Archive for the ‘Garden Travel’ Category

“Huge Sude­ley Bench” by Pablo Reinoso at Sude­ley Castle

I came across this work of art on a favorite web­site and stopped in my tracks! What a per­fect set­ting for this glo­ri­ous piece of out­door sculpture!

From the catalog:

As impres­sive in scale and ambi­tion as its name sug­gests, Huge Sude­ley Bench was com­mis­sioned espe­cially for the Sotheby’s at Sude­ley Cas­tle exhi­bi­tion. It rep­re­sents the first time that Reinoso has worked on this mon­u­men­tal scale, over­see­ing a team of foundry tech­ni­cians who employed hydraulic machin­ery to manip­u­late lengths of steel girder into exu­ber­ant and free flow­ing forms. Reinoso refers to this process as ‘breath­ing sculp­ture’, ref­er­enc­ing the man­ner in which Calder adapted his mobiles while at the same time acknowl­edg­ing its archi­tec­tural prop­er­ties. Com­ment­ing on his early train­ing as a sculp­tor, Reinoso has stated his will to go beyond pre­scribed bound­aries, ‘bound­aries you need to know but you don’t need to respect’. Huge Sude­ley Bench was cre­ated in three indi­vid­ual sec­tions and treated with black auto­body paint, a deci­sion made to ensure that future gen­er­a­tions could refresh its sur­faces and appre­ci­ate the work in the pris­tine state it first left the foundry. It also sees the intro­duc­tion of Reinoso’s new artist’s mono­gram which he intends to apply to all his future creations.

“Spaghetti chair” is actu­ally a bench.

To learn more about Pablo Reinoso and his work, go to:  www​.pablor​einoso​.com, www​.chair​blog​.eu/, and to see more of this Sotheby’s exhi­bi­tion:www​.sothe​bys​.com/​m​i​n​i​s​i​t​e​/​s​u​d​e​l​ey/.

A Socal com­pany that car­ries beau­ti­ful gar­den art and foun­tains on a smaller scale is Gar­den Tem­ple (818 – 783-0079) in Stu­dio City,www​.gar​den​tem​ple​.com.

Now this is a bicycle!

I was impa­tiently antic­i­pat­ing Flora Grubb Gar­dens and was not dis­ap­pointed! I was in fact wowed by this ulti­mate urban gar­den resource. Set in an indus­trial area of down­town San Fran­cisco, Flora’s green king­dom  encom­passes a soar­ing indus­trial build­ing filled with witty dis­plays, ver­ti­cal gar­dens and unusual plants and con­tain­ers. Ser­vices offered include cut­ting edge flo­ral designs (suc­cu­lent wed­ding bou­quet, any­one?), gar­den design and main­te­nance and a palm bro­ker­age. Flora Grubb Gar­dens has a ter­rific web­site and newslet­ter: check it out @ Flor​agrubb​.com. She also offers sem­i­nars and speakers.

1001 Gar­dens is a book to die for!

.….YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE. That’s the title of a book edited by Rae Spencer-​​Jones that I had to have when I spot­ted it at the Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens gift shop (www​.Hunt​ing​ton​.org/). Weigh­ing in at about 2 pounds and with 960 pho­tos and 800+ pho­tos, this is not a take-​​along book. It really is intended for arm­chair trav­el­ing (to actu­ally visit a listed gar­den you will evi­dently need to do some dig­ging on hours, direc­tions, etc.) I like it because there may be a gar­den not far afield to visit that the reader is not aware of. The for­mat lists design­ers, own­ers, gar­den style, size, cli­mate, loca­tion and a brief descrip­tion. List­ings are eclec­tic, on every con­ti­nent, with a heavy con­cen­tra­tion on the British Isles.

1001 GARDENS YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, Pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2007 by Barron’s Edu­ca­tional Series Inc.

Bot­tle tree @ RBG

I am vis­it­ing my brother Scott and his wife Kate in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. They live in Wal­nut Creek, about 25 miles east of San Fran­cisco and at the foot of Mount Dia­blo (site of a recent con­tro­versy con­cern­ing the name “Mt. Devil”, but that’s another story). There is a trea­sure right down the street from their house, the very first project of the revered Gar­den Con­ser­vancy.  That would be Ruth Ban­croft Gar­dens, ded­i­cated to the  preser­va­tion of as fine a col­lec­tion of water con­serv­ing plants as you will find on the planet. Started by it’s epony­mous founder in 1971, the 3 acre gar­den is located on a fruit farm owned by the Ban­croft fam­ily since the 1880’s. I have always found suc­cu­lents easy to love for their form, color, ease of pro­poga­tion and most of all archi­tec­tural good looks. The suc­cu­lent and cacti col­lec­tion @ RBG is thrilling for it’s con­trast­ing tex­tures, forms and col­ors, espe­cially in the spring.

The bot­tle tree (Brachy­chi­ton Rupestris) shown above is lit­er­ally a giant suc­cu­lent. Using it’s trunk for water stor­age, the Aus­tralian native  is slow grow­ing up to 40′ in height; it doesn’t dis­play the bot­tle shape until 15 years along. The good news is that if you have more money than time the bot­tle tree can be trans­planted very easily.

Ruth​ban​croft​gar​den​.org