Garden Showcases Landscaping

SONOMA, Calif. -- Remember the first time you looked through a kaleidoscope? Remember how fascinating it was to see familiar objects through a new lens? It wasn't so much the fractured beauty that was captivating, but the change.

It is exhilarating when the routine becomes remarkable.

Such is the experience of seeing the Cornerstone Festival of Gardens in northern California -- the first display garden in the United States exclusively for the work of landscape designers. These designers have been given small garden plots, each about the size of a standard city lot and surrounded by bushes that in the years ahead will block the views of the other gardens. Here, they have created art, much like sculpture installations. The most acclaimed names in the world of landscape design have come to showcase their grandest visions.

The designers of Cornerstone are an elite group whose work is usually found on large corporate campuses. What they do with plants, hardscape, sky and ground creates literally a new earth.

Encouraging a visit should come with a caveat: Seeing these gardens can leave a nagging discontent with the status quo.

Stars in his eyes

The man behind Cornerstone is Chris Hougie, who made his fortune with glow-in-the-dark stars, the decoration of choice for children's rooms everywhere. Hougie sold his business, Great Explorations, in the mid-'90s, got married, and, on his honeymoon in France, stumbled upon Chaumont-sur-Loire, a famous showcase garden. Having never seen anything like it, Hougie came away filled with a desire to create. Five years in the making, his vision finally opened in July.

To bring his inspiration to life, Hougie hired Peter Walker, the designer of the Nasher Sculpture Center's gardens in Dallas, to be his big-picture man. "He was instrumental in choosing the property," Hougie said. The 9-acre tract had been the World of Birds, a wholesale bird breeding business. The former tenants left a legacy of good fertilizer.

Walker plotted the individual gardens and the buildings that are home to the retail stores, restaurant and event facilities. Hougie asked Walker and others in the architectural and landscaping fields to name names. Who were the most innovative landscape designers? The names came back: Andy Cao, Martha Schwartz, Topher Delaney, Claude Cormier, Yoji Sasaki, among others. He found them all over the world, and this increased his desire and his vision.

"There was no place for Americans to see the work of foreign landscape designers," he said recently as he strolled the grounds of his new gardens.

Hougie sent out invitations, and the designers responded to his offer of a small fee ($2,500) and a construction budget of $7,500. They were enticed by the prospect of a large audience, name recognition and a solo effort that wasn't tied to the work of an architect. They got what every artist wants: complete creative freedom and the money to make it happen.

Fifteen gardens have been completed, and 12 more should be open by next summer. Some of them will be temporary, as their aging process is the art or they are meant to have a transitory nature. Others, the ones that are becoming favorites or that required substantial installation, will remain for several years.

Works in progress

Hougie said many of the designers were hands-on, insisting on building their gardens themselves. Others visited the site for inspiration and made frequent drive-by inspections of the construction, while a few mailed in their designs and trusted Hougie and his staff to create the magic.

A few of the designers apparently thought northern California would support the same horticulture as southern California and chose trees and plants that are not well suited to the Sonoma Valley. Hougie already foresees problems with some of the young trees that are struggling to stay alive in the extreme summer heat.

A few of the gardens have suffered procurement problems. A garden still in the design stages is waiting for thousands of pinecones. Hougie said that he has finally found a source and that transportation has been arranged. The multiple screen doors for a maze were easy by comparison.

Tom Leader's "Break Out," a screen-door maze surrounded by a high wall of straw bales, is accompanied by sound. Over the sounds of springs creaking, doors slamming and a bug zapper, there's a soundtrack of Johnny Cash songs emanating from speakers mounted on the straw walls. The doors, of all stripes and conditions, have a universal familiarity. The sound of slamming is eerily reminiscent of visits to Grandmother's house.

Cash died while Leader's garden was in being constructed. To honor the artist, the garden designer placed a black refrigerator at the maze's exit and filled it with Southern comfort food such as creamed corn and chicken potpies. The food is for Cash, should he need it in the afterlife. You know this because a small sign in the fridge says to leave the food for Johnny, but take a bottle of cold water if you are thirsty.

A world of blue

One of the gardens at Cornerstone is already gaining kudos far and wide for its towering silliness.

A gnarly old tree, misshapen and dying in one of the garden plots, was slated for removal, but Claude Cormier saw art potential in the ancient asymmetrical cedar. He took an ink chart (similar to a paint swatch book) and, holding it to the heavens, tried to match the blue of a northern California sky. He found the exact color, and 100,000 Christmas ornaments were ordered in the perfect sky blue.

They arrived, but instead of blending into the sky, they immediately illustrated that sky blue has as many forms as the Eskimos have words for "snow." Instead of disappearing into the blue, the thousands of balls -- which look like the eggs of a giant insect -- illustrate the subtle and dramatic differences in the sky's color. Some days, the tree looks blue and the sky lavender. On others, the tree is cast in a purple haze while the sky is a brilliant aqua.

The weight of the ornaments, while slight, is enough to make some branches droop, giving the tree a comical, Dr. Seuss look. "I think it gets enough air and light," said Hougie. "It seems to be doing fine." The locals are already referring to Cornerstone Gardens as the "place with the blue tree." It has become the garden's icon.