Posts Tagged ‘fountains’

Func­tional sculp­ture at Gar­den Temple

This is the kind of store, a life chang­ing sort of store, that makes me want to open the same busi­ness so I could spend all of my time there. That is kind of what hap­pened with David Mills, who with wife Mari, founded Gar­den Tem­ple in in Stu­dio City in 2002. Prior to open­ing the show­room David trav­eled the world buy­ing and sell­ing eth­nic art, includ­ing stone basins from Cen­tral Amer­ica. It seemed a log­i­cal next step to install pumps, but the logis­tics are more com­plex. “We get the stone in var­i­ous states of com­ple­tion from India, Guata­mala, Vietnam.…than the foun­tains are fin­ished locally. “I love being in a cre­ative busi­ness that offers a bit of nature in the city,”  says David. “I grew up in the val­ley and miss the open spaces. This is a neigh­bor­hood space. We wel­come peo­ple to come in and wan­der around, like the fam­ily with small chil­dren who come almost every weekend.”

The sim­ple, attrac­tive forms David designs and fab­ri­cates facil­i­tate water flow and fall. “We also install and main­tain our foun­tains, and we are very safety con­scious. It’s also impor­tant that the parts under­neath that you don’t see are durable  and made of high qual­ity mate­r­ial.” Gar­den Temple’s large out­door show­room and indoor area show­cases hand chis­eled stone troughs, basins and blocks, cop­per ves­sels, exotic indoor plants and planters.

Gar­den Tem­ple, 13055 Ven­tura Blvd., Stu­dio City, 91604 /​ 818−783−0079 /​ 10 — 5 /​ 7 days a week /​ www​.gar​den​tem​ple​.com

On the web: Burkard Nurs­ery in Pasadena is hav­ing their Labor Day sale Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 3 thru Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 6. All items 30% off. (626) 796‑4355 /​ www​.burkard​nurs​eries​.com /​ More infor­ma­tion in Find a nurs­ery under East Val­ley and beyond.

“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.

A mossy foun­tain at Laguna Nursery

This is a dif­fi­cult post to write because most nurs­eries are spe­cial in some way. Every com­mu­nity needs and deserves a gen­er­al­ized “gar­den cen­ter” for obvi­ous rea­sons (espe­cially since Tar­get has closed all of theirs — yea!). So I’m not nec­es­sar­ily talk­ing about ser­vice, selec­tion or price. With des­ti­na­tion nurs­eries some­thing more inde­fin­able is usu­ally in play, start­ing with the pas­sion of the owner. Most of the nurs­ery men and women I’ve met love what they do — which is lucky for us in this harsh eco­nomic cli­mate. But it is much harder to spe­cial­ize because it cuts down on clien­tele.  So, need Aus­tralian plants? Go to Jo O’Connell’s Aus­tralian Native Plants Nurs­ery in Ojai. Jo pro­vides Aus­tralian plants to the Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, among many oth­ers. Want your roses grown locally and accli­ma­tized — Otto and Sons in Fill­more has an enor­mous selec­tion. How about a cus­tom top­i­ary spelling out your name? Get it at Eden Nurs­ery in Orange County. Two nurs­eries that spe­cial­ize in jaw drop­ping foun­tains, planter arrange­ments, orchids, gar­den fur­ni­ture and acces­sories: Laguna Nurs­ery in Orange County and Rolling Greens Nurs­ery in Cul­ver City. Upland Nurs­ery in Orange County has 350 vari­eties of plume­ria. Does your spouse want to see a phe­nom­e­nal car col­lec­tion while you shop for petu­nias? The only place for that is Simpson’S Gar­den Nurs­ery in San Diego County. Also in San Diego County: Botan­i­cal Part­ners with every bam­boo imag­in­able, and Jun­gle Music for collector’s palms. The own­ers of these nurs­eries (Ralph Evans and Phil Bergman, respec­tively) will give you help in decid­ing what will do best in your gar­den — they want you to suc­ceed and come back for more. Of course, that is true of all nurs­eries, large and small, gen­eral or specialized.

I have a “Des­ti­na­tion Nurs­ery” list­ing at the bot­tom of my cat­e­gories on Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com. For more infor­ma­tion on each nurs­ery, go to the cat­e­gory for that nursery.

Cot­tage Nurs­ery Garden

This yummy Orange County nurs­ery is burst­ing at the seams with old-​​fashioned flow­ers and roman­tic heir­loom vari­eties. A smaller scale enter­prise, it is lov­ingly tended by sis­ters Jayme and Stacy Cox, and their mom Jane Cox. A brick foot­path winds through a tapes­try of blooms, vines, foun­tains, arbors and stat­u­ary. Beat­rix Pot­ter would have been right at home here. Think wis­te­ria, rare pop­pies, tons of antique  roses. I noticed “bleed­ing hearts”, a plant that I remem­ber from my grandmother’s gar­den in Wis­con­sin. If you are look­ing for Eng­lish gar­den plants this nurs­ery is well worth a drive — it’s one stop shop­ping. A ship­ment of Annie’s Annu­als arrived April 1. Be sure to Mapquest or call for direc­tions — access can be tricky.

www​.cot​ta​genurs​ery​gar​dens​.com

Finches feast at Cot­tage Nurs­ery Gardens