As designers, we all look to California gardens for inspiration. The designs are always magical, somehow, and the myriad plant combinations make all of us envious.
So, in their latest book, Private Gardens of the Bay Area
It's not often you'll encounter a garden designed in collaboration by Bernard Trainor and William McDonough. It's a lesson in a sustainable modern landscape that pays great respect to the land around it.
Who wouldn't want a garden whose "bones" were laid out by the likes of Tommy Church, Lawrence Halprin or Topher Delaney, or natural plantings by grass expert John Greenlee?
And then, of course, there are the gardens by some of the most successful contemporary landscape architects, including Ron Lutsko and Andrea Cochran.
The gardens in this book range from modern to traditional, and there's even one, Big Swing, created by well-known gardener and salvia expert Betsy Clebsch. There are city and country gardens, vineyard gardens and those in the suburbs.
As the authors state in the introduction, there's no such thing as a "California Garden." Rather, they say, "It was immediately clear that there is no one California voice but a multitude of styles and voices, and we chose to celebrate the diversity of approaches we found, which reflect the geography of the region and its myriad microclimates."
It's a book that belongs in every designer's library.
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