Lawrence Halprin’s Lucasfilms Campus

Yoda watches over the entrance to the LDAC offices . (Through the doors behind him, see Darth Vader statues you can!)

It’s time to continue with that APLD conference I attended in a galaxy far, far away  . . . oh, wait, I’m getting confused. It’s because on the first day out on the buses, where should we head for our first stop but the Letterman Digital Arts Center (LDAC), home to the flagship office for the Lucasfilm Companies, housing Lucasfilm and LucasArts and other related companies. As Lucasfilm’s recruiting website puts it, ” It’s where a cutting-edge campus meets an historic military base. It’s where a national park meets the big city.”

Located on the grounds of the old Letterman Hospital, the LDAC campus comprises approximately 1000 acres and possesses stunning views, including this one of the Palace of Fine Arts.

Opened in 2005, the LDAC was created with sustainability as a primary goal. Many materials from the demolished hospital buildings were recycled for use in constructing the new buildings, which were designed to be both more energy and water-efficient than conventional buildings. And its grounds, designed by famed landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, include areas of lawn underneath which sit large parking garages for employees.

I found the area we visited, shown in these photographs, to be a successful balance of open spaces and designed landscape. (Apparently the grounds are open to the public for picnicking, at least on weekends, and are very popular with San Francisco residents.) A “brook” cuts through the central part of the landscape, with moving water whose speed and intensity varies from location to location. One of our tour leaders told us Halprin had been inspired to include this element because his wife was a dancer.

Grasses, perennials, and large boulders line the edges of the waterway on the LDAC campus.

The flowing water feature sits in the center of this part of the campus. The large boulders help balance the presence of the Fine Arts Palace seen in the background.

At the end of the stream is a medium-sized pool with pergola-like structures on one side. To my eye, they were less successful as elements in the landscape (as were some of the shrubs on site), but the area looked as though it was designed with visitors in mind, perhaps especially families with children.

The pool area at the end of the stream has large stone ledges perfect for sitting on.

Lawrence Halprin, who died in 2009, was an extraordinary landscape architect. To read more about his career, including his work designing the FDR Memorial in Washington DC, visit the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s website.

A Visit to the Gardens of Alcatraz

In mid-September, I headed to the Bay Area to attend the annual APLD conference, which took us to an impressive number of gardens and made me wish I could grow some of the plants I saw. Before the conference began, however, I spent a couple of days visiting my son, who has just moved to San Francisco to work. One morning, I got up early and took the ferry over to Alcatraz Island. Unlike most tourists, however, I never set foot in any of the prison buildings. I was there to see the Gardens of Alcatraz.

As some of you may already know, Alcatraz served as a maximum security federal prison from 1933 to 1963, when it was closed for budgetary reasons. (Prior to 1933, it was a military prison, dating from the late 1800′s.)

Seen from the San Francisco Bay in the early morning, Alcatraz’s appearance is more than a little foreboding.

Although its nickname is “The Rock,” from early in its history, the officers’ families and later the inmates sought to soften its forbidding slopes and surfaces by planting flowers. When the Bureau of Prisons tore down two homes that had previously been occupied by these families, their foundations were converted to flower gardens tended by families and inmates.

An area of the old Officers Row gardens, open to the public only through the tours offered by the Garden Conservancy two mornings a week.

Another section of the gardens in the old Officers’ Row area.

In 1986, the prison became a National Historic Landmark, but it wasn’t until 2003 that The Garden Conservancy began partnering with the National Parks Service  and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy to clear away over 20 years’ worth of neglect of the garden areas. Today, Garden Conservancy volunteers, working through the NPS, lead fascinating and informative free tours ranging over much of the island on Friday and Sunday mornings. My two guides, both first-rate in terms of their knowledge of Alcatraz’s history as well as that of the gardens, met a group of us on the 9:10 a.m. ferry on Sunday morning and soon we were off.

Monica Beary (left) and Corny Foster (right) await us. Steps to climb? There were lots.

I was surprised to see plants like old roses,  fuschias and geraniums (as well as succulents) in profusion. Our volunteers explained that these were “survivor” plants that had been discovered in many locations when the GC’s restoration work began. The plants introduced by the inmates and families were exotics; the climate (Sunset Zone 17) is mild and Mediterranean in nature.

Perennial geraniums in the Officers’ Row area, near the greenhouse.

Echium candicans (Pride of Madeira), a North African native, grows in the Gardens of Alcatraz. It’s a favorite of hummingbirds.

Almost everywhere, the view out to the Bay reminds visitors how isolated and grim “The Rock” would be without these gardens to soften it.

Succulents and roses frame a view of the Bay.

An Agave americana in flower on the edge of the island.

At the end of our tour, we took in views of the west end sloped areas of the island – the only gardens that most prisoners could see.

Today these areas are planted heavily in succulents interspersed with other plants, such as Gaura, which can tolerate the rocky soil and limited rainfall of the site.

If you’re fortunate enough to visit the Bay Area over a weekend, the Garden Conservancy offers tours of the Gardens of Alcatraz on Friday and Sunday mornings at 9:30. You’ll need to book the 9:10 ferry, nothing later, if you want to get there in time. And for more information on the gardens, check out Bay Nature’s online article and the Conservancy’s own website. Highly recommended!

A Knot Garden at Filoli

When I was in the Palo Alto area in June this year, I visited Filoli again (as well as the Elizabeth Gamble Garden). It was blazingly hot, and I wasn’t sure I would get any good images because of the sun and time of day. So today’s post is sort of an ode to my B&W circular polarizing filter, as you’ll see.

I knew Filoli’s gardens were formal, for the most part. But on my prior trip I hadn’t ventured far enough to discover its Knot Garden. Located just beyond its rose garden area, this was no ordinary knot garden. All the knot gardens I had seen before were clipped boxwood shapes. The one at Broughton Castle was clipped and had roses inside the spaces.

The walled knot garden on the south side of the castle, known as the Ladies’ Garden, was established in the 1880s on the site of the sixteenth century kitchen. The fleur de lys beds are planted with Rose ‘Heritage’ and Rose ‘Gruss an Aachen’.

Oh so tidy and veddy British, don’t you think? Closer to home, I’ve seen a knot garden at the National Arboretum, with its edging plants somewhat more loosely clipped.

A knot garden in the National Arboretum in Washington, DC

So at Fioli, I was delighted to come across a knot garden composed of barberry, lavender, santolina, and little rosemary balls trimmed like lollipops – all viewed against a hedge of copper beech. Originally planted in 2007 by a local garden club or two, I’m not sure its shape is as tidy as the original plan, but I absolutely loved the sweeps of lavender, just coming into bloom.

A rosemary standard is silhouetted against a copper beech hedge and provides a formal contrast to masses of Angustifolia lavandula ‘Hidcote.’

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any elevation when shooting so the shape of the knot garden isn’t that evident from my photos. And the sun glared off the barberry leaves mercilessly.

Here you can get an idea of the sweeps of barberry, santolina and other plants used in the Knot Garden at Filoli, with the copper beech hedge in the distance. The sun’s glare on the barberry leaves is very evident.

A more tightly-cropped view of the same scene, with three of the rosemary standards visible from left to right, ending at an opening in the hedge.

Finally, I brought out the polarizer for my 24-120mm lens, and used it to cut the glare on the barberry shrubs. Here’s the result.

Now the barberry leaves, while a deeper red due to the polarizer’s effect, have lost their glare. And I like the line of the plantings as they lead your eye back to that little rosemary standard.

For more information on Filoli’s Knot Garden, click here. I have to say I didn’t experience the layout as two separate shapes as shown in this description, but gardens change over time. And I loved seeing the concept updated for a California climate!

The Gamble Garden, Redux

In mid-June, I found myself back in Palo Alto for my younger son’s graduation weekend. Since my body was on East Coast time the day after I arrived, I decided to head for the Elizabeth Gamble Garden, which I’d last visited in February several years back. I’d loved the garden’s “bones” and its topiary bunny, as well as its impressive collection of succulents, which can get through Palo Alto winters easily.

This time the area was awash in unusual heat, reaching up into the mid-90′s, but the garden looked beautiful and didn’t appear to be suffering. The bunny was still there.

A sunflower admires the topiary rabbit in the Gamble Garden in June.

Even though it was only a little after 8 a.m., the sun was already very bright, so I chose my shots carefully. Verbena bonariensis, scattered throughout the garden, looked especially nice in the rim lighting.

Verbena bonariensis, acting as a see-through scrim in the Gamble Garden with pink Agastache behind it.

Moving away from the harshest light, I found some other great plant combinations. The first one was a contrast of Santolina ‘Lemon Fizz’ (my thanks to the thoughtful volunteers who had labled it) combined with a blue-purple annual verbena. I loved the pop of the colors.

Santolina ‘Lemon Fizz’ and purple annual verbena in the Gamble Garden, contrasting nicely with a broader-leaved perennial in the upper right corner.

In the “let’s do monochrome” category, I liked the way some pink alstroemaria had been planted in front of red barberries.

Pink alstroemaria (variety unknown) in the foreground of a planting of red Berberis thunbergii.

In the end, one of my favorite images ended up being this one, where all the colors, despite their differences, seemed to work together. The small path light on the left works to balance the smoke bush on the upper right, I hope.

A path through the Gamble Garden in the early morning light.

And though my son doesn’t go to college here any more, I hope my travels will bring me back to revisit this garden in the future. Do see it if you’re in the area.