquino’s New York property
don’t enclose anything.
and dimension by using dark or light colors or by positioning a large object in the They’re simply used as a
foreground or a small object way off in the distance close to an imagined hori- narrative device to control the
garden’s energetic flow.
zon. They can neutralize a feeling of claustrophobia and imply more square foot-
age by hanging a mirror or a piece of artwork with a wide or deep perspective. A solid, closed gate implies
Inside and out, stripes and line repetitions—the man-made and natural more space, but a closed gate
with open metalwork teases
kinds—are versatile shape shifters. Depending on whether they’re vertical, as in at what lies ahead.
a picket fence or in the clustered stalks of a bamboo grove, or horizontal, such
as a wide set of steps or anything paralleling the horizon, they can visually
elongate, widen, narrow, heighten, stretch, or shorten the size of any wall, cur-
tain, carpet, lawn, fence, trellis, pergola, doorway, or path.
Japanese landscape designers have the miegakure technique at their disposal
and often use it to conceal and reveal parts of a landscape just as screens and
curtains cover and open up aspects of an interior. Whenever something is
hidden, it’s human nature for curiosity to prompt us to wonder or wander. •
LINE DRAWING
one of the first things matt larkin did after he bought a classic 1839 17
Greek Revival house on four acres in Richmond, Massachusetts, was to visually
extend its vestibule into the garden. Standing just outside the front door’s
threshold, he placed a transit level on a tripod and pointed it away from the
house’s central axis. Treating its beam as a guideline, he set a pole 500 feet
away and designated planting spots for two rows of sapling crabapple trees.
Taking his cue from André Le Nôtre at Versailles, he built in a false perspective;
the first two trees are 20 feet apart and the last pair are 15 feet apart. Now,
nearly three decades later, the majestic allée reaches high into the heavens
and, from certain angles, appears to stretch into infinity.
Larkin, board chairman of the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge,
OPPOSITE On occasion, when Massachusetts, appreciates other peoples’ wild, rambling gardens, but his own
Matt Larkin dyes the pool
water in his Massachusetts
is guided by principles of balance and symmetry, much like the orderly, square
garden black, its deep, configuration of the rooms in his house. As a principal of Grant Larkin, an
mirrored surface reflects the
garden’s strict symmetry.
interior design firm he owns with his wife, Lainie Grant, he filled the couple’s
house with an edited, quirky mix of antiques and contemporary art. All the
Sets of red metal gates interiors he designs feel authentic in large part due to a group of artisans—
surrounding the pool and its
pavilion repeat the color of a
blacksmiths, seamstresses, bronze-casters—who detail his furnishings. He
nearby barn’s standing seam treats his garden accessories with the same respect so, for example, his iron
metal roof.
girding mahogany planters are as sturdy as chests.
The celebrated designer David Hicks inspired elements inside and out;
Larkin considers Hicks’s book, My Kind of Garden (1999), a bible, much like
Russell Page’s The Education of a Gardener (1962). Over the years, Larkin
has added several structures to the property and it currently contains a
transplanted nineteenth-century barn, a teahouse constructed from locust
posts, a saltwater pool, and a spacious pavilion, which serves as a shady,
alfresco living room. Larkin tempers the garden’s decorum with some
eccentricity, and there’s a huge field where he fashions fantastical topiary
forms around welded steel cages. There’s also his eye-popping use of color.
Shocks of red (as green’s complementary color) appear on everything from
axial gates surrounding the pool to a powder-coated, coral-inspired chinoiserie
sofa in the pavilion.
He also loves black and describes his proclivity for pairing it with red
as “Dorothy Draper meets the Hell’s Angels.” In fact, he thinks of a coat of
black paint as a failsafe solution if ever one of his designs feels unresolved.
Inside, when he paints window sashes black, the frames recede and the view
PREVIOUS SPREAD An experimental “topiary BELOW Dutchman’s pipe vines (Aristolochia OPPOSITE A vase of sunflowers sits on a glass
yard,” where Larkin builds fantastical shapes macrophylla) will eventually cover the roof table beneath Larkin’s crystal-and-wire chan-
on metal forms he crafts by hand, resembles a and columns of the pool pavilion, where pots delier assemblage. Red-lacquered couches
surreal chess room. It’s where rows of boxwood of silver grass, bromeliads, and tree ferns define the outdoor room’s perimeter and nod
pyramids are crowned with leafy, bushy-tailed mingle with the odd plaster gnome. to the red gates surrounding the pool.
squirrels and a pruned yew obelisk wears a
bird-shaped hat.
SPACE
20
LINE DRAWING
LEFT Shortly after he acquired ABOVE A cast-iron stag pro-
the property, Larkin grew an duced by J. W. Fiske in the
allée of crabapple trees from nineteenth century watches
whips. Every other year, they over the pool in line with the
are pollarded. garden’s prominent axis.
Symmetry
Symmetry, an even distribution of visual weight
measured from a central line or axis, exudes dignity and
stability. Whether it’s a pair of candlesticks arranged on
either end of a mantelpiece, matching combinations
of bedside tables and lamps, or an allée of trees, as in
Matt Larkin’s garden, we perceive it as resolved and
complete. Whenever symmetry is overdone, when it’s
too perfect and precise, it can feel staid and impersonal.
Radial symmetry is found in a central light fixture, a table
surrounded by evenly spaced chairs, or a sunflower.
Larkin applied it to raised vegetable beds shaped into
quadrants and in the four axial gates around his pool
pavilion, and in both cases its effect is calming. •
GREENHOUSE AFFECT
30
Asymmetry
Traditional designers who tend to favor
symmetry place furnishings or plants on either
side of a central axis to establish a formal sense
of balance, which, according to Meconi, can
feel grand and confined at the same time. A
preference for asymmetry is associated with a
modern sensibility because it’s looser and less
predictable. Inside and out, asymmetric designs
involve odd, not even, numbers. For example,
three objects to carry the visual weight on a
horizontal surface; a single urn positioned to
the right of a doorway instead of one on either
side. To Meconi’s eyes, mismatched chairs,
groupings of dissimilar shrubs, or something
slightly off-kilter all feel spontaneous, relaxed,
and less rigid than a perfectly balanced, Greenery, including champaca trees, reflects
in the living room’s side window.
symmetrical arrangement. •
SOULFUL SOIL
plans full of circles, squares, triangles, and rectangles.
According to his method, it works for gardens as well,
because inside or out we are always walking into a
still life.
Hedges are Ripepi’s preferred form of structure,
but he also uses fences, and his garden rooms follow
a processional sequence. A weeping birch begins
his visualization of an alfresco vestibule. This area
leads to a narrow walkway lined with catmint that
culminates in a display of hydrangeas with a creamy
coloration as nostalgic as a collection of Wedgwood
china. Behind a door is a regimented boxwood
arrangement, as linear as a library. In the garden, fur-
niture is sculptural rather than comfortable because
Ripepi wants the experience of walking through it to
be as ephemeral as the piano music he plays, so he
leaves guests to wander, savor the atmosphere, and
take it away with them in their mind’s eye. •
36
Pruned and notched boxwood shrubs privatize an outdoor OPPOSITE “Concentrated, high contrast is crucial whenever a
dining area close to the house where Ripepi likes to serve tea part of a garden is primarily seen from a distance,” says Ripepi.
in bone china cups. “Here, the dark, coarse leaves and rigid pruning of the taxus
and holly tonics the loose, variegated dogwood.”
SPACE
38
40
SOULFUL SOIL
In Towner’s reinvention of
the lower terrace, the dining
area appears to float above
the expanse of lawn, allowing
diners to take in the tops
of silverberry hedges, yew
columns, and a tool shed’s
sedum roof at eye level.
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